Human Rights Violation Hearings — East London — 1996-04-17

ROBERT KOHL: My first reaction was that I couldn't believe it because it was the sort of thing that never happened in our area, there was nobody that was killed at any procession or any funeral.  In Grahamstown most of the shootings took place in the black townships, there was no shooting in the so called coloured area and every week there was someone shot and this week there was a funeral, and that's how things happened.  It was a real shock to us all sitting together there, my wife and boys were there, my youngest boy was three years old and the other one was seven years old.  There was a commotion of people coming and hearing and
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phoning, everybody was crying and I had a sort of emotional feeling.  But I kept cool and thought I must go to the hospital and find for myself, realise the truth and see if it's true that my son has been killed.

MR SANDI: Okay you get the message and you go to hospital, did anyone accompany you?

ROBERT KOHL: Yes my third eldest sister, Mrs Abdul accompanied me because my eldest sister was too old and weak to go with us, also my cousin Roland and Mr Parston, the school principal with Mr James Hillier, those are the people who accompanied me to the hospital as well as Reverend Titus, the priest in charge of the Anglican Church in Grahamstown, St Clements.  He had also heard about it and came to my place straight away to pay his condolences.

MR SANDI: I take it that Reverend Titus is your priest, in which church is that?

ROBERT KOHL: The Anglican Church of St Clements, that's a part of the Church of the Province of South Africa.  At the hospital we were taken to this little room where the body was.  One of the nurses, my neighbour's daughter, she was a nurse there and she opened the space for me to identify him. I first looked at him and I felt his forehead and his neck to make sure if he's really dead, but there was no movement from him.  I could feel that cold has already crept into his body and that's the moment I felt that it's really true, and I had to leave to be alone, to think about it, to understand what had happened, but even then I couldn't understand why this happened to me, why this happened to my family and I just left and stood outside for a while.  Reverend Titus came to me and spoke to me, and the group of us went back to my place.
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 Everybody was there now, all the people that I knew and friends, a crowd of people waited at my place and wanted to talk to me.  I was sort of walking, you don't know if you're coming or going actually, it's a sort of feeling that you have that you're not there or you are there or something like that and the principal of the high school came to me and said. "Don't forget, we still have to report this matter to the police", and he asked me if I wanted to go with. I felt that I must go with, because the father and I must go to the police station and report this matter.  So the principal, myself, Mr Hillier, and Mr Jerry Akum went to the police station.  Reverend Titus had already left so the four of us went to the police station.
 At the police station we saw these Caspars parked outside, in the yard, all around and people there. A lot of policemen actually.  It was a sort of climate where you could see people were really rejoicing over the sort of victory, the fun they had today, chasing people, shooting people.  They were all happy, shouting, it was the sort of atmosphere that you couldn't understand, but if you're in that situation you feel that they don't actually care about the person that they shot or the people that they shot.
 On entering there was a young constable, he was at the counter also smiling, and when he hears that I said I'm reporting my son's death, the one who was shot.  He asked me where, and I told him, at the funeral down in the township, and his face changed, you could see there was no laughter in his face anymore, he sort of saw that we were really serious in reporting this case.  It took him some time to grab some paper and a pencil and he wrote everything down.  On the counter there was a lot of wet clothing because that 
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afternoon that had been some drizzle...(intervention)

MR SANDI: Can I interrupt you Mr Kohl.  Did you say the police officer who attended to you...(end of tape 11)
( start of tape 12)

ROBERT KOHL: ...... two sides where the whites used to go in and the other side where the non whites used to go in, so there was a sort of partition and the other one was the other side, and he came also there.  So there was a kind of discussion there in Afrikaans but you couldn't hear what they were saying to each other actually, but eventually he attended to us and we left. But you could hear in the background, in the offices and the yard people really enjoying the afternoon.

MR SANDI: I hope you don't mind if I can just take you one step back.  Can you try and give the Commission a picture of what was happening at the police station.  You said it appeared that the police were in a happy mood, what do you mean by that?  Can you explain to the Commission?

ROBERT KOHL: Well if you were in my position you feel sad, you see them rejoicing and you are sad at the side actually.  So it's sort of a difference between sadness and why they were happy, so they were really enjoying themselves and just laughing and that was the reaction that we had from the people in the charge office yard and in the back, you could hear them sort of shouting to each other.  I don't know whether they were drinking or anything like that, but the mood they had there that afternoon was one of rejoicing.

MR SANDI: Do you mean to say it was as if they had a party?

ROBERT KOHL: It could be, but I can't prove that because nobody was near to me, they were just moving through the
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charge office, we could see them moving in and out.

MR SANDI: Was anything said to you about your son by the police?

ROBERT KOHL: Nobody said anything at that moment.  All of a sudden everything was quiet, because the other policeman just went out and he reported to the other ones, and they all were coming in anxiously to see who the people were.  You could see them walking past, just to see who the people were that came to report this case.  But nobody actually said anything at that stage.

MR SANDI: Didn't you say they said, "Hy was een van die klippe goiers".  The thing is that unfortunately the principal is not here, he heard the one saying that. I was busy at the counter that time when they were moving out.

MR SANDI: Were you able to cope with this at work? You have three children, one of them is Bully and all of a sudden Bully has been shot and killed.  Were you able to cope with this at work? Or how did the family cope with this?