Human Rights Violation Hearings — Upington — 1996-10-02

CASE NO: CT/00695

MR POTGIETER: I am going to ask you to settle down again. We are going to listen to the evidence, I am going to ask you to maintain silence again.  Will you please keep quiet so that we can listen to the evidence.  Mr Yona, give your testimony.  All right, are you sorted out with the headphones?  Can you hear the translation?

GODFREY XOLILE YONA: Ja.

MR POTGIETER: Can you hear?  All right?

GODFREY XOLILE YONA: Ja.

MR POTGIETER: What language do you want to use?

GODFREY XOLILE YONA: I will speak English and Xhosa.

MR POTGIETER: Will you please stand to take the oath.
GODFREY XOLILE YONA Duly sworn states

MR POTGIETER: Mr Yona, you were one of the accused in this Upington 26th case.  You have made a statement in which you have given us a lot of this background and we have already listened to the background evidence given by other speakers.  It is not necessary to go into detail about the background but I would like to ask you to start on the specific day of that event, the 13th November and to tell us what has happened to you since then.  Is that okay?

WITNESS:  Yes.  The 13th November was on a Wednesday.  I was on my way to a meeting.  When I came to that meeting we gathered with a lot of other people and we sang Nkosi Sikelele Afrika and we also prayed.  After we have said amen, the police started shooting at us and they fired teargas.  We dispersed but we became very, very angry because the police called us there and then having arrived there they turned around and they shoot at us.  That made us very, very angry.  We ran away and we ran to get to places from where we could fight them back and we did just that.  We threw stones at them because it was unjustified to fire teargas at us.  Some of the people there ran to where Jetta lived.  Some of us were still busy throwing stones at the police and we were fighting with them in that way.  After that I ran to my mother's house.  I heard shots being fired.  It came from Pilanie Street where Jetta lived.  On my way to where these shots were being fired a lot of comrades came back and they said hey, hey, Jetta has been killed.  At that time I didn't feel anything for him or for his death because Jetta was a policeman and the apartheid police used him against his own people.  After that it became quiet again in the location.  The people were arrested, various people were arrested.  I remained at Paballelo and I realised this place is getting too small for me because the police were looking for me and sometimes they came to my mother's house and I hid away and I could hear them talking and they said if I could find Xolile Yona we would kill him but I really made sure that they don't find me and I decided then to leave Upington.  I would have crossed the borders because I have already left Upington and they caught me on my way to the border.  They arrested me there and brought me back to Upington.  The reason why I wanted to leave, to join the under gorillas was that I found out that we have no weapons and the police were shooting us.  They have killed many of our people and it won't help us to fight with petrol bombs.  We had to have weapons to fight against them.  Coming back I was incarcerated in the prison in Upington and one policeman by the name of Barnard came to me and said, and another policeman by the name of Langeni said yes this is Godfrey Xolile Yona.  On my way back from Olifantshoek the police stopped the police van and told me Xolile don't you want to go into the field and urinate?  No I am not interested.  They put me in the van again and there was no reason why they wanted me to go and urinate and that was when I got back into the van, that was their way to shoot me because they would have said I was trying to escape.  On my way back they took me back to prison and then they locked me up again.  The other co-accused were given bail and I and another Basie Makabeke didn't get any bail because - they said it is because we were fleeing and we were not caught in Upington.  I remained in those cells and it was very, very poor circumstances.  Some of the warders and the officers, they swore at us especially when most of the comrades went out they swore at us.  Sometimes we had to fight against these criminals, the common law prisoners in this jail.  Some of these people were against us and were instigated to fight against us but they did not succeed in that.  During the Court case, a Judge Basson was very subjective.  He regarded me as a person who had killed Jetta.  The reason he said was because I was very actively involved in political organisations and because of that he said I was very actively involved in everything that was going on and that was why I was part of those people who killed Jetta.  If I did that I would have told them I have done that.  They did not accuse me of what I really did and that was throwing stones.  Judge Basson was very corrupt.  He never listened to any statements we made and he convicted us and sentenced us to death.  When he sentenced me I swore at him.  On my way to Pretoria we were handcuffed, our hands and feet and we couldn't get out the truck, the remand truck.  When we came to Pretoria it was about 6 o'clock that evening, we left at 5 o'clock in the morning from here.  They took us out of this remand truck, the warders just took us off.  We couldn't climb off ourselves.  We were taken to death row and there we had to undress and in our religion, in our Xhosa religion we may not undress before a Kweni.

MR POTGIETER:  Order please!  Thank you.  Silence please.  Please continue.