Human Rights Violation Hearings — Empangeni — 1996-11-05

MR LYSTER: the PFP, then DP, Roy Ainsley and we were also working together with Eve Jenkin.  And this monitoring group received a lot of calls for assistance from people in the whole province really - South Coast, North Coast, Durban - and not just personal calls but also telephonic calls which involved us all in a lot of interventionist work, trying to get police patrols, trying to get army patrols, and later on trying to get cases followed up by the police.  So my research experience that I bring to this Commission today has involved me in academic research activities as well as specific violence monitoring activities.  When I started doing research in this area in the eighties, the North Coast region was very different to what it is today.  With a few exceptions, namely Mandini and to some extent Esikhawini where there was trade union activity, there was very little political polarisation.  There was peace.  People who were perhaps inclined to the ANC or the IFP were co-existing quite happily together.  And in my research activities I had a wide range of contacts from people who were in all political organisations and many people who were not particularly political.  But as the DP unrest group continued its work, we increasingly got calls especially up the North Coast from people who were linked to trade unions and to the ANC/COSATU/UDF because of the attacks which they were subject to.  They were calling for help.  But I want to stress that so were a lot of other people.  People who were not linked to political organisations of any sort and we helped them regardless of who they were.  That's the background.  That's why I'm here today to talk about what's been  happening in terms of the security force involvement in this violence up the North Coast.  Now, the contention of this submission - my contention is that the security forces must bear the prime responsibility for the destabilisation of the North Coast, that the police in particular are largely responsible for the type of polarisation that we see today and the suffering of both IFP and ANC members as well as people with no political affiliations at all.  And the army as well is guilty to a certain extent although their involvement is less obvious.  The involvement of the police was very conspicuous.  Either the police did not act when you asked them to or the police were part of the - the part of the actual attacking mechanism.  Sometimes quite overtly, openly, and sometimes in a more sinister, shadowy force - what has become known as the third force.  What was apparent from the very beginning as the violence escalated towards the late eighties but particular from 1990 when there was a change of political dispensation set in motion, was the extent to which the violence was orchestrated.  Up the North Coast there was a lot of local level conflict between IFP and ANC supporters but the major thrust of the violence was far more deeply rooted and more sinister than that.  What we noticed was a similar pattern in area after area.  People would be threatened with attack.  People would be attacked.  Sometimes you would warn the police but the police were not around and the attackers moved in.  And very often the attackers were not local people.  They were people brought into the area from outside of the area and one of the people who was very conspicuous  in the patterns of violence which developed in the late eighties and nineties was Thomas Tshabalala and people closely associated with him from Lindelani in Durban.  Now, the point I'm trying to make is that a lot of the violence was not started, was not actively fermented by local people, local IFP, ANC supporters.  It was deliberately stirred up in a variety of ways from outside and I have mentioned Tshabalala because his name crops up in virtually all the areas up the North Coast which were conflict-ridden and he is known to have a very close relationship with the police.  He is suspected of having links with Military Intelligence and he is known to have sat on the Joint Management Council structures set up by the P W Botha regime.  Now, what I'm going to do - that's the general pattern that one observed, particularly from the 1990s.  I want to go through it area by area just to give an idea of the types of conflict which developed in specific areas within that particular broad pattern that I've outlined.  That is, a certain amount of local level conflict but a great deal of conflict which appeared clearly orchestrated in collusion, overt or covert collusion, with the security forces.  So let me just go through these areas very briefly.  This is not a detailed breakdown of incidents of violence in the areas.  That would take us all day, all week, all month probably.  A lot of information is available in the records of violence monitors' reports that have been put out, Goldstone Commission Report, Transitional Executive Committee Reports, etcetera, etcetera.  The detail is there.  Our records are available to the researchers  from the Truth Commission, obviously provided a degree of confidentiality is maintained about sources.  I want to highlight some of the major patterns starting with the Mandini area.  And the Mandini area was one of the earliest affected areas, if not the earliest affected area, on the North Coast.  The violence started in the mid/latter eighties in that area because of the activities which were generated by the industries in the area, namely trade unionists.  And what we noticed both up the North Coast and in the whole province is that trade unionists from the very inception of powerful grassroots-supported trade unions became the target of attacks by vigilantes, by hit squads and by police.  In this Mandini was no exception.  The earliest instances of violence occurred there.  The violence escalated in the latter eighties when the KwaZulu Police took over policing in the township.  And from then on most of the reports of violence were linked very closely to the activities of the KwaZulu Police and particularly the management of the KwaZulu Police in the form of Major Owen Zama who was, in many of the attacks which took place in 1990 and onwards, seen to be present when people were shot, sjamboked, houses burnt.  He was actually witnessed to be physically present.  So the violence in Sundumbili, Isithebe, areas around there was very much linked to the activities of the KwaZulu Police in the area.  Now, one person of particular note in these activities in the early nineties was a notorious hit squad person called Jerry Mdanda.  Jerry Mdanda was a widely feared hit squad person.  He was very highly trained.  He was a Mozambican believed to have had links  /with