Human Rights Violation Hearings — Tzaneen — 1997-04-10

DR RANDERA: Mr Mabunda, good morning.

OWEN MABUNDA: Morning, Sir.

DR RANDERA: Welcome,  can you please introduce the lady who is with you?

OWEN MABUNDA: That's my mother.

DR RANDERA: I welcome her too Mr Mabunda, before you tell us our story, could you please stand to take the oath.  If you will just repeat after me, I swear that the story I'm about to tell is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God.

OWEN MABUNDA: (sworn states)

MS SEROKE: Mr Mabunda, you've come to tell us about what happened to your brother, Ken Mabunda, on the twenty eighth of March 1986 in Lulekane.  Could you tell us that story very briefly?

OWEN MABUNDA: What happened on the twenty eighth of March in 1986 at Lulekane.  It was on a Good Friday.  Before that date there was a problem within the Lulekane Township.  There were these soldiers who were coming from outside country.  They were staying in another secret camp just next to our township.  Those people, before they came to our township.  It was very quiet but after their arrival peace was no longer there.  These people used to drink a lot and when they are drunk, they were drunk they used to go around the streets and started harassing people.  If they find you during the evening, they used to assault you, to beat people up without knowing the reason.  They used to assault us very badly.  The community of Lulekane, more especially the youth, we gathered together and tried to discuss this problem.  To assist each other in order to control the area, because it was no longer safe.  We gathered and discussed about these matters, we assisted each other with ideas, how we could remove these people from our township.  They should no longer set their foot in our township, because it was no longer safe if they were, they were around the township.  We agreed on those points.  There is nothing that we did to drive those people out of our township, because we tried to confront them at the beginning.  It was just a few of us who used to go there.  Sometimes other people, youth, used not to come.
 So, during that day that I've already mentioned, in the evening, we were sitting in a shabeen enjoying ourselves there and then immediately a bomb exploded in that particular place.  It was during the night.   No one expected that a bomb would explode.  Even myself, I was in that particular place.  I never heard a bomb exploding even a single day, except that day.  I used just to see it on films.  I was very scared.  People dispersed in that area.  I didn't run away myself.  I was inside and then I went out and I was on the  street.  After I heard that there were people who were inside, who were left there and my younger brother was also there and then I went back  to check what happened actually.  I found that the whole place was damaged.  Not even a single person  whom I was together with answered me.  Some of them were screaming, there was a fence, behind the fence.  Some of them called m, called me to assist them, to give them help and I didn't know what to do by that time.  I was shocked.  I looked around on the bodies.  I could not see my brother.  We left together with, with some two youths.  I went to report this matter at home.  When we arrived at home we found that my, my brother was not there too and we started looking around for him.  We went to the hospital that time, and to the police station.  They said we cannot enter in the mortuary to check, in the government mortuary, because we're still very young.  They refused us permission to enter until we got the help of Reverend Kwiniga, then we found him in the government mortuary.  You could not even recognize him.  That's what happened on that particular day.

MS SEROKE: You said that there were these soldiers who came and disturbed, you know, the life in Lulekane.  Where did they come from?

OWEN MABUNDA: Actually, these soldiers, some of them were coming from Angola, Zimbabwe, all these foreign countries.  They were not South African citizens.  During that time, the military bases which were there, it was 113 and 77 battalions and there was this battalion which they used to called it Skietoff or Five Rake.  It was just a secret base.

MS SEROKE: Why were they brought into Lulekane.  What was happening in Lulekane at the time to warrant their presence there?

OWEN MABUNDA: Actually, in Lulekane they came to township to drink there, if they were off duty.  Their camp was just next to Lulekane.  It was just outside Lulekane.  Ten kilometers from Lulekane.  They used to come to Lulekane to come and drink and do some other things.

MS SEROKE: Oh so they were not on duty, patrolling the place.  They just came to drink from their camp.

OWEN MABUNDA: When they come to Lulekane it's, they were not patrolling, they were not on uniform.  They were just come there privately to come and drink.

MS SEROKE: Then why did you dislike their presence, because you say that several times  you tried to confront them and how did you confront them?

OWEN MABUNDA: What we used to do, is that when we, we find them being a group, we used to tell them that we don't want them  in our place, we don't want them because they used to harass us.  When they used to find us in the streets, if they find you during the evening and even you are walking with a girlfriend or a wife, you will be assaulted, beaten up and they take your girlfriend or your wife and they will take your wife or girlfriend along with them.

MS SEROKE: .When they did this did you ever report to your police that these soldiers were harassing you and your girlfriends  or wives?

OWEN MABUNDA: I can say that maybe there were people who used to say that but we never reported the matters to the police, because some, maybe sometimes it could have ended but, but there was no action which was taken against them if ever the matter was reported by other people.  The way these people used to do, they were the people who were controlling the whole area.  There was no other person who was going to do anything with those people, because they were controlling the area itself.

MS SEROKE: Now you say a group of comrades met at a shabeen to drink or just to hold a meeting, because in your statement you say that they had planned this meeting and they used the shabeen as a venue.   Did you think perhaps they knew that you were going to meet there for a meeting?  Was it a meeting or just a social gathering?

OWEN MABUNDA: It was just a social gathering.  We were not discussing anything.  Just to build oness a, amongst ourselves so that maybe if one day if those people come and harass even one of our people in the community, we will assist each other.  It was a social gathering and at the same time discussing those issues and during that time in our township, there was no police station there.  The police station was only in town.  You have to go to town  to report the matter.  So to be assisted by the police, it was not very easy.

MS SEROKE: So, you would say that in the absence of a police station in Lulekane,  the comrades  saw that they could be the protectors of the, of that region, of Lulekane?

OWEN MABUNDA: Yes Sir. I assume, because they were the only people who were there who could give assistance to the community of Lulekane, because if a person tell you something and then you go to, to the police station, you don't know the people who were coming there, these soldiers.  You can even fail to point those people.  So it was very easy for us as the committee of Lulekane to protect each other.

MS SEROKE: Now do you think this bomb was planted there or was thrown into the shabeen?