Special Hearings — Trojan Horse Hearings — 1997-05-21

DOUW VERMEULEN: If you will allow me I will try to explain using dimensions and points that we have in this room.  As I remember it perhaps if I could draw a line where the middle bouquet is, I think that was the distance from between the edge of the truck to where the pavement started and then there was a normal pavement width which would perhaps bring us as far as to the furthest point, that is where the sound equipment is on the stage.  And if I remember correctly you mentioned Mrs Ryklief's home, I am assuming that we are referring to the same house, I would then say just behind the booth, the interpreting booth, that is more-or-less the distance.  That's more-or-less how I recall it.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: In other words just to rephrase and to try and understand myself you mentioned points which I don't really see.  Your truck would be where the bouquet is and the crowd would be about here, is that what you are saying?  The truck is where you are, the pavement is where the bouquet is and the crowd is where we are?

DOUW VERMEULEN: No, no I gave you the distances.  If this is the truck then the pavement would be more-or-less where the middle bouquet is and then there would be a pavement's width which would bring you to the loudspeaker and then the open piece of land just in front of the house to where the house starts, if I have to estimate it would be as far as just behind the interpretation booths.  From the truck to the house there were people in that whole area.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: And where is the crowd then?

DOUW VERMEULEN: From the truck across the pavement right up to the where the house started.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: Fine.  Now in terms of firing what consequences did you expect when you fired at a crowd that seemed to be as close as you are describing now, what kind of consequences?

DOUW VERMEULEN: Very difficult question once again to answer after so many years.  After I saw that the attack had commenced, well I am not actually sure what I expected but I wanted to avert this attack, and when I emerged from the crate and saw what was happening I just realised that I was not going to get out alive from that situation.  So I find it very difficult to answer the question with any more particularity than what I have just done.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: In your professional opinion what do you think the consequences of firing AAA and no.1 on a crowd with the distance that you have described now?

DOUW VERMEULEN: If you are asking my opinion on that I would say today, yes, should the people be hit they would definitely be seriously injured.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: This danger to your lives and threats, what - just to kind of picture the kind of danger that was awaiting you and the kind of threat to your lives that you suggest there was, what kind of damage to the truck that you were driving?

DOUW VERMEULEN: After one of the court cases we were shown certain photographs taken at some stage when I wasn't present, and if I have to describe these photographs, as far as I can remember there was some damage to the truck.  In the past I used the term that the windscreen had been actually broken by means of stones or bricks.  There were holes in the windscreen caused by stone-throwing.  I can remember one specific mark and I have described it before on some previous occasion and I will do so again.  If I hold my hand like this, keeping it slightly concave then there was a piece of metal in the doorframe, when I saw this mark afterwards it was near the driver's door and I thought to myself that the object which had caused this dent, if it was able to cause such a deep indentation then I can only imagine what damage it could have caused had it hit a persons head for instance.  I know there were other marks on the vehicle but I can't remember exactly what they were or where they were.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: What did you expect?  You were going into a situation that you knew was potentially explosive according to your own definition, what did you expect? Were you surprised that there were these things, objects?

DOUW VERMEULEN: Firstly, I never expected such an attack.  I was taken totally by surprise and in the situations in which we worked in those times you regularly found that single stones were thrown at you, sometimes at close range, sometimes from further away, but I never expected anything like this and I had never experienced anything like what I did experience on that day.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: So you were really expecting just small stones and little things like that, nothing as strong as you confronted?

DOUW VERMEULEN: No I didn't mention small stones or anything like that.  Before this incident there were occasions when bricks or half bricks or bigger stones had been thrown at myself or members of my section, but never on the scale which happened on that particular day.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: So you never expected the scale.  But what surprises me is that you loaded, you were loaded with lethal ammunition and yet you did not expect as much as you say you were confronted with?

DOUW VERMEULEN: Yes, as you've said we were armed with such-like ammunition and you are also correct when you say that we didn't expect anything of the kind.  I have to think back today, my instructions were to deal with road blockades and stone-throwers, you would sometimes have between three and ten people at such a road blockade who would throw stones at passing vehicles.  I certainly didn't expect the type of crowd which we found that day.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: But if you didn't expect as much as you got why then arm yourselves to the extent that you did when your intention was to deal with something of a lesser extent and to make arrests?

DOUW VERMEULEN: You used the term "armed to the teeth", for us it was simply a normal ammunition, birdshot and AAA and shotguns.  I wouldn't describe it as such, as being "armed to the teeth".

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Ntsebeza you want to pursue that question?

MR NTSEBEZA: Thank you Chair.  I have a problem with those replies Mr Vermeulen.  In your statement, you stated as having been your experience, paragraph 9, you stated as having been your experience that whenever a group of people attacked a vehicle with the view of putting it alight first they would bring it to a standstill, then thereafter they would throw it with stones, then they would move closer to it to punch its tyres so that the car could not go further, thereafter to put it on fire.  Now you state it as your experience that this was so, how else could it have done, how else could it become - if you say you didn't expect the sort of attack that you experienced, how worse, could it ever have been worse than that?

DOUW VERMEULEN: Chairperson I am going to try and understand the question ...(intervention)

MR NTSEBEZA: The question is, you are saying to questions put to you that you didn't expect, on that particular day, an attack on the scale that you got, and you are giving that, as I understand your evidence, as a reason that you went as far as you did, namely resorting to the use of firearms.  Now I'm trying to get from you how worse it would have been in terms of expectations, if in your experience as you stated, you knew, even before you went there, especially as it happened that in the manner in which things happened, in your experience, people would attack you if they had a view to put your vehicle on fire, they would try and force you to a standstill, throw it with stones, puncture your tyres so that you should not move and then thereafter put it on fire.
Now what I am trying to get, to understand from you is, how can you say you didn't expect an attack of the nature you got if, what I've just described coming out of your statement, was the measure of experience?  It's all about having, whether you could not have foreseen that what happened would indeed happen.