Amnesty Hearings — East London — 1997-03-17

MR BRINK: And the purpose of burning down her house presumably was to drive her from Klipplaat to Uitenhage, or certainly drive her out of Klipplaat.

NSITSIKELO DON JOHNSON: Will you please repeat your question?

MR BRINK: The purpose of having her house burnt down was to drive her out of Klipplaat, is that correct?

HASSAN MALL: Where does that appear?

MR BRINK: The burning of the house appears in paragraph 10, page 4 of the original application.  Have you found it Mr Chairman?
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HASSAN MALL: No.

MR BRINK: I am referring to the original application.  That is the manuscript one, page 4 of that application, paragraph 10(B), which starts "Typically all our people..."

HASSAN MALL: Yes.   ..."It was all in vain.  It was after her house was burned down that she fled to Uitenhage."

MR BRINK: That's correct. Yes.

HASSAN MALL: And then her Councillors resigned.

MR BRINK: Yes.	So the purpose of burning down her house was
to make sure that she left Klipplaat and left you people in peace?

NSITSIKELO DON JOHNSON: The people wanted her personally, but she was
not there.  Then her house was burnt.   It was not an 
original intention to burn her house down.  The people wanted her personally.

MR BRINK: Did they not want to drive her out of Klipplaat?

NSITSIKELO DON JOHNSON: Yes, the major plan was to remove her from Klipplaat.

MR BRINK: Yes, right.  Now ...(intervention)

JUDGE WILSON: When you say that they wanted her personally,  do you mean they wanted to kill her?

NSITSIKELO DON JOHNSON: I think so.   I was not part of the planning for burning the house down, but I heard from other comrades that is what they wanted.

MR BRINK: Yes, in any event you went on to say in your original application
"After the house was burnt and after she fled to Uitenhage her Councillors resigned."
Is that correct?

NSITSIKELO DON JOHNSON: Yes Sir.

MR BRINK: And then you went on
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"We left them ..."
presumably you left them alone,
".... because you also integrated them into the community".
in other words they came back to join you people.  They were no longer puppets as I understand it.

NSITSIKELO DON JOHNSON: Yes, after they resigned we accepted them as members of the community, because they assured us that they would work for the community.

MR BRINK: At that stage, at the time Mrs Hanabe was shot, do I understand then that there were no Councillors in Klipplaat?

NSITSIKELO DON JOHNSON: She was the only one at the time, because she had stipulated that she would not resign.

MR BRINK: But at that stage she had already gone to Uitenhage.  Is that not so?

NSITSIKELO DON JOHNSON: Yes Sir.

MR BRINK: And there was no Council left in Klipplaat?

NSITSIKELO DON JOHNSON: There was no Council but she was still working.   Even though she stayed in Uitenhage she would go to Klipplaat to work.

MR BRINK: Well she was a schoolteacher there, was she?

NSITSIKELO DON JOHNSON: Yes Sir.

MR BRINK: Because you went on in your application to say,
"While exiled in Uitenhage she still effectively had control of Klipplaat".
Now that I don't understand.  There is no Council, if she was a Mayoress she was Mayoress in name only because there was no Council.

NSITSIKELO DON JOHNSON: After the Councillors' houses were burnt down they resigned.   She then went to Uitenhage.   She had a house in Uitenhage, but she would regularly go to her office to work at Klipplaat.   I do not know exactly how she operated, because she EAST LONDON HEARING	AMNESTY/E CAPE
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was still the Mayoress.

MR BRINK: She was a Mayoress over no Council at all.  The Council did not exist, so she had no one to control, surely?
Do you understand me Mr Johnson, do you understand what I am trying to clear up with you?  Here is a woman who is driven out, alright she has got an office in Klipplaat, she is driven out of Klipplaat to go to Uitenhage.  Her Councillors resigned.  There 
is no Council left.  And although she had not resigned she did not have a Council to govern.

NSITSIKELO DON JOHNSON: As a person who did not know how things worked exactly what I know is that the Councillors' houses were burnt down.   They then were integrated back into the community.  Mrs Hanabe, however, stipulated that as a Mayoress she would not step down.  This is why we went after her.

JUDGE WILSON: But did she do anything as Mayoress after you had burnt her house?

NSITSIKELO DON JOHNSON: She stopped the water supply, the sanitation.   All this she did whilst she still had a Council.

JUDGE WILSON: I am talking about after she had left and gone to Uitenhage, did she do anything at all?

NSITSIKELO DON JOHNSON: After she left she organised AmaAfrica to go and kill particular members of the organisation.

JUDGE WILSON: But she did nothing as Mayoress.   You decided to kill her just because she would not resign.  Is that it?

NSITSIKELO DON JOHNSON: Yes.    It is because she would not resign and also the terrible deeds that were perpetrated on the community.

MR BRINK: You see, the difficulty I have, Mr Johnson, is that after Mrs Hanabe left Klipplaat, because her house had been burnt down, the fact that there was no longer a Council, the fact that she could no longer exercise Mayoral authority in Klipplaat, surely you ends had been achieved?   This woman had been driven EAST LONDON HEARING	AMNESTY/E CAPE
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out of your community.   She no longer had a house there.  Why go to Uitenhage to kill her?

NSITSIKELO DON JOHNSON: As I clarified, the reason we went to Klipplaat for is because the community was against Mrs Hanabe, because of her status as a Mayoress and the things that she did.   She organised AmaAfrica to kill some of our comrades.  It was also at the forefront of our minds that she did not resign as a Mayoress.
NO FURTHER QUESTIONS BY MR BRINK

SISI KHAMPEPE: Mr Johnson, when did she organise AmaAfrica to kill members of the ANC?

NSITSIKELO DON JOHNSON: If I remember correctly she organised AmaAfrica in 1990.

SISI KHAMPEPE: But you did not take any decision to kill her in 1990, the decision to kill her was taken in February of 1991. Wasn't the real reason why you decided to eliminate her the fact that she could not and would not succumb to your call for her to resign as the mayoress of the then local Council?

NSITSIKELO DON JOHNSON: Please repeat your question.

SISI KHAMPEPE: You are saying that Mrs Hanabe organised AmaAfrica, that is the vigilante group in 1990 to kill members of the ANC.   Now you decided to eliminate her only in February of 1991.   Wasn't the real reason why you decided to eliminate her the fact that she would not succumb to your call for her to resign as the mayoress?

NSITSIKELO DON JOHNSON: The reason why we concluded that she should be eliminated in 1991 even though she had organised AmaAfrica in 1990, it was at the end of the year, that she organised AmaAfrica.   They arrived the end of the year 1990, left and came back in January 1991, they beat one comrade and his bladder burst, M Mpati was his name.  They came back in January 1991 and repeated the same acts.  Therefore these deeds were from 1990 to EAST LONDON HEARING	AMNESTY/E CAPE
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1991.  This is why we reached the conclusion that Mrs Hanabe 
should be eliminated.

SISI KHAMPEPE: Had she not organised for the vigilante group to attack members of the ANC, would you have still continued to take the decision to kill her?

NSITSIKELO DON JOHNSON: If she had not organised AmaAfrica and had resigned clearly like the other Councillors we would not have concluded that she should be eliminated.

HASSAN MALL: So as I have got your evidence, I have got it down as saying that the reason for killing her was that she was still Mayoress.  That was the reason that you killed her, is that correct?