Amnesty Hearings — East London — 1998-04-02

ZUKILE AUGUSTINE MBAMBO: You see Sir, I don't feel well when I kill a person but those days it was a war in South Africa and I did not think after doing this how must I feel and such things or that what I did, that person his next of kin, how is she or he going to feel.  It was a war an I was a soldier, I did not think about those things.

MR LAX: You see, when I put to you the example of the bus order that you got, you said you didn't feel good about that order but you would have carried it out anyway, do you remember that?

ZUKILE AUGUSTINE MBAMBO: Can the question please be repeated?  I did not say such a thing.  I said, in connection with that bus - when you asked me how did I feel when it was said I must go and kill school kids in a bus and I answered: "No Sir, my - I" - when you asked me how I felt - in fact you asked how did it get into me: "when your commander instructed you to go and kill school kids? What was his intentions or the intentions of APLA"? and my answer was: "I do not know the motives of my commander, I was simply instructed to go and do that but my thoughts when I was thinking about what he may have thought when he instructed us to do that, I think he may have thought that when many school kids die the parents of those school kids are going to put pressure on the government of the day that: "As you can see, our kids are getting killed, please free those black people".  That's what I said Sir.

MR LAX: You see as a soldier, and if you're like any other normal soldier I will assume you didn't like what you had to do but you followed your orders, is that correct?

ZUKILE AUGUSTINE MBAMBO: As I've said Sir, to like or not to like, during that time of ware there was no choice of liking or not liking.  In fact you did not think as to what you did to this person or to his or her relative, how it's going to effect him or her because during that time of the war I was a soldier Sir.  You may ask me now how I feel about those things I can answer you, not as to how I felt then.

MR LAX: So you felt absolutely nothing, you felt numb?  You didn't feel good or bad, you didn't even think about what you were doing?  Is that a fair way of putting it?

ZUKILE AUGUSTINE MBAMBO: Sir, you are putting it fairly, that is a fair reflection, yes.

MS COLLETT: Was APLA persuing political objectives as far as you were concerned?

ZUKILE AUGUSTINE MBAMBO: Yes, that is so.

MS COLLETT: Did you think as an APLA soldier that you were persuing the same political objectives?

ZUKILE AUGUSTINE MBAMBO: That is so.

MS COLLETT: Now if you are granted amnesty for the missions in which you were involved, what are your intentions for the future?

ZUKILE AUGUSTINE MBAMBO: My future plans are to return to school so that I can get employment and work for my kids because I've got a lot of kids and build a their future, a corret, a bright future for them so that they cannot live a life that we too had experienced, a life of oppression and ill education or ignorance.

MS COLLETT: Talking from the point of view of now, do you think that violence was good or an adequate way to obtain the liberation of the country?

ZUKILE AUGUSTINE MBAMBO: Violence is not a proper manner to flee a country, that is why our people did not commit violence, instead they fought back.  For instance our people in South Africa never, for example, have Umkhonto weSizwe and APLA, the military wings and AZANLA, the military wing of AZAPO, it did not simply occur that way.
	At first there was Imbumba manjana, unity, and there we got the ANC and then the PAC and then we got Poko, that's when our people saw that we are trying to negotiate with these people, talking about our own thing, when they respond they kill us.  That's when our people decided to make plans to fight back, they created armies.  The first one was Poka, another one was they fought back.  
	I'm trying to say violence is not the correct manner and our people were forced to adopt violence as a method to free themselves, it was not their initial intention or to the armed struggle.

MS COLLETT: Thank you Mr Chairman.
NO FURTHER QUESTIONS BY MS COLLETT

CHAIRPERSON: Well, we'll take the adjourment now till 9 o'clock tomorrow morning.
COMMITTEE ADJOURNS