Human Rights Violation Hearings — Soweto — 1996-07-23

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Mosala, maybe I need to assist you.  Thank you very much.  By saying, can you just address the Commission as to what lessons were learnt from your experience, in particular, of thinking that you worked closely with the Government and so many things went wrong while you were in leadership like the senseless losses that we have been hearing about over the past two days?

MR MOSALA: What we learned was that, I think this is very much, be very clear less in the future the same mistake should be committed.  Any institution that is created by a repressive Government cannot serve the interests of those the Government oppresses.  It can only serve the interests of the Government that created it.  We were wrong to believe that by serving on a Government created platform and in this regard, the Homelands stick out as one great example.
 When Matanzima took over the Transkei even the ANC expected that he was going to use that platform to promote the interests of black people, the objects of liberation.  Gatsha Buthelezi was regarded in the same light.  In no way did those institutions advance the objects, the aims and objects of the liberation movement.  We were wrong to believe that we could change the institution from inside.  When the children started their exerted effort to dismantle the UBC, Dan Montsitsi was one of the students who came to my house in the middle of the night to discuss how the Sowetan UBC could be dismantled.  It was futile, it was a futile exercise and for anybody in the future who can 
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believe that he can advance his own interests through a vehicle created for him by those he is fighting is making a grave mistake.  That cannot work.  It will never work.

CHAIRPERSON: I will then ask you to round off your testimony so as to give other Commissioners an opportunity to ask you more questions.

MR MOSALA: Commissioner, I think, ultimately, I think on the day that Dan Montsitsi and his colleagues, we did not ask names then.  We told them who we were, they knew who we were, but we told them that we did not want to know them.  The less you knew in those days, the better for you and for everybody that was involved.  We discussed how the UBC could be dismantled.  I think it was at that meeting that we suggested that they write letters to certain key members of the Council who were refusing to vacate the Council.  David Tibarade, Richard Maponya, Maude Sepomota was one of them.  We did not think that the Chairman then would agree, Makaya, we did not think that he would agree, but apparently they also approached him.  The other members of the UBC were not really important.  They were not important.
 The students, apparently, did write the letters because the Press published the resignations of a number of Councillors, but that was actually and ultimately the students marched to the UBC one day, but the Councillors still refused to resign, those who had not resigned.  Some Councillors resigned after that, but other did not resign.  Then the following year the community of Soweto was called by Percy Qoboza to the offices of The World where the community or let me say that in the interim, the UBC ultimately was dismantled.  It did not function.  For a period of time there was a vacuum and during this vacuum 
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the community of Soweto was called to the office of The World where a Committee of ten people was elected to prepare a blueprint for the governance of Soweto.  In that blueprint the Committee of Ten outlined what they saw as the most appropriate administration of the metropolis, the urban metropolis of the Witwatersrand and the present metropolitan authority of Johannesburg, is in fact, one of the things that the blueprint recommended.  
 Now, the Committee of Ten was never allowed to present that blueprint to the people of Soweto.  Kruger banned all  the meetings that the Committee of Ten called to present the memorandum to the people of Soweto including one which was not called, stuck a notice banning it at Dr Mahlangu's door and at the door of this very Church.  We had not called that meeting.  He had banned all the other meetings.  So that blueprint was never presented to the people of Soweto, but the Committee of Ten proceeded to mobilise people at the street level.  The Committee of Ten was conscious that it was implementing what had been known as the M-plan in the past, 1960, where the community was organised street by street.  The purpose was to ensure that the people in every street would know what was happening to the community and if one of them disappeared, the people would know.  If one of them was working for the other side it would be easy for the people to find out and the mobilisation went on.  
 The Committee of Ten was detained together with 19 other organisations, representatives of other organisations on Wednesday the 19th of October, the black Wednesday, and its members spent various terms of jail in Modderbee.  They were in there for nearly a year.  Faniya Mazibukwa was in there.  I was in the same cell as Legau Matabate.  We were 
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with Cattiz Nkondo, Percy Qoboza, we were in the same cell.  In that period the Government attempted to establish the Community Councils.  The first two elections did not take place.  Some members of the community of Soweto formed a Committee, an Action Committee to continue the work of the Committee of Ten while it was in detention and the Community Councils could not be formed until much, much later on.  I think that brings me to the end of what I would like to give to the Commission.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much Mr Mosala.  You have touched upon quite a number of areas.  I would like to give this opportunity to other fellow Commissioners to assist you in exploring whatever point you have raised which they feel it needs to be highlighted.  I will start with Piet Meiring. PROF MEIRING:  Mr Mosala, thank you for all the information you gave us.  In your written statement you talk about the police and the Defence Force involvement in the community.  I often heard that there was a difference in they way the police treated people and the Defence Force treated people.  Is that a correct assumption?  Was there a difference in the way either the police or the Defence Force handled a situation and can you enlighten us upon that?

MR MOSALA: I must, in all fairness, I did not observe any difference at all when the police and the Defence Force were arresting whole schools there was no difference in the treatment.  In fact, later on as repression increased, the Government intensified its repression upon black people in Soweto and other urban areas.  Whole schools were taken in, adults were taken in, Dr Moklana treated rape cases where the police had raped children, girls in the cells.
 On one occasion at Moroka Police Station the women, 
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many of them came from the SACC, came out and called on the white mothers to come and take their sons out of Soweto.  On that occasion a whole Caspers were bringing a whole school from White City to Moroka Police Station and these woman just stood in a line.  A young white soldier was screaming at them, please get out of the way, get out of the way, they will soon tell me to shoot.  I do not want to shoot, I do not want to shoot.  The poor, little fellow was traumatised, the traumatisation of 1976 did not only inflict pain upon the victims, but also on the perpetrators of the atrocity.  So, I remember that occasion very well.  I was right there at Moroka Police Station.

CHAIRPERSON: Hugh Lewin.  Joyce Seroke.