Amnesty Hearings — Bloemfontein — 1998-01-29

ADV MEMANI: Mr Chairman, I wish to deal with the matter of Mr Venter. It is common cause that Mr Venter - that Mr Ngo was an informer handled by Erasmus. On the version of Mr Ngo, he was introduced to Mr Venter by Mr Erasmus. However, Mr Erasmus has denied having introduced Mr Ngo to Mr Venter. One finds this denial difficult to accept. Firstly, Ngo was an informer of Mr Erasmus on matters occurring in black townships and black schools. Mr Ngo then moves, apparently without notifying his handler, to another address. He then leaves that address and later he informs the handler that 'I am leaving to a different place now, you must come and see me there'. I find that improbable; one would expect that the Security Branch would require of their informers to remain where they are and when they have to leave, when the leave the place where they are living to at least inform them that they are about to change their addresses.
	Mr Chairman, one also would expect the Security Branch to want to know the type of person their informer is living with. That would then have prompted Mr Erasmus to make some enquiries about Mr Venter. From what he told us he was not bothered at all. That is an improbability in my submission. I am sorry to repeat then; one would expect that some enquiry about Mr Venter should have been made.
	On the other hand, Mr Ngo gives a plausible explanation for his living at Venter's house. He says, 'I was living in the township until the day I became exposed; from that day onwards the Security Branch decided that I should live with Mr Venter'. That's the most plausible explanation. Mr Venter was a white person, removed from the black townships and it could not have been easy for schoolchildren to reach Mr Ngo at Mr Venter's house. So on this aspect the probabilities favour Ngo. This probability is strengthened by the fact that despite the fact that an allegation was made very early that two members of the Security Branch took Ngo to Mr Venter's house, when Mr Erasmus testified it did not appear he took any steps to ask from members of the Security Branch, 'who of you, by the way, took Ngo to Mr Venter's house?' Secondly, none of the persons who testified here and were implicated by Mr Ngo, said that they ever took Mr Ngo to Mr Venter's house.
	Mr Chairman, in my submission, if Ngo had been simply incorrect about the identity of the persons who took him there, we would have expected some correction.
	It was suggested that Mr Ngo went to live there because he was a gardener and helped in the house. Mr Chairman, I find this to be somewhat difficult to believe. At that stage Ngo was a schoolchild. I am not aware, since the time I was born, of anyone who employs a gardener who is a student fulltime, or one who employs a man to do internal domestic work like washing dishes and so on. I am not aware of those things.
	Some suggestion was made by Mr Erasmus that Mr Ngo apparently had a homosexual relationship with Mr Venter. Mr Chairman, if you look at the affidavit submitted on behalf of Mr Erasmus, it is in chronological order. If you have listened to the evidence as a whole, you will see that at the time when he made the affidavit he intended to lead us to believe that he had discovered that Mr Ngo had a homosexual relationship with Mr Venter before the trial. If we look at how the incidents are put there, the trial emerges much later.
The impression that one gets is that he discovered before Ngo went to Pretoria that he had a homosexual relationship with ...[intervention]

MRADV DE JAGER: Was it a fact or a suspicion ...[indistinct] though they discovered that in fact it was a fact at some stage or other? I am not worried about that but I am worried that things are stated about a person being dead and we don't know whether it is true or not. If it is only a theory, let it be a theory, but it shouldn't be conveyed as a fact if we are not sure about the fact.

ADV MEMANI: One wonders that if we are not sure and we had this suspicion, why did we include it in our affidavit in these proceedings?

MRADV DE JAGER: One person who could have said something about it, and he didn't, and that was Mr Ngo. So we are not sure about it and I myself are not sure about it. Somebody is holding a suspicion, and I think it is unfair to tell the world through a public media today that he was involved in a certain situation which might never have been.

ADV MEMANI: Mr Chairman, the fairness lies with Mr Visser's clients. The affidavit is a public document and I'm doing no sin by mentioning this. Secondly, he was cross-examined on that and he denied having a homosexual relationship with Mr Venter.
	The suggestion, in my submission, was meant to suggest that Ngo killed Mr Venter because of this homosexual relationship, because a difference had arisen between him and Mr Venter. This ought to be rejected as false; no basis was offered for the suspicion. It was just thrown in, just as much as the ritual murder thing was thrown in in the case of Mr Motsamai.
	Mr Chairman, Ngo was Mr Erasmus's informer. As he said, he was a good informer and he valued him. One then would expect that Mr Erasmus would have an interest in the safety of Mr Ngo, and he himself would have made the arrangements for the transfer of Mr Ngo.

CHAIRPERSON: But he said he knew Ngo lived there and he went to visit him there.

ADV MEMANI: I am asking you to reject that as being false, and I am saying that it is probable that he arranged it because he loved Ngo who was a good informer, he did not want to lose him. Ngo's version on the reason for his living at Mr Venter's place was more plausible than any other reason we have been given. It is that, 'my life became endangered and I had to be removed from the township'.
	Mr Chairman, another aspect which makes it the more probable one is that it is a somewhat neutral fact; it is a fact which is part of the narrative of the history of Ngo. It is not meant to implicate anyone. Ngo tells us about how he came to live with Mr Venter, and he says: 'I was an informer, I lived in the township and then, because I got injured, went to live with Mr Venter'. At that stage when he gave his evidence in chief, he had no reason to believe that that would be denied. Two, no reason suggests itself for him to fabricate this fact on the probabilities.
	In my submission the police distanced themselves from having anything to do with Ngo living at Mr Venter's because they were afraid that it would tend to corroborate Ngo's version that he was later asked to go and kill Mr Venter. They wanted to suggest that they did not know him at all, just as they had done in the presentation of their case. I see Mr Chairman appears to be puzzled at this ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: Erasmus has told us that he knew him, that he visited him, he had coffee with him and you have just now said they wanted to pretend that they did not know him at all. I don't understand it, Mr Memani.