Human Rights Violation Hearings — Moutse — 1996-12-05

DR RANDERA: If I can come to your document - you have it with you or not?  If I can just refer you to page 2 and we are talking about the 16th December 1985 where you say Skosana responded that he would even give up his life to have a victory over the Moutse people.  Despite these threats Van Niekerk recalls that Skosana and the group of Ndebeles did not enter Moutse that evening.  When you say the group of Ndebeles who are you referring to besides Mr Skosana?

CAPT VAN NIEKERK: ... they were found in Moutse and they were chased out of Moutse by Major D Malan.

DR RANDERA: Do you know who was there besides Mr Skosana?
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CAPT VAN NIEKERK: When I visited them I got them at Klipplaasdrift.  It is a small distance from Matete and Skosana was there and Piet Ntuli was also there.  There were also other people.  Perhaps I knew their names then but I really can't remember that but there were a group.

DR RANDERA: I just want to go to what happened on the 1st January 1986 and just ask you to recall the events as you saw it at the time that led to what happened on the 1st January.

CAPT VAN NIEKERK: Chairperson,  the morning I didn't arrive here too early, it was round about nine o'clock.  And already there were people from the region of Siyabuswa up to Matete, up to Soetmelksfontein.  There was already people coming in from Ndebele and there was fighting all over and you will also see from the memorandum we didn't have enough human resources and everyone who could be withdrawn from a police station was out perhaps closing the police station, they were here at Denelton and these people were all over busy trying to get the people away from each other, trying to let the Ndebeles go back to Kwandebele and this particular day I was at the police station at Denelton and there were many bodies that were brought there and I also determined that more than 150 Ndebeles were injured on that day.  At that stage I was not aware of the fact that Moutse people were murdered.  Perhaps later the information came to the fore that perhaps Moutse people were also murdered on that day.  What happened on that day, as I could ascertain later how the attack happened, was that the Ndebeles were already placed in Kwandebele from different ages and people were also forced to go.  They weren't all voluntarily there.  And as of old they had to go to Moutse by foot and they were
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tired when they arrived at Moutse and the Moutse people were rested and then they had the upper hand.  That was my opinion and the Moutse people had the upper hand over the Kwandebele people and also had victory over them.  I don't want to say that the one party is perhaps better fighters than the others but the other people, the Kwandebeles, they were tired when they got to Moutse, when the fighting started. And on that same day I sort of phoned Mr Piet Ntuli, the late Piet Ntuli, and I seriously gave him an indication of my feelings that I was very unhappy with this and said that the next day the commissioner and myself would get him and Skosana and other cabinet members in the office and that we had to discuss this, what happened.  That is what happened on the 1st in Moutse.  What also happened on that day was that policemen, that is Kwandebele policemen, their wives were harassed at their homes.  That was reported to me and then they were accused that their men were not good enough to have victory over the Moutse people.  Perhaps I could also just mention that on the same day two policemen, two detectives, they were stationed at Denelton, two lovely people, competent people, they gave an indication that they would not go to the Kwandebele police.  They went to investigate a certain problem, I think it is in the area of Moutse too and there they were perceived to be Mbokoto members and they were then cruelly killed there by means of the necklacing method.

DR RANDERA: ... with the 1st January again on page 4 of your document, and I apologise to the community that you don't have these documents in front of you, you are implying that it was almost as if you were given wrong information as to where incidents were taking place and you were asked to go
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and investigate something and really nothing was happening there.