Human Rights Violation Hearings — Pietermaritzburg — 1996-11-20

DANIEL JOHANNES MEYER:  No, I am asking you specifically about intelligence reports that your own intelligence officers would have gathered at that time.  People like the present Captain Brookes, for example, was very active in the Edendale valley, and he's told us that, and we want to know - he would have made reports to you about the situation in the valley, about his discussions with Mr Ntombela and others.

WITNESS:   That is correct.  That is the type of information which we gathered.

DANIEL JOHANNES MEYER:  Okay.  Now, did you meet directly with members of the IFP, and Mr Ntombela in particular, as preparation for your planning?

WITNESS:   I personally liaised with Mr Ntombela regarding the planning.

DANIEL JOHANNES MEYER:  So you personally would have been aware of the exact number of buses involved, what their proposed route was going to be, and all the logistical arrangements in relation to that rally.

WITNESS:   That is correct.

DANIEL JOHANNES MEYER:  Now, obviously it's easy to be wise after the event, and one understands that the benefit of hindsight always helps, but looking back now how would you describe the situation that subsequently unfolded, in the sense that certainly for someone like myself, looking at this period six years later, your members seemed grossly inadequate for the purpose at hand?

WITNESS:   Yes, I agree with you.  I think, to give you a little bit of background, this was not the first time that a rally of this kind was to be held.  If am confusing the events on the 25th with previous events it's possible, because I experienced several such rallies and events, so I might, for instance, say the buses stopped at a particular place when it wasn't the case.  For that particular day, for instance, to take the buses through Edendale in the morning with an escort, and presence during the day, I think we had sufficient manpower.  But, on the subsequent days we definitely did not have enough manpower.

DANIEL JOHANNES MEYER:  I want to just deal with the events of the bus coming through Edendale in the morning.  You, as the officer on the ground in charge at that point in time, and I am assuming that from the nature - from the comments made in the submission.  Is that correct?

WITNESS:   That is correct.

DANIEL JOHANNES MEYER:  Now, in the submission you are reported to have had discussions with Mr Ntombela in the upper Edendale valley somewhere.  It's not clear exactly where you were, but it's somewhere round about the Taylor's Halt, probably at the bus depot before the buses left.

WITNESS:   No, that's not correct.  Perhaps I should just say before this occasion the IFP was specifically approached to avoid Edendale road.  On the morning of the occurrence itself I went to Mr Ntombela's home - and during all these events and occasions the buses would always first meet at his home beforehand - and during this talk with Mr Ntombela I tried to persuade him once again not to drive through Edendale.

DANIEL JOHANNES MEYER:  Why didn't you just order him not to go that way?  You were a police officer, you had the authority to do that.  Why didn't you just order him not to do it?

WITNESS:  That is a difficult question to answer now.  I think any policeman on the ground must sometimes make decisions, right or wrong.  Ultimately he has to account for what happens.  If things turn out well then he made a good decision and nobody would ever refer to it again, but mistakes are sometimes made.  And I think at that stage the political climate and events were so focused on political access routes and so forth that - well, I don't know whether you are interested in a specific newspaper report in which Mr Mvelase - I think it's V B Mvelase from the IFP - made specific statements regarding public roads, and he said these roads were not IFP or ANC roads, so I think the whole matter was a very, very sensitive one at that stage.  And I think that my approach was that the buses would drive through early in the morning, and normally in the mornings we didn't experience too many problems, and I thought we would more than likely get the buses through without problems.

DANIEL JOHANNES MEYER:  You see, what I don't understand is this.  In the submission on page two, point three, it's clear from what is written in that last paragraph on that page that Mr Ntombela was utterly adamant.  Now, as a police officer you recognised a very real threat of problems on that day.  So much so that you people had delegated the Defence Force to keep the road open.  That was their delegated task for at least that day specifically.  That Swanepoel has already told us.  So you foresaw the very real possibility of trouble, and you deployed the Defence Force to keep the road open.

WITNESS:   That is so.

DANIEL JOHANNES MEYER:  The question I then have, you see - and this is what we find very hard to understand, and I recognise all the political factors you've mentioned, but at the end of the day as a police officer your duty was to prevent damage and problems, potential loss of life, which you knew was a real possibility.

WITNESS:   Mr Chairperson, if we look at the alternative, the statement was made to me that the buses would be attacked.  The statement was made to me that the same route could not be used in the morning and in the afternoon.  From the IFP's side it was perhaps a strategy to use different routes, but the threat regarding attacks on buses was a fact.  Edendale was not our only problem area.  If we look at the route round Mpophomeni, buses had been attacked there on previous occasions, so the possibility and the threat of buses being attacked was significant.  If I had forced them to go past Mpophomeni and there had been an attack then there would have been as great an onslaught from the IFP side.

DANIEL JOHANNES MEYER:  I want to take you to the issue of the military, and your submission refers to two days of news reports, wherein which you have shown articles which tend to indicate that the police effectively prevented attacks.  That's correct?

WITNESS:   Chairperson, the statement is correct to some extent.  I think, however, that it is more of an indication to say that everything wasn't bad.  In the same newspaper reports we were also strongly criticised.  I only pointed out those certain reports to try to show that we were making attempts to prevent the whole thing from happening.  It was certainly not all moonshine and roses.

DANIEL JOHANNES MEYER:  Well, I am pleased that you at least have the frankness to admit that to us.  However, the situation goes much further than that.  By your own admission in this submission there were at times more than 14 000 people mobilised.

WITNESS:   I think it was 12 000.  These were also statements made in the newspapers.  If we look at the extent of the whole event, in the document Seven Day War written by Professor Aitchison he makes it very clear what his sources were, and these were UDF sources.  It was not information obtained from the SAP, and it was not information obtained from the IFP side.  In his document he refers to about 500 incidents, and I think that if we add IFP incidents and we add the SAP incidents, and we then look at the events surrounding - more less three days, not seven days but three days, then I think we'll start to see what the true extent of the whole thing was.  Mr Pierre Cronje made a statement in Parliament, and he also mentioned a newspaper report, and he said - let me just find his exact words, I don't want to misquote him.  "(Inaudible) ... outnumbered, and the reports he received from the area yesterday indicate that the police were once again not able to control the situation."  That was a newspaper report on the 29th of March.  He did criticise us as well, but this was simply to give you an indication of the magnitude of the whole thing.