Special Hearings — Children's Hearings — 1997-06-12

GEORGE NDLOZI: More or less experiencing the same trauma, because it was like to be a community member you have to be an SDU members.   Whether you didn't carry an AK47, but you participated in some way or other by making your house available to the members of the SDU to hide themselves away from the police.
 Try to donate money, took cook food for them so as to eat because they never had any kind of resources where they could get food or earn some kind of salary where they could now feed themselves, so people were involved in a lot of, you know in different angles to assist the SDU to keep on moving on.
 So what I would say is some members of the SDU's have left behind their children in which those children will never know how brave their fathers were.  And it affects the entire community and if you look at that child, you can clearly see the comrade was brave, who used to partake in defending the community, but at the end of the day, you know for every occasion there must be casualties.
 One had accepted that such a situation might happen thereafter.

MR MALAN: George, just basically a comment from my side.  This is the confusion in total of the conflict of the past, people you've described as heroes and victims in a sense so many were perpetrators and victims at the same time, simply the dimension and the trauma that people must be experiencing, both because of their victimhood and because of them having acted as perpetrators, committed gross human rights violations.
 It must be immense and I don't yet know what the Chairperson's Committee is going to lead us on as to how to deal with this and cope with this in society, but from my side also thank you very much for having come to us, thank you.

MS MKHIZE: There is just one last question which I think you will be able to help us with.  Was there an age restriction in terms of being allowed or being acceptable as an official member of the SDU's, given the decisions that people had to make about other people's lives?

GEORGE NDLOZI: No.  There was no age restriction.  Parents left homes and they left their children behind and there was a stage in which when you leave the township running away from the violence, other boys around the township will come and ask for you and say we all need to do something to defend our township, to defend our lives, to defend our homes.
 And there was a period in which the question of age was discussed, but people came forward and said I am also affected the same as you, irrespective of age.   The war doesn't choose whether you are six years old or ten years old.  When it happens, when the attacks happen, they killed even a three year old baby.
 So it was very difficult to convince although Commanders played an important role to try and convince young children not to be involved, but if they insisted, there was no choice, there was no choice.  You had to involve them inside to see in what way can you use them, in what way can they be useful.  As I've mentioned about Small, he is one of those people who were actually dispatched into certain areas and say if you go there and survey the area and then come back to us and tell us, you know.
 And if you look at other people, like the Genie and you look at other people like Lucky Buthelezi, they were very young, but at the same time they said you cannot stop me from doing, from protecting the community and it was very difficult to argue that issue.   You cannot stop someone else from protecting the community.
 He will tell you about his families who have been killed, brutally murdered like Macashu for instance.  He will tell you about his family who has been brutally murdered and such a person cannot be stopped.  You cannot stop that person from joining the Self Defence Unit, he will immediately join the Self Defence Unit without any other person coming into his way.
 So there were instances in which some of the young kids were exposed to dangers, were exposed to things that you may not think that they were at that early age was supposed to be exposed to, but things went wrong in Katorus and we have to accept that as a fact, things went wrong and at the end of the day it made people from as young as 11 years, to be involved in the Self Defence Unit.

MS SEROKE: George were there girl SDU's?

GEORGE NDLOZI: Yes.

MS SEROKE: And what was their role?

GEORGE NDLOZI: There were some of them who were, I wouldn't say brave enough because I consider all of them to be brave, there were some of them who used to say we also need to take part, I also need to carry an AK47 to defend, I should not be discriminated against because I am a female.
 And there were those who were very important, who played parts in cooking.  Although it may look a bit sexist, but they decided that they better cook for people who will be going outside to actually defend the community.
 So they were all involved.

MS SEROKE: But there were those who also carried AK47"s?

GEORGE NDLOZI: Definitely.  Definitely there were those.

MS MKHIZE: Order please, order please.  George, can I ask you one thing, I mean what you are saying it is like a contradiction of what we as a Commission are trying to achieve.
 Earlier on we had Mrs Machel giving us an international perspective and in a way lobbying that there should be ways that young people should be protected in times of conflict.  In our thinking within the Commission, although we have formulated our recommendations, is that it is not acceptable for young people to be exposed to armed, to conflicts, violence, wars, be it whether you are looking at it from a position of being victim or even as active agents.
 I don't want to say perpetrators, so what would you say when looking back today?  Do you think it was appropriate for your leadership to accept any person who is moved - some by revenge, some by anger, wanting to join a structure which was even assisted by criminals by giving weapons?