Special Hearings — Mandela United Football Club Hearings — 1997-11-28

DR RANDERA: Chairperson, my first question is to Mr Cachalia and the other three are to both of them.  My apologies.
 Mr Cachalia, I think I mentioned yesterday to Rev Mbangula, a document that I think Peter Storey prepared of Rev Verryn again, that there were rumours circulating in October long before the abduction of the young people from the manse, were you aware of that rumour?

AZHAR CACHALIA: I was not aware of the rumours until January, early January when the whole thing happened.  So the rumours between October and December I had no personal knowledge about.

DR RANDERA: Let me say as far as the other three questions go, let's take it as accepted the difficulty ... (intervention)

AZHAR CACHALIA: Are you coming to me or ...

DR RANDERA: Both of you.  The conditions under which you were working and everybody was working at that time, was very difficult.  What I am trying to understand is that the rumours were circulating.  I think Mr Morobe said that it was thick with rumour in Soweto at the time.
 Now through the structures, and I am referring particularly to the Mandela United Football Club, through the structures that you two were leaders of, besides the intervention that took place at the time of the burning of the house, did you at any time attempt to either verify these rumours or make any interventions yourselves?

AZHAR CACHALIA: No, look not all of it was rumours, there were some, for example some court cases at that time.  The one I refer to, I referred to yesterday, the battery acid case, it was something that actually had happened, and it happened in the Mandela home.
 So what I am saying is that they were not all rumours, there was fact and there was fiction.  As far as approaching Mrs Mandela directly is concerned, no, I didn't unfortunately.

MURPHY MOROBE: On that question Mr Chairperson, one of the things I actually would mention in this regard is that when I mentioned in answer to an earlier question about the existence of structures to try to deal with certain instances, when issues arose, but even if there was no formal decision or committee meeting that said there is this meeting, Rev Chikane at some point, took an initiative.  rev Chikane was a respected member of our community.  Rev Chikane was a member of the executive of the United Democratic Front in the Transvaal at some point, and then the other members of the committee where in fact senior members of our organisation.
 So for us, because our organisation at that point were either banned or we were operating in sub-divides underground, people were restricted to their homes, some of us were in jail, in the way that things happened was because you still had some element of collective leadership around, people were able to get engaged in trying to deal with this issue, and for us it was easy, in fact it was actually the right thing to do to be fair, in fact enquiry on this matter to that committee and that is why even their own assessments were taken very seriously.
 Because we accepted their bona fides and integrity.

DR RANDERA: Mr Morobe, I accept that, but what you are referring to is October 1988, when Rev Chikane gets involved in the situation.  What I am understanding from both of you, from your statement, is that there were rumours circulating and I take what Mr Cachalia has said, long before that.
 I am just trying to understand why it took you two till October 1988, before that intervention took place?

AZHAR CACHALIA: You know if I can think back myself, I think one of the difficulties, and we must say this quite openly, is that at that point I really did not believe that Mrs Mandela acknowledged or accepted the UDF leadership, the MDM leadership at that point.  I did not believe that she would, I mean for example you would hear Mrs Mandela say "I take my instructions from Lusaka", and I just didn't think that in a sense we any longer had the authority, you know, to approach Mrs Mandela.
 I may have been wrong, but that was certainly the impression that we laboured under by the end of October 1988, that our influence with Mrs Mandela would have been tenuous.

DR RANDERA: Mr Cachalia, you are leading me into my question section actually, which is again, it is an impression which I have gained over the last few days.
 You talk about the mass democratic movement, you talk about the UDF structures, it seems to me at that time people were not elected into those positions.  I think both of you have said that Mrs Mandela was very much part of  and seen as a leader in society at the time, but I think, you can correct me, but yesterday you even said that the Mandela United Football Club could be considered to be part of the structures at the time?  But the impression I come away with is that there was - on the one side there was the structures that you and Morobe are referring to and on the other side, Mrs Mandela wasn't part of this.  And yet she was seen to be a leader, why was she not integrated, or why was she not integral to the structures of the UDF or the MDM at the time?

MURPHY MOROBE: There is a history to this development Mr Chairperson, and this history has to do with the way in which our struggle unfolded.
 The whole question of the relationship between the underground formations and those who operated at an open level.  So there were certain lines that had to be bled for obvious reasons from the point of view of security.  Now only to the extent that you wanted certain things to be done, you could only ask and enquire so much.  In fact there was a term in those days that said, ask no questions and be told no lies.
 But it basically had to do with the fact that you only needed to know what was relevant  for what you had to do, especially where you begin to engage the elements of the struggle.  That had to be secured from obvious in fact interest from the Security Police.
 Now, those things obviously do create significant tension in terms of the ways in which people want to relate to one another, how do you go, if you know that there are people in Mrs Mandela's place, you know, either those people are people who belong to your former structures, or people who probably come from the underground, and you wouldn't want to go and interfere in that kind of thing, because you have obvious fears that you might end up getting caught in things that don't really have to do with what you want to achieve.
 So those things create those tensions and those fears that people tend to have about how far to make certain enquiries.  That is the environment we are functioning in, so to the extent that Mrs Mandela was not necessarily a part of the structures, the official structures are the elected, in our definition of the mass democratic movement, it was a broad definition, because at the core of it, were the organised formation's attempts of the UDF and Cosatu, but it was defined broad enough so that as a movement you actually tried to pull people in behind a particular common objective.
 Now, in that situation, you have seen a river in torrent, it drags along everything along with it, you know.  And you've got no way of clearly defining exactly who everyone is who are coming into the stream, so we hoped to be able to clarify that by the time it get to the leadership point of view.
 So depending on how far you were, people tended to take certain actions as well, that would not necessarily accord with the core and heart of what the movement stands for.  So those things do happen and I think that the statement relating to boxes of matches and petrol bombs etc, is one case in point, where I think the movement had expressed an opinion that it doesn't accord with our sentiment of how we want a justice struggle,  particularly from a leadership point of view.