Human Rights Violation Hearings — Johannesburg — 1996-05-03

MR DIPAKOANE: When we started to know about the disappearance of my uncle, it was in 1981 when I was studying at the University of Transkei and we didn't know anything about his whereabouts because he was one person who wasn't writing to us and unlike the other uncles, there are two uncles who would write to us and keep us in the picture but he wouldn't even send us a note or a card or a telephone call, so in 1981 a gentleman by the name of Daniel Lengosane, he is also in my statement there, he came to my residence room at the University of Transkei and it was a shock for me, because I wasn't expecting to see him there, he was also an MK cadre, and he asked if he could see me outside.
 For one, I was happy to see him because I didn't know anything, I was just in the dark and seeing a person you have last seen for the past five, seven years, it was something joyous to me, and we went outside and he said he would like to go somewhere where it would be just the two of us, no one should hear about this. When we got such a place he started saying to me that he was going to tell me something very sensitive about my uncle who is almost my same age and they used to call him my brother and almost regard us as twins. He said that my brother was sent back into the country in 1987 to infiltrate and he was with other cadres and they were in combat with the South African Police, and he was captured when his ammunition was finished.  Later he was taken to Mafekeng and interrogated and later he decided to join the Askari group and now he has crossed the floor and was working with the 'system'. 
 That didn't make sense to me, because knowing the position we were in, more so back home politically we were so aware which we got from my grandmother who was a member of the ANC Womens' League since the '50's and now that is something that we used to discuss about at home. And the other thing is, that because of the two brothers that are also in exile and because of us back in the township who are still active within the country, and those outside the country, it just couldn't make sense to me that he could actually go and join the Askari group and come back and fight against us, because who would be the first target obviously?  So I said to him that I find it very difficult for me to understand that.
 Well he said that's the information that he's got and he's in Mafekeng. If I want him to help me he could take me to him in Mafekeng and he knew definitely that he would not point a gun at me but if other people went there he would definitely have to kill them, but he wouldn't harm me. I agreed to go there to fetch my uncle.  If he's within the 'system' then we have to go there.
 A month later he disappeared, he registered at university and thereafter he just cancelled his registration and went to a farm and after the elections he joined the integration group.
 We went to the Legal Aid and met some lawyers and tried to get help from them to investigate the matter and the response that we go was that he was old enough, they cannot assist us and they can not even force him to him to come back into the family, so we don't have that much of a stake in him and it would be a futile exercise to try and locate him, and if he's within the 'system', we cannot force him to come back, he would still have to work with the system.
 But that didn't stop us to carry on finding out about his disappearance. In a township, what was very painful to us is that a rumour was circulated and the rumour was that he is now working within the 'system' and some people would come and say they have seen him within the township with the 'system' in a white combi and I have got a number of people who actually came to us implicating that.  For instance, there's another gentleman by the name of Jakie Mkwanate who said, while they were in exile, many Minister Steve Tshwete actually came to them and warned them that they should be careful because my uncle is now working with the 'system', and the way he has put it, he was not putting it as if it was hearsay, it was in a way as if it is something that he knows about.  But to our surprise when we tried to put all these stories together we just could not find anything, more so that with Shell House who couldn't give us any documentation.  The file which they gave us, his file, had only the day that he left the country and that was it. There was no information as to his information with the 'system', there was no information as to whether he has died or anywhere whatsoever, and a list of the deceased people within and outside the country was given to us and we went through it and his name was not there. It was a countless list of people who died inside and outside the country but his name was not there and it was easy to locate whether he's there or not because it ran in alphabetical order.
 Most unfortunately, Shell house or MK were not even willing to help us.  For instance Timothy Mokoena who is on he MK Desk at Shell house, he just dismissed the matter by saying to us that as he was working with the 'system', so there is nothing that they can do. He was actually qualifying the statement, so now those are the statements that we've been getting from the cadres only, not even from other people and they are the people who were actually spreading the rumour, but what was peculiar to us is that, usually when a person crosses the floor, and more especially towards the enemy camp, the family would have to bear the repercussions of that action. In one way or the other they will be harassed, will be attacked, I mean similarly when a person is within the MK camp or the PAC camp, the 'system' will definitely persecute that family, but now within the ANC nothing has happened, nothing has been done to our family.  They didn't come to us, either to harass us or to give us the information as the responsible organisation, to say this is what has happened and that has had a grievous impact on my grandmother as a mother to Kunyamane.  She suffered depression, ended up losing her mind, we just couldn't understand the position she was in, because mentally she couldn't even remember any of her children, she couldn't remember us. You would go into the house and try and talk to her and she wouldn't even know who you are.  For instance when one comes, she would think it was me, and the when the other one comes she would be asking where here son was and soon.  What the news did to her was horrendous, she would start crying and you could not stop her and she got lost, I don't know how many times because of the whole thing. In a way it tormented her and disturbed her emotionally and physically and the previous government has contributed to her state of health in the sense that at some stage she would be taken to a police station, be harassed there, made to march around the police station, to say things that she could not even understand and she would come back crying.  She just went into a trauma until she passed away as a result of a stroke, she just couldn't handle the whole situation and she passed away last year, so the whole disappearance of my uncle has caused a lot of pain within the family and now the only thing that we would like the Commission to do for us is to investigate the matter and most of that, whilst he was outside the country, we understand that he was working with his commander by the name of, it's an alias name, Sibata. He was his commander and what was peculiar with his commander is that one of his cadres,  Michael Kobe went to him to ask him about my uncle and he simply said, I don't know anything about him, and that really, you know implied something to us in the sense that, how can a responsible person like a commander not knowing about his cadre, more so that we understand that he was even a commissar, Kunyamane was a commissar at that stage. So it's body who was close, you know his rank was so close enough to him as a commander, but still he couldn't know about his whereabouts and we understand that when he went for his mission, he's the one who gave them orders to go for that mission but now in kind he didn't know.  And another story that we got is that another gentleman by the name of Sangile went to Shell House and he asked as a cadre, he asked the MK desk and somebody just dismissed him by saying that he has died in Angola.  That was very interesting to us because we were made to understand that he's within the 'system.  But here now somebody comes back and says he has died in Angola, so that means that he died while doing the acts of the 'system'or while working within the ANC. We don't know about that, but he just simply said to him he's died in Angola.
 There's another gentleman by the name of Popo Mahlangu, while he was with my other uncle who was also in exile, the one who was in Bulgaria, Saki Ranyaoa, they were in Shell House one day and Sebatha passed just next to them and Popo made a comment to my uncle and he said, this is the gentleman who sold your brother, and Sebatha had been a person holding a high ranking position, you know my uncle couldn't even comment on that one, he said, Oh really? He said, Yes that is the gentleman who sold your brother, so he just passed, probably they didn't expect him to go to him and asked him as to whether that's true, whatsoever, and yet Michael Kobe did go to him, Sabatha asking him the whereabouts of Kunyamane.  
 So I mean those are the conflicting stories that we got from the township when the exiles came back into the country and when he didn't come back.  About Daniel Lengosane, when we made a plan to have a meeting with him so that he could come and give us a clarification about the whole thing he even wasn't prepared to come to us to give us the story.  What he did, he simply went to Sowetan to give it the story and he published the story about people who disappeared in exile, people who were killed, but when he gave Sowetan a story, he didn't use his real name, he used a fictitious name that is, David, and now when they saw the article in the paper, the first thing that we did, we went straight to Sowetan and we asked them who published this story because we don't know anything as the family.  I mean when a person says anything about us, more especially such a sensitive story, he should actually come to us and find out from us as to whether there is anything that we want to add or can we authorise the publication of the story.  He didn't do that, he just went there on his own and on that story in the Sowetan, he mentioned things that were different from what he said to me when he came to see me at Umtata.  He said when he came back to the country he heard he heard about the disappearance of Kunyamane and that he is working with the 'system, and he has once testified somewhere in Gauteng and now that meant that the ANC or the MK knows something about what happened to Kunyamane.  They should know because it's the cadres themselves and most of that, at some stage, the very same Daniel would come to us and say, there's a lady from Cape Town who saw Kunyamane at the ...(indistinct) house, and we would ask who that lady was, what's her name so that we could actually go to her to tell us more about that. And he said it's not necessary because we won't find her, she's living in Cape Town and he doesn't know how to locate her. 
 So I mean they were actually giving us all sorts of stories which were not linking at all.