Amnesty Hearings — East London — 1998-10-07

MR ZILWA: Yes.  Some documentation has been given before this Committee as exhibits which indicate that at that point in time the political stance of the African National Congress was that political violence was not approved, in other words it had been stated that the armed struggle had been suspended and the ANC was speaking against political violence.  Now if it is to be stated that your action of the killing of the Weakley's or your operation of that day was a direct violation of that stated stance of the African National Congress and as such you acted off your own bat in direct violation of the policy of the African National Congress, what would be your response to that?

FUNDISILE GULENI: That would be surprising in that I don't regard that as a direct, as it was in direct conflict with the policy of the ANC because what we did, we were furthering the interests of the ANC, not our personal interest.  As a result, as we have planned that, we will carry on with our missions.  It was not the only incident that we would perform there.  Now after the call by the President, Nelson Mandela, that we should remain calm, it's then that we decided to not carry on.  So according to our analysis at that point in time we thought we were acting within the ambit of the ANC's interest.

MR ZILWA: I see.  Now it has turned out that in fact the people who you shot on that day, the victims of your attack, were in fact not the right-wing elements that you thought you were attacking but it turned out to be an innocent party of men who had gone to fish and there were children amongst them.  Now what is your response to that?

FUNDISILE GULENI: I feel very bad about that.  In fact I felt very bad even when the time I got that these people were not AWB members as we suspected and they were alleged to be subscribers of Democratic Party, so I became so sorry since I get that information because those were not the people we targeted.  We thought any person we would find, in fact it was our thinking that people whom we can find around in that area which was alleged to be infiltrated by AWB who will be indeed having something to do with the AWB so that was our assumption.  So it was so unfortunate that the people who were having nothing to do with it have been effected.

MR ZILWA: Now to put this matter beyond doubt, if you had been aware before you actually shot at these people ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: If that was the case, the AWB was not the Government of the day, not so?

FUNDISILE GULENI: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON: But yet you wanted to send a message to the Government of the day, why them?

FUNDISILE GULENI: Ja, it's because the AWB was behaving in a manner which a person would believe it's for violence.  Now we suspected that even in these incidents of black to black violence were infiltrated by them and we suspected that those people who were anti-blacks were AWB and other right-wingers.  That's why we were having attitude against AWB because it was having attitude against ANC, against blacks and so on.

CHAIRPERSON: What made you think that the AWB would be worried about a message that you'd sent to the Nationalist Party government?

FUNDISILE GULENI: In fact AWB we thought it's one of the parties that were perpetrating violence.  It's not only the Government, we thought it's working together with the Government in attacking blacks, that's how we view the situation.

ADV DE JAGER: But weren't you aware that the Government also arrested AWB members?

FUNDISILE GULENI: Weren't?

ADV DE JAGER: Weren't you aware that the Government also arrested AWB members at that time?

FUNDISILE GULENI: No, we were not aware.

MR ZILWA: Are you saying in the violence that was raging throughout the country, are you saying you suspected that the Government was acting in collaboration with the AWB, hence your message would be heard by the Government as well as AWB.  Is that what you're saying?

FUNDISILE GULENI: Ja, our suspicion was that they are having common objective of attacking blacks, that's how we felt.

MR ZILWA: Yes.  As I was still saying had you been aware before you actually fired at this party, had you been aware of the identity which they turned out to be, i.e. they were just fishermen who had nothing to do with the AWB, would you have carried out the attack if you had been aware of that before the attack?

FUNDISILE GULENI: No, not at all, we wouldn't have carried the attack against them.

MR ZILWA: Now to the families of those unfortunate men who died in that attack, their families and friends, what message do you have for them as you are sitting here now applying for amnesty?

FUNDISILE GULENI: The message to the friends, relatives, family members is that we are so sorry now that it appears that we have attacked the people who were innocent, having nothing to do with these things because even if they were DP members, DP members who was not at the time appearing as a structure which is promoting violence, so we are so sorry because it was not our intention to hit anybody who is innocent.  Our intention was to hit against the people who were having missions to attack us as ANC or as blacks.  So we are so sorry, I'm tendering my apologies to all those effected by the death of the victims.

MR ZILWA: Now if it is to be suggested that your action in fact had nothing to do with any political objective, it was just a pure racist act on your part which had nothing to do with politics or a political objective, what would be your response to that?

FUNDISILE GULENI: I could dispute that because if it was a pure racist attack we wouldn't have bothered, or let me put it this way, the comrades from Flagstaff wouldn't have bothered about coming from Flagstaff down to Port St Johns.  It's far away and they could have waited for any white person moving nearby and that one would be a target.  Also when we, having met at Port St Johns as a group, we wouldn't have bothered ourselves about going to Mpandi, down to Mpandi, about 40 kilometres from town, we would have attacked any white person coming from the coastal areas because there were a number of white persons who coming from that direction, coming from the sea, but we didn't attack them because we regarded them as not the target.  We regarded targets as the people whom we can find in the area which is alleged to have been infiltrated by the AWB.

MR ZILWA: Now as you know or as you may have heard by now, one of the requirements for you to be granted amnesty in an application such as this one, that you must make full disclosure of all the relevant facts.  Now is there anything which you haven't told this Committee about that you can think of which has any bearing on your action?

FUNDISILE GULENI: To my knowledge I don't remember anything which I may have omitted because even some of the things which I have not detailed have been detailed by the other applicants so that's why I was so brief from telling the story as from Port St Johns to the scene.  But I at the moment, I don't think there is anything which has not been disclosed before this Committee, which I have not disclosed.

MR ZILWA: And you are saying in other words that you align yourself with all the details that have been given by your co-applicants?

FUNDISILE GULENI: Yes I do.

MR ZILWA: Are you then accordingly urging this Committee to grant you amnesty on the grounds that your application satisfies the requirements, you had a political objective, you've made full disclosure?

FUNDISILE GULENI: Yes I do.

MR ZILWA: Mr Chairman, that is the witness's evidence.
NO FURTHER QUESTIONS BY MR ZILWA

MR SMUTS: Thank you Mr Chairman.
	Mr Guleni, you say that this attack was not a racist attack?

FUNDISILE GULENI: Yes.