Human Rights Violation Hearings — Newcastle — 1996-09-11

WITNESS:   He didn't go with them.  We refused.  We contacted the head office general secretary and the president, Cyril Ramaphosa.  We asked them to come down because one colleague of ours got injured when we left the stadium, so we said if we let it go this thing will continue happening.  Then the general secretary and the president came.  The management denied all this, they said there was no employee who was injured.  We had to go to hostel and fetch that employee to show to the management and the president and the secretary that, "Here's the person who's injured," so that's when the management agreed that that thing happened.  We realised that this mine situation was getting worse.  It was obvious that the management had a problem since from 1983 when those people died, because the workers showed them that there is something that they can do as long as they can get together, be united.  And again I'll also like to emphasise one event that happened on the 6th of June in 1986.  As Siyolo has mentioned here that we got together and we had a meeting, and we agreed in that meeting that workers who were going to work at night were supposed to go to the offices of management so that whatever we're going to say there we're going to say there all as one.  We agreed all of us.  We went there early in the morning.  The first person that we met was Mr van Zyl.  I am not sure what was his position at that time.  What I knew is that he was a security.  If we were supposed to meet the management he was always there blocking us.  We were not supposed to go to the management but via him.  So we explained to him that we wanted to meet with the management.  At the end we met with the management.  We went to the office and we started to negotiate.  We saw a group of people, men with shields and spears.  It was for the first time in my life seeing that thing even though I am a Zulu, I grew up with Zulus.  I am a Zulu myself, but it was for the first time that I will see someone carrying a spear just like that.  One person that I can identify is one person.  I stood up inside the hall.  Van Zyl went to the door and he closed the door.  We opened the windows.  Van Zyl opened the door because he realised that others were leaving his office through the windows.  So as we were talking to the management people with spears came, but in the negotiation we were talking basically about that employees should go back to work except for the administrators, and the workers said they couldn't go back to work, especially underground.  Now, we realised that if we didn't run away through the windows, try to escape through the windows, those people were going to kill us.  We realised at the end that it was true what employees were saying.  We tried to contact the offices of the UM.  The management came back to us and told us that our union has contacted them, and they asked us to sit down and negotiate with them, so we said to them, "We can't do that, because if we try and do so you call people to come and attack us.  What we can do is that if you can give us another venue where we can go and sit down and negotiate with you we can do that, because we are scared now sitting down here with you."  Then he left, and then he came back to address us.

MR LAX: (Inaudible) ... you said, "He left and then he came."

WITNESS:   Mr van Zyl.  When he came back to address us workers took the microphone from him.  They didn't want to let him talk.  As time goes on they explained to us that, "If you are a Zulu you must go down to the mine grounds.  Zulus are meeting down there."  And this came surprising to us, because to us it really didn't matter who you were.

MR LAX: (Inaudible) ... Siyolo has already told us.  What we would like to know is what happened to you.

WITNESS:   Okay.

MR LAX: Because you're adding now - repeating the same things.  You've added the thing about van Zyl and about the armed people while you were meeting with them.  Just one thing you can tell me.  You said you recognised one of those people.  Who was that?

WITNESS:   I would just like to tell you now exactly what happened.

MR LAX: (Inaudible) ... on that first group of people that were armed with spears and shields.

WITNESS:   When we were at the office I saw Mr Mngadi.

MR LAX: (Inaudible) ... talking about?

WITNESS:   I am not quite sure whether we meant one person, but the person I saw was Mr Mngadi.

MR LAX: (Inaudible) ... Mngazi Buthelezi.  Now, that could just be a writing error or a reading error, but that's the name mentioned in your statement.

WITNESS:   Yes, he is the one I am talking about, Buthelezi.  He was working at Shaft 17.

MR LAX: (Inaudible) ... time now.

WITNESS:   I think I got confused when I realised that there was a group of people coming armed, and they were being led by Mr Mthethwa, who was working at the kitchen, and Mr Dlomo, who was driving a goods car going underground.  When they came I got confused, because it was for the first time that I had seen people carrying spears and shields.  When I stood there watching these people I saw police going to them.  I thought the police were going to stop them because they were carrying weapons, but I got scared when I saw police coming and these people were following the police.  The police were leading them.  That's when I saw police shooting.  I think they fired three times.  Because I was so scared I couldn't even move.  A person could have killed me because I stood for a while.  I don't even know what injured me.  Whether it was a spear or a gun I can't tell.  All I did is that I ran afterwards.  I left those steps and I started running.  And I jumped a certain place - it wasn't that high - and I continued running.  I saw a van, and Mr van Zyl was driving the car, and there were people inside this car.  And when this car passed these people were armed, so I realised that Mr van Zyl was delivering or deploying these people, because he knew we were running into the forest so he was deploying these people so that when we run we meet them forward.  I ran through the forest.  I ran up until Louwsburg.  I went into a family whom I know, and that's where I slept.  Even though in my statement I couldn't make the events follow each other coherently, I can't even now tell what I have left or I have said everything.  I don't know.

MR LAX: (Inaudible) ... much what you said in your statement.  What I want to know from you is, you said that the following day you learnt that 11 people had died in this incident.  Is that right?

WITNESS:   That's correct, although I didn't believe that the number was the correct number, but I heard 11 people died.  But I realised that people who got inside the forest trying to run ... (inaudible - end of side B) ... this made me sad, because I didn't know in that mine that we were Xhosas and Zulus, but at the end, at the final statement said that it was a war between Xhosas and Zulus.

MR LAX: (Inaudible) ... plenty.  If we understand both yourself and Mr Siyolo clearly there was no - originally no problem between Xhosas and Zulus or between Sothos and Xhosas, or vice versa.  Are we right about that?  Now, you said that after this all the employees were placed in hostel No 2, the ones who had been injured or had run away from that place.  Is that right?

WITNESS:   People who were sent to hostel No 2 were those who were attacked.  They were not allowed to go to these other hostels because people were scared.  Management gave them money to leave the place. One other thing you haven't told us is that you lost all your property in the previous hostels where you'd been because you weren't allowed to go back there.  Is that right?   ---   Yes, I lost my property, because when I left my place where I was staying in hostel I was just wearing my mine uniform, so I lost my property.