Amnesty Hearings — East London — 1997-03-18

HASSAN MALL: Did you see the persons that actually stabbed her?

SEKUMBUSO VICTOR MPHAMBANE: Yes Sir.

HASSAN MALL: Besides a knife and stones were any other weapons used?

SEKUMBUSO VICTOR MPHAMBANE: Yes there were other weapons, like canes.

HASSAN MALL: By canes, you mean sticks?

SEKUMBUSO VICTOR MPHAMBANE: Yes Sir.

HASSAN MALL: How old was she?  Do you know?

SEKUMBUSO VICTOR MPHAMBANE: Are you talking about Mrs Mphambane?   I am not sure how old she was.  I think she was over 50.

HASSAN MALL: How old are her children?

SEKUMBUSO VICTOR MPHAMBANE: She has elder children than me.  I am not sure exactly when they were born, but she has two that are older than me.  She has had four others, one of them is my age and three of them are younger than me.

JUDGE WILSON: Well the two who were with her that day, what age were they?

SEKUMBUSO VICTOR MPHAMBANE: I am not sure, perhaps 16 or 17 years of age.

HASSAN MALL: I want you to listen to what my notes say about your answers to the questions on a certain aspect of your evidence.
	Among other things you said, because you all were young you did not have a full grasp of politics, do you confirm that?
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SEKUMBUSO VICTOR MPHAMBANE: Yes Sir.

HASSAN MALL: Then you said it was the energy of the youth that drove them to do what they did, is that right?

SEKUMBUSO VICTOR MPHAMBANE: Yes Sir.

HASSAN MALL: And that they did not think of the consequences.

SEKUMBUSO VICTOR MPHAMBANE: Yes Sir.

HASSAN MALL: But you believed that you acted righteously, because in your village you wanted liberation, because of the presence of the ADM in your community you felt oppressed.

SEKUMBUSO VICTOR MPHAMBANE: Yes Sir.

HASSAN MALL: So it was not the Nationalist Government that was oppressing you, it was the ADM that oppressed you.

SEKUMBUSO VICTOR MPHAMBANE: Yes Sir, it is so because the outskirts of Ciskei was under Brig Qozo.

HASSAN MALL: ... village how the youth - I am now not talking about how you had seen other parts of the country reacted, I am talking about in your village.

SEKUMBUSO VICTOR MPHAMBANE: Yes Sir.

HASSAN MALL: And did you really believe that by killing this woman you are going to feel liberated?

SEKUMBUSO VICTOR MPHAMBANE: Yes we believed that, because with past deeds of peoples' houses being burnt down her house, the windows got broken, but she did not stop evoking violence in our village.

HASSAN MALL: So all the burning down of the houses that we have heard today done by the youth and in the process of which somebody died, indicated the kind of lawlessness on the part of the youth.  Is that right?

SEKUMBUSO VICTOR MPHAMBANE: Yes, because it was not right to take
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somebody's life.

HASSAN MALL: To get onto the bus and order all the passengers off the bus, to commandeer the bus, and not pay anything and to order the driver to go where you want him to go, that is also a kind of lawlessness, was it not?

SEKUMBUSO VICTOR MPHAMBANE: Yes Sir, it was breaking the law.

HASSAN MALL: It was the reckless disregard of the rights of other people.

SEKUMBUSO VICTOR MPHAMBANE: Yes Sir, you can put it like that, but it was the spirit of the day.

HASSAN MALL: In other words lawlessness was the spirit of the day, or perhaps anger was the spirit of the day.

SEKUMBUSO VICTOR MPHAMBANE: Yes Sir, as I tried to explain before, that was the energy, the spirit of the youth in a political setting.

JUDGE WILSON: What you wanted you could do.  If you wanted a bus you could take it, throw everybody else off,  that was what your feelings was, was it not?

SEKUMBUSO VICTOR MPHAMBANE: Yes Sir that is what we did on that day.

JUDGE WILSON: After having brutally murdered this old woman you came back where her children are standing waiting, and they ask whether you have killed their mother, you say yes, that is correct.

SEKUMBUSO VICTOR MPHAMBANE: Yes Sir.

JUDGE WILSON: And then you start questioning them, what side did they belong to and when this young girl said she belongs to the ANC you made her sing a song, knowing her mother is lying dead a few yards away.  What sort of behaviour is that?

SEKUMBUSO VICTOR MPHAMBANE: As I have said before Sir, that we were
young, we did not think properly, when we killed their 
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mother we were in the spirit.

JUDGE WILSON: You have told us that you went to King Williamstown to the ANC Headquarters, tell me who you spoke to there?

SEKUMBUSO VICTOR MPHAMBANE: There was a comrade who was the President of the ANC Youth League at the border, we referred to him as Shoes but his proper name I do not recall, also Toto.

JUDGE WILSON: Were these two with the ANC Youth League that you were talking to?  Not the ANC itself, not the responsible members of the Party?   Is  that what you are now saying, you went to King Williamstown to the Youth League?

SEKUMBUSO VICTOR MPHAMBANE: We went to the offices of the ANC Youth League, it was the Executive of the ANC Youth League that we went to.

JUDGE WILSON: You see I have totally misunderstood your evidence.  I understood that you went to the ANC as such and that is why your counsel asked you whether they were - you were asked and you said they were not totally against what you had done, I took it that was - it was not the ANC it was still the Youth League that all of you were going to chant before?

SEKUMBUSO VICTOR MPHAMBANE: The ANC Youth League is formed by people.  Those officers were comprised of the Executive of the ANC Youth League.

JUDGE WILSON: We have heard enough about the acts of the members of the ANC Youth League to know what regard they had for the rights of others.   You did not talk to any mature proper member of the ANC?   Senior member?  Your acts were never approved by the ANC as such.  Is that the position?

SEKUMBUSO VICTOR MPHAMBANE: Yes Sir we never spoke with the body of
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the ANC per se we spoke with the Youth executives at the ANC offices.

SISI KHAMPEPE: Mr Mphambane to your knowledge was the ANC local branch aware of what you did?

SEKUMBUSO VICTOR MPHAMBANE: I think they became aware after we had run away with the bus.

SISI KHAMPEPE: I am talking about the local branch of the ANC and not the ANC Youth League.  Was it aware of your conduct?

SEKUMBUSO VICTOR MPHAMBANE: We did not report to them that we would do this.  They heard our report after we had left.

SISI KHAMPEPE: So they became aware of what you had done to Mrs Mphambane and the circumstances under which what you did, happened.  Did they distance themselves from your conduct?  The local branch.

SEKUMBUSO VICTOR MPHAMBANE: They knew that we killed Mrs Mphambane, and they also were aware of what Mrs Mphambane was doing.

SISI KHAMPEPE: How did they know, or how did they become aware of what happened to Mrs Mphambane?  Who gave them the report?

SEKUMBUSO VICTOR MPHAMBANE: At the time, especially that particular day they did not get a report from the youth, because we were running away.  They must have gotten a report from comrades that had been arrested when they came from court and were going back to the village.

SISI KHAMPEPE: So you cannot say whether they became aware of had happened in 1993?  You cannot say that as a fact?  You can simply presume that they became aware of what had happened after the ....

SEKUMBUSO VICTOR MPHAMBANE: No, I am not emphasising, because I did not go as an individual.  They must have gotten a report from
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the comrades that have been arrested.  On that particular day they must have heard because the police went to fetch the corpse.