Special Hearings — Mandela United Football Club Hearings — 1997-11-24

DR BORAINE: Thank you.  Father in your earlier responses to other questions you stated, and I wrote it down, that you went to talk with Mrs Mandela to tell her, and these are your words, "of the deep concern in the community concerning the four..." and you used these words, the ages are immaterial at the moment, "...of four young men".  This coincides very much with what Mr Mbangula stated that he was deeply concerned about these young people, and he actually went further to say that in his view, I am not saying it's necessarily yours, but in his view that the best way to try and deal with this was to go and speak to Mrs Mandela because she, in his words, was the key person who could throw some light on these concerns. Now I am also puzzled at the fact that you state clearly that at the time of your visit none of the children were at Mrs Mandela's home.  Now that's a very categorical statement, it's a scientific statement actually, it's a factual statement, none of the children were there, how did you know that?

FATHER MKHATSWA: Well I suppose like every statement needs to be interpreted the background to that statement is that when we discussed this issue with Mrs Mandela, and we got the assurance that these children were safe and sound and we as a group of three did not really request to see those children and in fact physically we did not see them, and we did not see them logically because we did not ask, not even request to see them.  So maybe it could have been phrased differently but that's basically what it means.

DR BORAINE: So you could probably say that you didn't see the children when you visited them?

FATHER MKHATSWA: Correct.

DR BORAINE: Rather than none of the children were there, because you didn't know that, you didn't go to every room?

FATHER MKHATSWA: No, no.

DR BORAINE: Okay.  I think that's a lot clearer.  Then you go on to say that this was a very amicable meeting, and that you had a deep concern for the four young people but you were told that they were quite healthy and therefore you were not concerned and you had a word of prayer and you left.  Now subsequent events suggest very differently, am I right?

FATHER MKHATSWA: Subsequent to that, okay.

DR BORAINE: In other words your accepting of Mrs Mandela's assurance that the children were safe and sound and quite healthy, to use your words, turned out to be very different.

FATHER MKHATSWA: Obviously in this world certain things happen that you cannot in any way humanly speaking foretell they are going to happen.

DR BORAINE: But you could have asked to see them because then you would have had greater knowledge about the condition of the children and you would have known at least that one was either missing or desperately ill or dead, right?

FATHER MKHATSWA: I certainly didn't as I say have information that the Reverend Mbangula had access to prior to the meeting so one could not really have been expected to ask those kinds of questions.

DR BORAINE: A final question.  If you look back and you see the context of all these concerns and your attempt to get to, as you stated, the root causes, wouldn't it have been, you know looking back and thinking about this now, wouldn't it have been logical, sensible, compassionate to have gained some assurance for yourselves that these young guys were okay, just by at least greeting them, seeing them, getting some assurance so you could go back to your community and say look it's okay, those kids are okay, you don't have to be so concerned because that's why you went? The community were concerned about the children, about the young people, wouldn't it have been normal to say well I am so glad to hear that they are safe and sound could we just see them, perhaps pray with them?

FATHER MKHATSWA: Had they been in a prison, had they been in detention I certainly would have insisted upon seeing them, but this was a different situation as far as we were concerned.  We certainly at that time we did not get the impression that the situation was as serious as it eventually turned out to be.  As Mbangula pointed out for instance, the community organisations met on the 16th and that was after our visit to Mrs Mandela's house.  And then after that one could then say the picture became much clearer as to the graveness of the situation and perhaps your question would then make sense if at all we would have visited Mrs Mandela after that meeting of the community structures.

DR BORAINE: The point I was trying to make is that if you had asked to see them in order to have an expression of your concern for them then you wouldn't have had to wait till the 16th to realise how serious the situation was.

FATHER MKHATSWA: Well at that time quite frankly as I say among ourselves we didn't really see any immediate need for that.

DR BORAINE: No further questions.

CHAIRPERSON: Yasmin.

YASMINE SOOKA: Father can I actually  ask you, when you talked about this pastoral visit, was it pastoral in terms of these boys or pastoral in terms of Mrs Mandela?

FATHER MKHATSWA: It wasn't really either or, it was both, because Reverend Mbangula remember these boys had been kept in his church and members of the congregation I presume were quite concerned about the plight of the children, and therefore we had the responsibility to ensure that they were not harmed or they were eventually released and so on, but also for Mrs Mandela, because as I pointed out earlier in my testimony, from newspapers but also from talking to individual comrades in leadership we were aware that there were tensions, we cannot really hide that, there were tensions between some community structures or individual leadership and so on with Mrs Mandela, and therefore we thought that our visit would be - was timely and was a very good one.  But as far as possible we had to try and create a climate again of ...(intervention)

YASMINE SOOKA: You see it's always wiser I think with hindsight but there's a certain amount of anguish that we feel, that here we have church leaders, community leaders who have ostensibly gone to see about the plight of four boys who are reputed to be held against their will and I know that there were rumours - and I am beginning to want to ask the question, was perhaps the reason that your delegation were so willing to accept the story fed to you that these boys were okay because there was a certain amount of doubt still in your mind about whether the allegations about Reverend Paul Verryn were true?

FATHER MKHATSWA: Yes I am not so sure really the term "feeding us with the information" is a felicitous one because I don't really believe that we were fed because that implies somehow that we were there and we were almost taken for a ride, you know almost too ...(intervention)

YASMINE SOOKA: But Father, sorry can I stop you Father, this fact of the matter is you went with the delegation to enquire about the position of these boys and their condition but you come away from the meeting without having asked to see the boys to establish for yourselves that they were well.