Amnesty Hearings — East London — 1998-04-03

CHAIRPERSON: Is there a Charlene Dobson here?

MS DOBSON: Yes, that is me.

CHAIRPERSON: Would you stand up please.  On behalf of the members of the Committee, the lawyers present and I am sure on behalf of all members of the public here today, may we congratulate you on your birthday.

MS DOBSON: Thank you very much.

CHAIRPERSON: Best of wishes to you.

MS DOBSON: Thanks, I appreciate the kind wishes.

MR PRIOR: Mr Chairman, the date is the 3rd of April 1998 and the amnesty application of Zukile Mbambo and Dumisani Ncamazana proceeds.

ZUKILE MBAMBO: (still under oath)

MR PRIOR: Mr Mbambo, the confession that you made during your trial, was annexed to the papers, to the one application, and you have gone through that, that is the handwritten statement from page 14(a) to (r) of the bundle, you have gone through that with your counsel, have you not?

ZUKILE MBAMBO: I would like to repeat sir, to re-read it.

MR PRIOR: That is not the question.  Before you came to this hearing, and in consultation with your counsel, did she go through that statement with you?

ZUKILE MBAMBO: That is so.

MR PRIOR: And at that occasion you read through, and you understood what that statement was all about?

ZUKILE MBAMBO: That is so.

MR PRIOR: Is it your evidence that that entire statement is not true?

ZUKILE MBAMBO: This statement has a lot of lies in it.

MR PRIOR: All right.  Well, I am going to be referring to portions of that statement, I will simply put those portions to you, and you can tell the Committee if those statements are true or not and possibly explain why you made incorrect statements or false statements, do you understand?
	Before I go onto that, would you agree that in the statement you make reference to the Commander Jimmy Jones?

CHAIRPERSON: Sorry, before you do, was this confession attached to your application?

ZUKILE MBAMBO: Yes, that is so.

CHAIRPERSON: That is the application, they type written application that starts at page 8?

ZUKILE MBAMBO: The application for amnesty that was prepared for me by Mr Bandazayo.

CHAIRPERSON: Carry on.

MR PRIOR: Thank you Mr Chairman.  That application is dated the 7th of May 1997.

ZUKILE MBAMBO: That is so.

MR PRIOR: Did Mr Bandazayo explain to you why he put up the confession that you had made to the Magistrate together with your application?

ZUKILE MBAMBO: No, he never told me because I did not know even that he did so, the statement and the confession statement together with my application.

MR PRIOR: Would you agree that the statement does discuss, or does explain about the Bahai Church incident?

ZUKILE MBAMBO: Yes, the statement does refer to the attack of the Bahai Church, though it does not really reflect the true state of affairs.

MR PRIOR: The statement also refers to Jimmy Jones?

ZUKILE MBAMBO: That is so.

MR PRIOR: Now, if I understood your evidence yesterday, towards the end, you said that Mr Bandazayo was protecting, the sense of what you said and correct me if I am mistaken, that Bandazayo was protecting his other clients that is for example Jimmy Jones, at your expense?

ZUKILE MBAMBO: That is so.  As far as we could see, and as far as he was speaking, the way he was speaking.

MR PRIOR: Did you get the impression that Mr Bandazayo did not want Mr Jimmy Jones to be implicated in any way in these matters to which you are now applying for amnesty?

ZUKILE MBAMBO: That is so.

MR PRIOR: And if I also understood your evidence, that was possible ... (no recording due to power failure) ...

ZUKILE MBAMBO: Yes, I knew, he is very close there to Mr Jimmy Jones.  I can say they are close friends, and for that time Mr Bandazayo did not only represent us, he was our Attorney of the PAC.

ADV GCABASHE: So this really is an assumption you made, that he knew the truth?

ZUKILE MBAMBO: I don't assume these things.  I say he got access to those statements when he was making a bail application on our behalf in East London and again when he got those statements from the Police and attached them to our amnesty applications, and sent them to the Commission, he read them.
	He knows how we stand in those statements.

MR PRIOR: You see, you still don't explain to us clearly enough, why you say he knew it was lies.  He acted for you, you presumably gave him a version that was going to be the version that he would defend you on.  Did you say to him we talked a whole lot of lies in those confessions or did you feel you didn't need to say that, and just assumed that he must have known the truth as you saw it?

ZUKILE MBAMBO: This is so sir.  Mr Bandazayo got our statements from the Police yes, as he was the one who was representing us during our bail application at the court in East London, and secondly Mr Bandazayo, we used to discuss with him at prison, he knows fully that those are lies.  Even if he did not get access to those statements from the Police, he knew very well that we had talked lies in the statements.

MR PRIOR: So the main reason why he knew that there lies in the statement, according to your evidence, is that you discussed these matters with him in prison during the bail application?

ZUKILE MBAMBO: There was some of the reasons that he got to know that those were lies in those statements.

MR PRIOR: The other reasons are matters beyond your own personal knowledge, which you are assuming because of his closeness to Jimmy Jones, as you see it, he might have other information that would also help to confirm the fact of what you've told him that these are lies, in other words your discussion with him would be confirmed by your assumption of his other knowledge because of his relationship with Jimmy Jones?

ZUKILE MBAMBO: Another reason sir, is the one I gave initially.  He read those statements, he knows how these cases are, the process about those cases, he knew who our Commander was, he knows what went on and how these cases arose and went.
	It is not the reasons we thought up as you think sir.

MR PRIOR: Are you saying he was a party to the chain of command, he was a party to these acts, and therefore had intimate knowledge of all these acts and how they were committed, because that is what you are implying from what you are saying.
	You are saying it in a round about way, but that is what you seem to be saying.

ZUKILE MBAMBO: No, that is not what I mean sir.  I am trying to say sir, as I have already said he has a very close friendship with Mr Jimmy Jones.
	Mr Bandazayo is not a simple Attorney, he is also a member of the PAC, not a simple member of the PAC, he is a high ranking PAC member, who are very close to the soldiers, despite his not being a soldier.

ADV GCABASHE: Mr Mbambo, maybe just to explain what our difficulty is, we are all trained as lawyers and we are asking this really I suppose as lawyers, because you take instructions from a client.  You tell me something, as a lawyer I don't rely on other things, it is your case, I repeat in court what you have told me.
	So if you haven't told me certain things, if you haven't cleared up certain things with me, I can't repeat them in court, as your lawyer simply because you think I know about it, and that is really where our difficulty is in understanding what your instructions were, to what extent these lies were clarified to your Attorney at the time.  Just to give you that background.

ZUKILE MBAMBO: I hear you Ma'am.  I agree with you, but in our case, there is a difference because most times as you say, when you represent someone at court, you speak with him or her as your client, you don't go to the complainant to go and talk with her or him, in our case there is a difference.
	Our Instructor, Jimmy Jones, is very close with our Attorney, the Attorney is our representative, our own PAC members, the complainant is the government.  It is easy for Mr Bandazayo to meet Jimmy Jones and talk about this case.
	I don't know whether you follow me.