Amnesty Hearings — Johannesburg — 1998-11-23

RE MR MBANDAZAYO: Thank you Madam Chair and Honourable Members of the Committee.  At this stage I will call Jabulani Khumalo who is going to be the second witness.  Jabulani Khumalo is a member of the NEC of the PAC.

JABULANI KHUMALO: (sworn states)

RE MR MBANDAZAYO: Thank you Madam Chair and Honourable Members of the Committee.
	Mr Khumalo, can you tell the Committee what position are you holding within the PAC NEC?

JABULANI KHUMALO: I'm a member of the National Executive of the PAC, I'm in the cabinet of the PAC as the Secretary for Sport and Recreation.

RE MR MBANDAZAYO: Mr Khumalo, you have seen the applicant, do you know the applicant who appeared before this Committee today?

JABULANI KHUMALO: Yes I know him.

RE MR MBANDAZAYO: Can you tell the Committee how do you know him?

JABULANI KHUMALO: I know him to be the member of the Azanian Peoples Liberation Army, the commander in charge of the repossession unit within APLA.

RE MR MBANDAZAYO: Now as a member of the NEC of PAC, do you know about this unit, how it was formed and for what purpose?

JABULANI KHUMALO: Yes, I'm sure I need to give a background of the PAC itself in relation to the Azanian Peoples Liberation Army.

RE MR MBANDAZAYO: Yes continue?

JABULANI KHUMALO: PAC as a liberation movement in this country from forceful efforts by the settler minority regime in 1960 opted to go and undertake a serious struggle, a painful one, the armed struggle.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Mbandazayo, I'm sorry to be interrupting your witness whilst he is giving evidence.  May I just advise you that we are aware of the submission and may I say a very pregnant submission made by APLA before the Human Rights Violations Committee some time in 1997 and if you are seeking to lead evidence with regard to the existence of the repossession unit and the objectives of that unit, we are fully familiar with those and we wouldn't like evidence to be led in respect of those issues.

RE MR MBANDAZAYO: Thank you Madam Chair, I'm indebted to the Committee, Madam Chair.  Then I'll have to channel it on how it worked, I'm happy that the Committee is aware of that, many occasions you'll find that we have to lay the basis that there was such a unit.
	Now Mr Khumalo, the Committee is aware of the unit, that there was a repossession unit and what was it's purpose.  Now what I would like you to enlighten the Committee on was on it's operational basis, did you know when they went to an operation how they were reporting and whether the PAC was aware of the monies which have been repossessed by this unit and how this was done?

JABULANI KHUMALO: Yes, thank you Comrade Chairperson to cut me short on this.  PAC gave Azanian Peoples Liberation Army a mandate as a military wing to execute military operation, to make funds to support the struggle, mainly then it was that APLA as a military wing should have a self-reliance because of the PAC not having funds to support them in order to push the staff forward they must create creativity and find some way to raise funds.  PAC made it very clear that the resources and funds, money are here inside the country so a unit should be created, so these units were created for the possession, not for armed robbery or bank robbery, things like that, it was a repossession for the pushing of the struggle forward,  that was the purpose of this unit.  As of the report, we have a clear guideline that within APLA there is the logistic desk, there is commisarian desk that collect information as intelligence and there is commanding structure as well, so we operated in threefold as the then Peoples Liberation Army.  So a commander  of the unit, within the unit itself, there should be a commissar, a logistic because a commander cannot at the same time handle the logistics so those things were defined clearly.  So the report was that the field operators report to the commander of the unit, the unit commander report to the operational commander and then it ends up then lastly to the chief in command which was at the time was Sabello Palma was the Chief in Command and then they would take the report to the chief in command of the PAC.  So all those things was off from the blessing of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania.

RE MR MBANDAZAYO: Now my point, what I want to know and also I want you to tell the Committee, do you know how the money was handled at that particular point in time?

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Mbandazayo, I thought the question you had posed to Mr Khumalo was how the commander of the repossession unit operated.  Wasn't that a question that you posed to Mr Khumalo?  If I'm correct that question has not yet been answered?

RE MR MBANDAZAYO: Thank you Madam Chair.
	Mr Khumalo, as Madam Chair has already indicated that how was the commander of the repossession unit operating?

JABULANI KHUMALO: The commander of the unit will from the collective of information from the intelligence go and confirm the assessment of the targets and of the place if need be to be of the repossession, reconcile all the information and approve it and once that is done he'd issue orders in the field that this unit will be doing the this and that and that so he gave responsibilities, he delegate the responsibilities as stated before in this case that there was a supporting group, there was the cut off group, all those groups were designed and given the delegations by the commander of that unit.  So whatever comes up from there it reported back to the commander, a commander can choose to be in whatever group that seems fit to him because he's got authority at that time, he's got a full authority at the time to use his discretion of how it should be operated.

RE MR MBANDAZAYO: Now from the commander to - where was the commander reporting to and how it was done?

JABULANI KHUMALO: A commander reported to his senior whether operational commander which is similar to him.  A commander in the Azanian Peoples Liberation Army, it's very broad.  If we can go deep it's very broad in such a way that if you follow the chain it will take the whole day because you're talking of the unit.  That unit commander is reporting to the section commander, the section commander reported to the regional commander and the regional commander report to the -it goes up to Sabello Palma, it's a chain, it's a very long chain.  So in this particular case I think Comrade Tapello whom is known in other areas as Lebo as a codename, in this particular case he was reporting directly to Msiki.

RE MR MBANDAZAYO: At the time of this operation can you tell the Committee, the question was raised by whether he knows what Msiki does after reporting to him or after handing the money to him, what Msiki does after that, whom was he reporting to?

JABULANI KHUMALO: Msiki reported to his commander as well, he was reporting to his commander.  In this time it was a national commander of the operations, Commander Letlape who will in turn report it to his commander.  His commander was Sabello Palma.

RE MR MBANDAZAYO: Can you tell the Committee would the applicant Mr Maseko know after reporting to Msiki what has been done after reporting to him about the money, if he handed the money to him?

JABULANI KHUMALO: No.

RE MR MBANDAZAYO: Would he know what happened to the money?