Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — 1997-11-20

UNKNOWN: When you say, and I quote on page 243 of the first bundle,
"It is, therefore, perfectly clear ...",
sorry it is the third paragraph, for the benefit of the members of the Committee,
"It is, therefore, perfectly clear that groups who identified with the ANC or the UDF at the time considered the police as legitimate targets and that this strengthened my personal perceptions at the time, that the comrades would have no moral problem attacking us."
That is incorrect, not so?

TIKAPELA JOHANNES MBELO: Yes, during those years, that is the 80's, we, as the police, were fighting for freedom and we were enemies of the comrades, because we were delaying their fight for liberation.

UNKNOWN: But the perception created here that these documents confirmed your perceptions, that is incorrect, not so?

TIKAPELA JOHANNES MBELO: These documents never influenced me, but I was influenced by the situation as it prevailed at that time in South Africa.

UNKNOWN: Mr Mbelo, would you tell the Committee, at the time that you were a policeman, which was, approximately, from 1981, you were, you had joined the security police and were shortly thereafter at Vlakplaas, not so?  Not so?

TIKAPELA JOHANNES MBELO: That is so.

UNKNOWN: You personally never lived in the community, not so?

TIKAPELA JOHANNES MBELO: No, that is not so, I did stay amongst the people.

UNKNOWN: Are we then incorrect if we understand that you stayed at Vlakplaas and you lived, the spent the better part of your time there, as a Vlakplaas operative?

TIKAPELA JOHANNES MBELO: Chairperson, we were not staying at Vlakplaas.  We were going in and out to different provinces as well as different cities and we were meeting the public as we were travelling.

UNKNOWN: Yes, but you were never an uniformed policeman, I mean, you always operated covertly, not so?

TIKAPELA JOHANNES MBELO: That is correct.

UNKNOWN: So, would you agree that you were not at risk of being attacked as a policeman, because you could never be identified as a policeman, not so?

TIKAPELA JOHANNES MBELO: I was in danger just like any other policeman, because where I was born there was not any single soul who did not know that I was a policeman.  Even my house or my home was in danger of being attacked, because they knew there was a policeman living at that house.

UNKNOWN: I want to put it to you, Mr Mbelo, that you have tried to hide behind orders and circumstances to justify your conduct.  You have not come here unequivocally to say to this Committee and the families that you have done wrong.  What do you say about that?

TIKAPELA JOHANNES MBELO: Chairperson, the first thing, if I did not want to tell you what I know about this, I would not have come before this Commission and if I did not want the members of the family to forgive me, I would not have come that.  The main reason that I have come before this Commission is to tell this Committee as to what I know about this shooting and the part that I took, because the nation at large does not know about what we were doing at that time and I have come here prepared to face the music of whatever I have done in the past.

UNKNOWN: I will come back to that point in a moment, Mr Mbelo, there is just one other thing I need to clarify with you.  You said in your evidence yesterday that Captain Bellingan had changed your affidavit.  Would you tell the court, what had you conveyed in your original affidavit?

TIKAPELA JOHANNES MBELO: Chairperson, even that first affidavit was not a lengthy or an affidavit that went into the depths of all the things that we did and it was structured in such a manner that whatever we did should not appear as an evil deed, but as if the police were doing their job and they were obliged to do so and whatever happened was not written in depth in the first affidavit.  It was written according to Mr Bellingan's requirements.  So, it was not a true reflection of the events as they took place

UNKNOWN: Yes, Mr Mbelo, but the question that I ask of you is what was your first affidavit?  Are you saying to this Committee that your first affidavit said what you are saying to this Committee today about what happened there?

TIKAPELA JOHANNES MBELO: No.

UNKNOWN: Then would you explain to the Committee why you are trying to create the impression or trying to reflect Captain Bellingan in an even worse light than he already is, in my respectful view, by suggesting that he tampered with your original statement which was the truthful one?  Why do you try to create that impression for the Committee?

TIKAPELA JOHANNES MBELO: It is because my first statement was not going to tally with the statement that he had made, because in my statement I was told to say that this guy was trying to take out his gun on Captain Bellingan.  That is what I said on the other statement and they said I should not mention the fact that he had lifted his hands up.  I should say that he was trying to shoot at Captain Bellingan or attack him.

UNKNOWN: Are you saying that you would have said in your first statement that the person was surrendering, is that what you are trying to tell the Committee today?

TIKAPELA JOHANNES MBELO: Not when I was still in Vlakplaas, that though never ever crossed my mind.

UNKNOWN: Precisely.  If you look at page 244 of your application, you deal with the question of torture.  I would like to ask you a question about that.  You say,
"If I did not participate in acts of torture, I would have been regarded as a sell-out and the possibility exists that I could have been killed."
So, once again, you are not saying that you did not want to participate in the torture, you are saying that you were forced to, not so?

TIKAPELA JOHANNES MBELO: Yes, there were certain things that were happening and if you do not take part you were taken as a sell-out, as if you wanted to side with the liberation fighters.

UNKNOWN: Mr Mbelo, you will agree that you could have been transferred out of Vlakplaas at any stage, you were a policeman, you were not an askari?  Do you agree with that?

TIKAPELA JOHANNES MBELO: Mr Williams, if we can look at the security establishment as a whole, it was not Vlakplaas only that employed assaults or torture as a means of extracting evidence from people.  So, it was not difficult for me to move from that place, but it would have remained the same, because the security branch was all over the country.

UNKNOWN: The point that one wants to make is that you had a choice as to whether you wanted to participate in acts of torture.  You could have decided to be transferred out of that branch of the police.  Do you agree that that was possible?

TIKAPELA JOHANNES MBELO: That is correct.

UNKNOWN: Once again, you say in your evidence, I was ordered to execute Mr Mlifie, I had no choice, not so?

TIKAPELA JOHANNES MBELO: Yes, on that aspect it is so.

UNKNOWN: You say that when you lied in previous proceedings you were told to lie, not so?

TIKAPELA JOHANNES MBELO: That is correct.

UNKNOWN: And if you look at paragraph 26 of your affidavit you say there as a catchall,
"I did not act for personal gain or out of malice, ill-will or spite.  At all material times I was acting on the instruction of my superiors.",
not so?

TIKAPELA JOHANNES MBELO: That is correct.

UNKNOWN: So, you are actually not coming to this Committee to say I know I committed crimes, I have done wrong.  You are actually coming to this Committee and saying I have done something wrong, but I had no choice, not so?

TIKAPELA JOHANNES MBELO: I will say to the Committee I have come here to ask for amnesty, because of the things that I did, but to qualify that, I would say I was coerced into this situation, I had absolutely no choice at that time.

UNKNOWN: You will agree that you have much to gain by this amnesty application, not so?