Special Hearings — Armed Forces Hearings — 1997-10-07

MR MENDANA: (Indistinct) the previous issue, sorry.  This is in reference to our cadres who are prison and they are serving long sentences, 55 years, 75 years, 30 years, 40 years and we have had the opportunity of visiting them.  Now, we have got a dynamic here where they can only be released after an application for amnesty and that application for amnesty must also be successful, but we feel that a great injustice is being done to these people.  First and foremost, maybe the TRC can approach the President of this country, because those people did not do those things for, rather as criminals, for their own sakes as individuals, they did not do them for personal gain.  They did those things, because they got instructions from the liberation movement.
 We, every country has got an instrument vested in the Head of State, in the President.  That instrument is called clemency and I am sure that since we recognise what these people are in prison for, that act of clemency can be exercised by the President of this country.  Maybe if the TRC were to have a tete-a-tete with the President of this country then you might be able to adjust your own expectations about the TRC and allow the President to exercise this act of clemency.  That is number one.
 Number two, these young people did not go to prison there as criminals.  Again, as, I wish to emphasise that, but they are placed there with hardened criminals.  Now, this is unacceptable.  In a country where they, the level of crime is so high, you take people who have never been tutored in criminal skills and then you put them among criminals and in the state of frenzy and state of desperation and state of anger, they learn these skills and if they come out, either by clemency or otherwise, the possibility is that they themselves would find the option of criminal activities very, very attractive.  Since they are so skilled the possibility is that they will be able to go on with any criminal activity that they might choose without being apprehended.
 So, we are, in effect, creating a criminal situation by mixing them with hardened criminals, but that is only one part of the picture.  The other part of the picture is that because they are not used to that kind of culture, they are politicians just like me, just like anybody in Parliament there, they are politicians.  They joined the struggle out of political commitment to liberate their people, but then, you see, they are treated there as if they are animals.  One of them, his cell was stormed last week in a, in St Albans there in Port Elizabeth and he was removed forcibly, just on the spur of the moment, to another prisoner, rather to another prison which is reputed to be a very, very tough prison where hardened criminals, incorrigible criminals are sent.  
 Now, for a politician to be treated that way in this country, a politician who has fought for the liberation of this country to be treated that way is quite unacceptable and I think the TRC must intervene in this regard and those people must be placed in a separate prison.  One thing can be said, maybe cynically, about our former oppressors.  They removed us from hardened criminals and placed us separately from them.  That is why I am here today, because at the time that I was in prison if I had been put in the midst of hardened criminals, there is no guarantee that I could not have joined the, what do you call it, the criminal army, but fortunately, my oppressors kept me separate from those criminals, but here is this Government, a Government that claims to be enlightened, keeping political prisoners together with hardened criminals.  I think this is a priority in the direction of rehabilitating this country.  Thank you very much.