Special Hearings — Political Party — 1998-05-06

MURPHY MOROBE: Thank you chairperson, on the onset I must just make an apology for the slight delay in my arrival here this morning, as you know putting a submission like this and having to contend with someone like Mr Lekota is not very easy, he would always raise arguments five minutes before the time but since we thought it was for the general good of the process we thought, I'm sure you would also agree and understand that perhaps it was a necessary injunction on his part.
     The way we intend to approach this, we basically sort to stick as much as possible to the general thrust and trend of the questions that were submitted to us.  Now what we have here in front of us is individuals who play roles within the UDF at certain points in time.  Mr Molefe and Mr Lekota were the secretaries, general and the publicist secretary of the UDF at one point and when they departed on account of being charged in the Delmas trial, myself and Valli took over in those respective positions and then Mr Cachalia has been treasurer, he is the one that escaped detention for most of the time but spent a lot of time underground with us.  
     Now the approach that we are going to take, Mr Molefe will basically take us through a summary of the document mainly which we have before us and then because we have actually surmised, and just from the questions posed and also from the responsibility of the commission recognise the fact that in particular the issues relating to the questions of violations and the questions of political responsibility, particularly germane and central to what the commission has to conclude on and we are going to, once Mr Molefe has concluded that part, ask Mr Cachalia to, in fact Mr Terror Lekota will come in to add anything that needs to be added on that aspect in terms of the origins and autonomy of the UDF on questions on structures and control but some elements of that will be carried over into the next part where Mr Cachalia will deal with violations in questions of political responsibility because there is a very clear relationship between what happened in the initial stages and what subsequently happened because if you look at the genealogy of the process some things become more pronounced at certain points and time of the life of the organisation.  
     So our own existence through the genealogy, in fact will also give expression to the extent to which we also experienced, participated in and in fact influenced some of the events at that time.  Through that we hope that we will be able to assist the commission just to also have the sense of this organisation in motion and in terms of the issues that it dealt with and in terms of the challenges that it was faced with and eventually the end of its period when it closed.  
     Now once that is done we can then open up for general discussions and I am sure that Valli will also be able to come in at different points otherwise more than that the process will be on your hands but I should also mention, Mr Chairperson, that we are here, I know in certain areas people would mistake us as representing the UDF, I think we are here to represent experience at certain points in the history of our people we are not representing the UDF per se because as you said yourself the UDF has ceased to exist.  
     This is important because we do not want our presence here to be misconstrued as anything else other than us as individuals who were involved at the time, coming forward to assist the commission as best as we can in terms of our recollections and in terms of what we can reconstruct to help you get in fact to some of the conclusions you need to get to at the end of this process.  So we do so with the understanding that there are many more people, if given the chance, given the resources and given the time would have liked really to be part and parcel of putting and making an input like this because of their association with the activities of the organisation, so I am basically saying, that yes we did occupy key positions in the organisation and for that I think we perhaps are better placed to be able to answer some of the questions you have to the extent possible but also recognise that giving some of these points I've made earlier we would have liked to actually canvass opinions as broadly as possible so that at least our input is as expansive as possible and we do thank the commission of course for some of the documents that were made available to try to assist us.  
     Now the documents itself and the presentation might come across as being fairly general in certain respects but the fact is you have us here and I think our task would be to try to give as much substance to some of those general points that you have raised because we will use that as a general pointer of the thrust of the inputs that we would like to make and at the end we take this as a conversation because you will also be helping to prick our brains to probe some of the past events that might have slipped our minds in the drafting of this submission, I thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much Mr Morobe, can I just make only one comment before asking Mr Molefe to read into the record the executive summary and that is that we are entirely at one with you that obviously there are many many more people who were directly and indirectly involved in the UDF during its life and history and I want to publicly state here that if there are those who have additional information or who wish to send in submissions they will be considered like we've received many other submissions from many other sources not only people who have appeared before us.  You will obviously give the main input but I place it on record, if there are those anywhere in the country who were involved who may have documents, may have speeches who may have statements, may have records we would welcome that because we would want to get as full as picture as possible.  Thank you for that word, Mr Molefe.

POPO MOLEFE: : Thank you very much Mr Chairperson.  Before I proceed with my input I think it is appropriate that we recognise the presence amongst us of one of the stalwarts of our struggle in
the Western Cape Comrade Johnny Essal who is sitting here with us today.   
 Now chairperson and members of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, we are formally thus of the now disbanded United Democratic Front, we have no doubt that there are many UDF activists that support us who would have wanted to contribute to this submission.  We regret that this was not possible but we trust that opportunities for further submissions will be created should the need arise.  
 This submission is a sincere attempt on our part to answer questions about the UDF activities and whether these activities contributed to gross human rights violations during the mid nineteen eighties.  We believe that the actions of individuals and organisations associated with the UDF should be evaluated against the background of the UDF vision, mission strategy and tactics and the political and social and economic context of the period between 1983 and 1990.  May I pause to welcome Mama Sisulu former president of the United Democratic Front.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much and of course as a Commission we would like to welcome her very warmly as well, there is no name in front of you but you don't need that we are very
pleased to see you.