Human Rights Violation Hearings — Pietermaritzburg — UNKNOWN

UNKNOWN: (Incomplete) ... free election wars.  On 2nd of February 1990 President F W de Klerk announced the unbanning of a whole range of political organisations, the imminent release of Nelson Mandela, and clearly an indication of a negotiated settlement towards a full democracy.  Mandela, when he was released, spoke in Durban on the 25th of February and urged an end to violence.  On the 25th of March, a month later, Chief Buthelezi addressed a crowd in the same place at a meeting that was financed by the Security Police.  Two days latter massive attacks started in the Pietermaritzburg region on non-Inkatha areas in Vulindlela, Edendale, Ashdown, Imbali, Mphopomeni and Table Mountain.  This so-called seven days war was a further graphic illustration of the Security Forces allowing participants in political violence to act with impunity.  Huge groups of Inkatha supporters were allowed virtually unhindered to rampage through vast areas of Vulindlela, in particular KwaShange, KwaMnyandu, Gezabuzo and Vulisaka, Galuza in Edendale and Ashdown.  The Inkatha forces appeared to have logistical support, and large lorries transported platoons of them from place to place.  Many of these attackers were armed, and amongst them were people in blue "kits konstabel" overalls.  The control centre of these attacks seemed to be Inkatha MP David Ntombela's headquarters in Vulindlela.  The late Chief Shayabantu Zondi also played a significant leadership role in these attacks.  At Ntombela's base large crowds were seen massing, and soon after the attacks looters drove herds of cattle there.  Ntombela, an induna of one of the chiefs in Vulindlela, had often been accused of participation in the murder of UDF supporters.  He was closely linked with the Security Forces, and when the December 1988 Trust Feed massacre perpetrators came to trial evidence was led that Ntombela had been at planning meetings with the police involved in these killings.
The police reaction to the invasion of the areas was at best incompetent, and at worst partisan.  People were being massacred while police helicopters circled overhead.  A few kilometres away on the Edendale road an armoured patrol, SADF, eight vehicles, made no attempt, or were not allowed to make any attempt, to move on to where the battles were taking place.  Over the next month regular attempts to contact and persuade the SADF to take action invariably failed, apparently because they could only take action at police request and under police direction.
By the end of this horrific week there were 20 000 refugees in Edendale from Vulindlela and the Table Mountain area.  The battle continued in Imbali for over a month, and gradually burnt itself out, but it led later on in the year to continued conflict.  Notable among the abuses here were the assassination of Anglican priest, Victor Afrikaner by Inkatha gunman, Toti Zulu, who was later arrested and convicted, but released on appeal.  Possibly in retaliation for Afrikaner's death Umkhonto we Sizwe later assassinated the Inkatha member Jerome Mncwabe, who many believed had given the order for Afrikaner to be killed.
The violence spread through Natal.  Every month 50 to 60 people were killed in political violence.  In the
90s, the first four years of the 90s, we in fact see the  gradual embedding of violence throughout communities, and certain patterns become clear.  Inkatha lost control of urban areas in Pietermaritzburg, and in places like Richmond, Mooi River and Greytown.  Other townships, like Wembezi, became battle grounds.  The period was accompanied by intense periods of violence in which both sides participated, in which there were accusations of police partisanship, particularly in Mooi River.
Thirdly, in many areas, particularly on the south coast and Richmond, there were notable excesses and atrocities on both sides.  Massacres of whole families, of women and children, became more commonplace.
Fourthly, Inkatha came increasingly to rely on the support of the more conservative rural chiefs.  This led, particularly in the south coast, to incredible violence.   Fifthly, high profile assassinations continued, notably of Chief Maphumulo of Contraleso(?), Hadebe and Ngwenya of the ANC in Pietermaritzburg.  Investigations in all these cases appear to have been less than enthusiastic.
Sixthly, the Peace Accord that was finally signed by all parties totally ineffective, probably because the formal structures had representatives who had caused the violence in the first place.
Seventhly, there was a gradual change for the better in the South African Police in their handling of political violence after 1992, although this was hampered by a seeming inability to take action against people carrying weapons of war, aided and abetted by the State President, who, after a near century of prohibition of people
carrying spears and such like in public, effectively  legalised it by proclamation, although this was later rescinded.
The role, I believe, of Jacques Buchner, previously head of the Security Police in Pietermaritzburg, in allowing political murders and violent attacks to take place with seeming impunity in the Midlands, needs to be investigated. 
The violence then continued until the elections in 1994.  On the ground reality is that intolerance, fear of group pressure and no-go areas remained a reality and an ongoing inheritance for people in the new democracy.  Bad men, and ordinary men made bad in the conflict, continued to control the lives of people in many areas of KwaZulu-Natal.  The culture of violence has become embedded in a number of communities and groups, and resort to murder as a means of getting what one wants is all too common, leading both to killing of political opponents as well as of colleagues within ones own movement, as in the assassination of Solomon Mzolo of the ANC in Greytown, and of a number of young ANC leaders in the Richmond area.
In conclusion what has happened in the Midlands is a tragic story and a microcosm of what damage apartheid did to South Africa as a whole.  It's not a story that cannot be understood or made sense of.  We can also consider what could have been done to avert and contain these horrors.  Whilst the Natal Midlands was just one part, and not immune to the major trends of society, it is also true that if sufficient numbers of people with access to power - Judges, policemen, newspaper editors, businessmen, church leaders - had been more willing to do what is right many human rights abuses could have been  stopped in this region, and many lives could have been saved.  It is important to remember their cowardliness and their complacency and their complicity.  Apartheid did that to us too.   
It is also important to remember that the majority of white people accepted the apartheid system, voted its parliamentary representatives in, who legislated for the security legislation that created the Security Force monster that nearly destroyed us.
The current state of psychological block, in which it is impossible to find anybody who ever supported apartheid, needs some kind of purgative ethical drain cleaner.  But, because the right things were not done, we have to mourn over all the dead, over what happened over the last 33 years.  We do need to mourn the dead and the lost lives and the human possibilities that were lost in this terrible conflict.  We need to mourn the dead on both sides of the conflict, on all sides of the conflict.  We need to express our dismay at the decimation of the future leaders of this city, of the cutting down of our youth.  Hadebe and Ngwenya were not amongst the candidates for the recent local government elections.  But we also need to praise and honour.  Honour those who put freedom and justice first, and were prepared to suffer for it.  Honour those who resisted the evil that was apartheid, even if doing so was a passport to ostracism, or the Island, or the battery electrodes, or the bullet out of the dark.  Honour to all the known and unknown soldiers for simple democracy and fairness and true peace.  We honour their courage, we honour their fight to rid South Africa of the
scourge of racism, and in truth it was a privilege to have  /lived in
lived in a time in which such men and women endured and died.  Thank you.