Human Rights Violation Hearings — Empangeni — 1996-11-05

MR LYSTER: - she was called Mrs Nxumalo, and Mrs Nxumalo's son - she described to me the state of the body.  It had had acid poured over the head so there was no skin left on the head.  It was just a skull.  The body was not decomposed.  The mothers thought that the boys had been kept somewhere and then, because the bodies were not as decomposed as one would have thought after two, two and a half weeks, but they had deliberately poured acid over the bodies to mutilate them and prevent - possibly to prevent identification.  The suffering of these women did not end there.  The one family was Inkatha supporting and the other family was ANC supporting and the police deliberately stirred up animosity between these two women at the time of the funerals.  They went out of their way to spoil the funerals and one policeman said to Mr Nxumalo, "We know that your son's funeral is just a pretext for an ANC meeting."  You just wonder how people can bring themselves to do this sort of thing to some people who have lost their children like that.  The policeman that spoke to Mrs Nxumalo, whose name she gave me, appears to be the same person who is now working with the team of the investigative task unit in Durban and one wonders how he got into that unit.  Now, the killing of these two boys was widely believed to be one of the reasons that Dr Henry Luthuli, a prominent medical practitioner in the township, was shot dead in early August 1990.  Mrs Luthuli is going to give evidence to the Commission tomorrow and I'm sure she will tell you the terrible pain and suffering she went through, especially even after the death of her husband when people put out rumours that she had killed her  husband which is another dirty trick tactic that one sees used time after time.  It happened, I remember, in Durban when Mrs Mxenge was killed.  People tried to say, "Well, you know, it was just a jealous husband, or wife, or whatever."  Now, Mrs Luthuli suffered terribly and one of the reasons that people in the township thought that her husband might have been killed was that he had possibly done port mortems on these two boys and discovered that they had been shot by the KwaZulu Police hit squads.  As it happens, it has transpired that Dr Luthuli did indeed do a second post mortem on the Nxumalo boy and the case is currently before an inquest court.  But what has emerged so far - the matter's been postponed now until December - what has emerged so far in the killing of Dr Luthuli is that it is very possibly linked to a Vlakplaas operative working in collusion with the Empangeni security police and the KwaZulu Police but the matter is, of course, still under - the proceedings are carrying on but that is the evidence that has been led so far linking it possibly to Vlakplaas.  So we see right from 1990 very clear hit squad activities surfacing in Esikhawini Township.  Now, these activities escalated dramatically in '91/92, '92 in particular, and killings were the order of the day.  And at the height of this in August 1992, which was a black month - at least 31 people were killed in instances of violence in that month alone, most of them just shot dead by people often wearing balaclavas - and at the height of this Ainsley and I were contacting the police and begging them to put SAP patrols in the Esikhawini area because it was a KwaZulu Police  jurisdiction area and everybody knew that the KwaZulu Police were implicated in this violence and yet the police refused to act.  At one stage a general in Pretoria had agreed to send in the SAP and we were told that the general had been reprimanded by Minister Heunis Kriel who said that he had no right to interfere.  The question of the KwaZulu Police was a very delicate matter.  Now, I hold the whole government culpable because people were dying, they were being told about it.  Ainsley and I launched public appeals to government officials, to the Goldstone Commission, to diplomats, and Amnesty International launched appeals.  I wrote to President de Klerk himself in connection with the Luthuli case in 1993.  I asked De Klerk to intervene.  I did this through a colleague of his.  De Klerk, in spite of my having put in my letter the connection with the KwaZulu Police hit squads, passed the matter on to the Minister Kriel who passed it on to the KwaZulu Police to deal with.  So they were given the chance to intervene and they did not take it.  To me that implies culpability in the deaths of innocent people.  Also in that August attack, three of the attackers were injured and admitted to hospital under false names and addresses and Ainsley and I observed in that period a massive degree of cover-up and collusion between members of the South African Police, including Colonel Nel from Eshowe.  There were a number of other matters needing attention in Esikhawini.  Reports were received in 1992, for example, that a notorious KwaZulu Police killer, Simpiwe Mvuyani was operating in the area.  Mvuyani was known to be linked to a mandrax cartel and I think it's time that  /the link