Human Rights Violation Hearings — Bisho — 1996-09-11

CHAIRPERSON: Order please.  Order please.

TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION: BISHO MASSACRE - DAY 3 - 11 SEPTEMBER 1996

MAJ MBINA: Thank you very much Mr Chairman, I am Major Mbina.  I was a soldier in the Ciskeian Defence Force when this happened.  First of all I want to make one thing clear.  I was not a colonel, I was only a captain.  I was working under Colonel Mkosana.  I am not going to repeat all that he said but there are just things I want to make clear.  I was also in Jongilanga Crescent with Colonel Mkosana but I was in another car, as there were two cars.  I was on his right.  
 I want to make it clear especially where orders are concerned that the order that I was given was that I should tell, order the people in front of me at Jongilanga Crescent, the people that we were worried about.  The other people that were not at the Jongilanga Crescent were not given orders.  I never gave orders to the rest of the troops.  Therefore I do not know who gave orders at large.  My order was specific and clear and as Colonel Mkosana said, he said minimum force.  What I specified was who exactly should shoot.  The automatic guns and the rifles should not be used, only single shots.
 I know because some people have no respect.  Some people shot, probably shot without having been given orders, knowing that at the end it's the boss that will answer.  That is what I want to make clear.  I also ask for forgiveness.  I empathise with families that lost their members.  I ask forgiveness on behalf of the Ciskeian Defence Force especially those that were involved.  We ask forgiveness.  We will be very glad if the Commission would forgive us.  To the community we ask for forgiveness.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much.

TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION: BISHO MASSACRE - DAY 3 - 11 SEPTEMBER 1996

CHAIRPERSON: Can we just keep a moment's silence please because we are dealing with things that are very, very deep.  It isn't easy as we all know, to ask for forgiveness and it's also not easy to forgive but we are people who know that, that when someone cannot be forgiven there is no future.  If a husband and wife quarrel and they don't one of them say I am sorry and the other says I forgive, the relationship is in jeopardy.  We have been given an example by our president and by many other people. 
 Many of you, all of you who have suffered have said, those who have come up here have said, who came to tell what happened, to ask for forgiveness and to forgive.  But it is not easy and we don't, we mustn't pretend it is easy but this is what we are about, if our country is going to survive.

REV XUNDU: Just for the purpose of the Commission understanding very well the submission made by Major General Marius Oelschig, I am aware that the majority of people who went to the Noordeberg Tiles, went there and said they were doing things under orders but the impression that one gets from your submission is that you were emotionally and morally feeling committed to the issue of thwarting a group of people who had no vote and in an attempt by the Ciskeian Regime to keep itself as an island when South Africa all over was beginning to accept the presence of the change which was being made through demonstrations of this kind and marches of this kind, to Pretoria, to Cape Town, Parliament and everywhere, and you thought that with your whole mind, that you could stop this and you indeed did that.
 I want to ask the question then.  Are you convinced now as you were convinced then that you were correct in giving an order to unarmed people and the proof of that is that nobody died from the Defence Force, that in your enthusiasm to make sure that you perpetuate the existence of the Gqozo Regime you went that way.

TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION: BISHO MASSACRE - DAY 3 - 11 SEPTEMBER 1996
MAJ-GEN OELSCHIG - continuation

MARIUS OELSCHIG: Mr Chairman, I regret if such an impression has been created in my submission, that was not in fact how I felt.  I reject completely and absolutely any suggestion that I supported the maintenance of any of the previous political orders that existed in this country.  I was and I am today, a professional soldier.  My allegiance is to the Constitution of this country, not to political parties.  When I am given an order I accept that order as a soldier.  I always have and I always will.  I was sent to the Ciskei, not in order to maintain any given political situation.  The instructions which I received, having been withdrawn from the Joint Staff Course as a student, the most senior course that one can do in your military career and I accepted that withdrawal without complaint.  
 I was sent to the Ciskei to try and bring order to a force that was in the process of disintegrating.  There had been coups, there had been attempted coups.  Almost the entire military leadership of the Ciskei Defence Force had been dismissed before my arrival.  I was sent to the Ciskei to prepare that force for integration eventually into what is today the South African National Defence Force.  I spent my days and nights involved in trying to get good management, good leadership, good training, back to the Ciskei Defence Force.  I did not for a single moment involve myself in politics, I rejected it entirely and I dedicated myself to the military application of my job.  Everybody believed that because I was sent to the Ciskei, I must somehow have been involved politically.  Mr Chairman, I reject that.  I was never ever politically involved in Ciskei or any other politics.

REV XUNDU: My last question is then - is there a place, is there a space for dictates of conscience within, was your conscience at ease therefore, in practising that system to the extent to which you did?

MARIUS OELSCHIG: I do not believe, and I speak now in all honesty, that I personally did anything to buttress the Gqozo Regime.  In fact many of the issues where he and I could get no agreement, were exactly because I opposed certain of the requirements that he had of me.  I opposed them and I refused to perform them and it was exactly for that reason that I asked for de-secondment, I could not work under those circumstances as a soldier.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much.  Denzil Potgieter?

UNKNOWN: Thank you Chairperson.  General Oelschig, it is quite clear from your evidence that you gave that order to shoot.  It was your order that was passed down via the colonel and via the other colleague of yours sitting there but ultimately it is your order which was really given.  If I understand your evidence correctly, it was given on a second or even third hand report, allegation that they were shooting at the soldiers.
 Now up to now in these proceedings, there has not been a twiddle of evidence substantiating that, that there was any shooting at the soldiers.  In fact the ballistics evidence that we heard earlier this morning confirmed that, that there was no shooting.  Do you accept now, because it's no use and that point has been made many times to apportion blame to people on the ground that pull the triggers.  One must look higher up in the hierarchy, the line of command.
 Do you now accept at this stage that that order was wrong?  There was no reason to open fire, there was no shooting at the soldiers.  The only soldier that was shot, was shot by his own colleagues.