Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — 1998-09-08

NORMAN ARENDSE: Now I just want to raise a few things with you in the affidavit.  It appears from this affidavit, and we've got no reason to question the factual correctness of it Chairperson, there are a number of submissions, conclusions and so on.  ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: ...[inaudible]

NORMAN ARENDSE: Yes, but it would appear, and we accept, that she was a waitress on the evening of the 26th of December 1992, at this restaurant.  She says that she was sitting in the restaurant round about 10H30 when she heard a series of explosions.  Now she had to help a number of people who had apparently got injured as a result of the attack, including Mr Visser who is the owner of the restaurant.
	Now what I want to ask you about is, she says she suffers or she suffered severe emotional trauma as a result of this attack and she also says that she harbours a fear that her attackers, which would include you, would hunt her down and kill her.  Do  you want to comment on that?  She's afraid that you will hunt her down and kill her.

ANDILE SHICEKA: I cannot do such a thing, I do not hate her.  I cannot do such a thing.  You see, what made us fight is no more, we are now one people.

NORMAN ARENDSE: Are her fears well-founded or grounded, or doesn't she have any basis to fear anything from you?

ANDILE SHICEKA: There is no reason for her to fear anything.  Even if I can meet her I can sit down with her so that I can explain everything and to explain to her why everything happened the way it did.

NORMAN ARENDSE: I take it you don't know her, you haven't seen her, you don't know what she looks like?

ANDILE SHICEKA: I never saw her, I do not know her.

NORMAN ARENDSE: She said that is why she is now living in the United Kingdom, just as a matter of interest.  Now she opposes your application for amnesty on a number of grounds, and I just want to run through them with you.  She says that what you did, the act which you perpetrated that night, was not a good faith act associated with a political objective.  Do you want to comment on that?

ANDILE SHICEKA: Yes.

NORMAN ARENDSE: Sorry, just before you - to put it another way around, this was a purely criminal act.  You decided with your cronies to go there, open up fire and to shoot them.  This has got nothing to do with politics, it has nothing to do with the conflicts of the past.  That is what she is saying.

ANDILE SHICEKA: Let me tell it this way.  In the way she explains, you see that operation was claimed by APLA under the code name Kabambata.
	When she says it was a simple criminal act from the PAC principles, the PAC do not hate white people.  They believe that there is only one race, the human race.  We did not hit white people because we hate them.  There is only one thing we wanted from them, to allow us freedom to respect human beings, us as human beings.  We did not hit them because we hated them.  We do not hate white people because they are white, even from PAC principles.  What happened is that they did not recognise us as human beings.

NORMAN ARENDSE: Now you have already told us that you were a member of the PAC and of APLA, but she says that you did not commit this particular offence in furtherance of your struggle against the state.  This was an attack on innocent unarmed civilians and had nothing to do with your struggle against the state at the time.

ANDILE SHICEKA: This we did as members of APLA.  APLA has accepted responsibility for the operation.  In your thoughts, how can I go and kill people without anticipating any gains?  I cannot move from Transkei and go and shoot people I do not know just for the fun of it.  All of this was planned by APLA and us as operatives of APLA executed that job.

NORMAN ARENDSE: Just to take your last point, you say you executed this job.  Did you have reason to believe that the job that you were carrying out was within the scope of your duties as an APLA soldier, as an APLA combatant?  Because she also claims that you did not have reasonable grounds to believe that you were doing this within the scope of your job as a combatant.

ANDILE SHICEKA: I am an APLA soldier, I did this, I'm not denying anything.  I was only executing the orders that were given to me as a disciplined member of APLA.  You carry an order as it is and then you ask questions later.

NORMAN ARENDSE: Then she also goes on to say that you also - the offence in respect of which you are applying for amnesty, this is the Claremont restaurant, cannot be associated with a political objective because firstly she says you were motivated by malice and a hatred of white people in general.

ANDILE SHICEKA: We never hated white people, we regarded them as human beings like us but we had a problem in terms of their attitude, they were oppressing the Africans.  We were joining the political organisations so as to liberate the Africans.
	We were to fight with the government to show the government that we don't like the manner in which we were being regarded.  That doesn't imply that we hated white people.  You can also find that in our preamble of the PAC, that all of us belonged to one race and that is the human race.  We never hated white people, we hated oppression.  No-one like oppression in the whole world.

NORMAN ARENDSE: She also alleges that the Claremont restaurant attack was not committed within the context of a political uprising or disturbance, or in reaction to a political uprising or disturbance.

ANDILE SHICEKA: APLA only suspended its armed struggle on the 16th of January 1994.  The operation took place in 1992.  That proves that we were in the battle with the whites up until the time when the armed struggle was suspended.

NORMAN ARENDSE: She also claims that the offence wasn't even directed primarily at white people because half of the people who worked at the restaurant were 50% black.  She doesn't say, interesting enough, how many white people were in the restaurant.  I take it that most people who work at any place are mostly black.  Do you want to comment on that?  Did you take into account that there were not only white people there but there were also black people there, whether they were working there or whether they were eating there?

ANDILE SHICEKA: There were only white people there.

NORMAN ARENDSE: Now she also says that you failed to disclose why the Claremont restaurant was selected as a target or why it was selected as a legitimate target.

ANDILE SHICEKA: That restaurant at Claremont was frequented by white people.  We targeted it because we knew that it was frequented by white people.  Even the other places that were frequented by white people were being hit.  We couldn't hit all of them all at once.  On that particular day we identified it as our target and that is why we had to hit that restaurant.

NORMAN ARENDSE: She also says that neither the PAC nor APLA were aware of this target or that you had selected this restaurant as a target.

ANDILE SHICEKA: I have a question now.  How did APLA claim the responsibility of that operation, if it wasn't approved by APLA?  How can APLA claim responsibility?  That operation was claimed under the code name Kambambata.  If she says that that was not approved by APLA, I don't know what that means because I know that APLA claimed responsibility.

NORMAN ARENDSE: She also alleges that you gained personally from this, from the commission of this offence because you were paid R1 000, R150 of which you spent on alcohol in a shebeen and also to buy clothes.