Special Hearings — Political Party Recalls — UNKNOWN

UNKNOWN: I don't know whether General Malan felt double-crossed or whatever. As I was saying one of the problems, I can't quite remember the details around it was, there was no movement on the part of the government with regard to the licensing of these firearms and that presumably would have felt like double-crossing on our side. The thing did not work out in the way that it was thought it would work out certainly.
Now, yes when you look at the matter later, indeed you would say quite correctly what you've just said, but if you looked at the matter at that particular period, you wouldn't necessarily come to this conclusion because here are these ANC cadres, these are good ANC comrades. Let me give you an instance. I get a message from good ANC comrades and they say to me, we are part of a chain of SDU's, our responsibility is to receive the weapons, distribute them to particular persons, keep a record of where the weapons are and with whom, that's all we do. So I say okay, don't tell me where they get the weapons from, I have some guesses but they don't tell me, I say okay. They say the reason we've come to talk to you is because we have discovered that one of these SDU's wants to blow up a hostel on the East Rand with explosives, mainly Zulu-speaking, and they say, you can't allow this thing to happen. So I say I'm not in contact with the SDU's, they say, please you've got to intervene, this thing is wrong and irresponsible. We did intervene and that thing didn't happen.
Now I'm saying that's at the time, it reinforces my confidence in these good ANC cadres. They received the weapons responsibly and when one or some among them are going to do an irresponsible thing they seek a way of intervening to stop that. So I'm confident, I say no the matter is being handled properly because we've got these good cadres. Indeed it may very well be that six months later things begin to go wrong and we say perhaps we should have had a better system of control. But I'm saying that at that particular point, I don't think there would have been many among us who would have been wise enough to say the confidence and trust and system of contact and control will not be sufficient tomorrow. I think there would have been very few wise enough among us to have come to that conclusion at that stage.

CHAIRPERSON: Dr Mgojo?

UNKNOWN: Thank you Sir. This is a contextual problem. I want to take it on the context under which it falls. Dr Boraine has rightly asked a very genuine question about the young people, some of them behaving in the way which is not acceptable because they have nothing to do. Let's not forget that some of these young people were what we call, community comrades without really being entitled ANC cadres.
The question which is a problem, which raises a problem especially in the townships, is that some of these young people, they said because we don't have any jobs, let us become criminals, let us criminalise ourselves so that we can go to jails and the reason being that they say that this ANC government is the government for the criminals. Criminals are having more advantages than an ordinary law- abiding young person in the township. They say that they have got all the facilities which we don't have, we have fought for this liberation through mass action but now we are left with nothing. The criminals in these jails are having everything, privileges, education and now they are speaking about free health services, and they say that the best thing for us to do is to become criminals.
How do we deal with such a situation? Especially that it has been said that they don't have any jobs and of course people with no jobs, they become criminals, because they are not occupied fully. How can you assist us in that problem, you people especially with the youth in the township?

UNKNOWN: I want to agree with Dr Mgojo that the question that the Vice Chairperson raised was an important and a correct question. It's one of the principle challenges that the country faces in terms of what we have to do to effect, to achieve this transformation in the society. I don't know Chairperson if it's allowed that I put on my government cap for now to respond for now to respond.

CHAIRPERSON: I will rule you out of order at the end.