Amnesty Hearings — Bloemfontein — 1998-01-22

UNKNOWN: The question as to whether he's a victim or not, he still has a right to be declared a victim by giving a statement to the Human Rights Violations Committee, it will be given to them, they will declare him as victim and they will send it through to the Rehabilitation Committee.
	If amnesty is not given according to what his deeds were because application was not made for such amnesty, then he doesn't lose any rights, he still has the right to approach the police and summons them for compensation.   I don't want to prejudice this person but should an application now come in from somebody who has in fact been assaulted by Ngo in Kroonstad and Ngo has never applied for amnesty for that incident, then it is not relevant to Ngo's application.  
	And surely that evidence will not be heard hear because amnesty has not been asked for that incident but in your case, should it have relevance to application of Ngo's then of course he has a right to do it but then you must convince us in which category, where in Ngo's or Motsamai's applications, under which heading, under which of the six deeds.

ADV MEMANI: Mr Chairman, I have difficulty that what has to be strained this much in order to say that Mr Motsamai's application includes an application for Molefe because this pre-hearing conference was called at the behest of the Committee and a member of the Committee chaired this pre-hearing Committee ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: It wasn't to increase the scope of applications it was to try to cut down.

ADV MEMANI: Mr Chairman, because there were difficulties about exactly what the applications were about, it was then decided that there must be this predicatory hearing conference to determine these issues.  It was then decided that what would be agreed at the pre-hearing conference would constitute the application.  Now, these documents were submitted to the Committee as part of Motsamai's application.

UNKNOWN: And you turned up without a document there, was that recorded too?

ADV MEMANI: I beg your pardon Mr Chair?

UNKNOWN: And you turned up without a document at the pretrial hearing?

ADV MEMANI: I did not have documents at the hearing these were the documents that were prepared at the hearing.  But this document was prepared by my secretary, the list of victims.

CHAIRPERSON: Will you look at the pretrial conference paragraph 5.   It is agreed that the applicant filed an amnesty application during 1996 case no.4031.  This application has been mislaid by the Amnesty Committee, therefore the applicant was invited to complete a duplicate which is now before the Committee signed the 5th June 1997 together with an annexure A comprising of 3 pages.  It is agreed by consent that the form 1 application together with annexure A be regarded as the application.  I see no reference to there to a list of victims.

ADV MEMANI: You can't sit on many chairs.  If you say that this list doesn't form part of the application because it's not annexed the original papers that were filed then everybody from Oupa Makubalo did not have Lucas Stander to sit here.  That is the difficulty you are greeting. These people have been accepted all along because it was understood that they were included in this list of victims and that this list of victims formed part of the application by Motsamai.

CHAIRPERSON: It is because they are understood to fall under the category of persons who were assaulted at five Fountain Street, the 5th floor at Fountain Street.

ADV MEMANI: That is correct.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes, he doesn't have to list all the names, he didn't list all the names, that is not necessary.  We are simply saying this incident must be one of those.

ADV MEMANI: That is what Mr Stander has been saying all along, that he's taking you to Fountains.

CHAIRPERSON: He hasn't told us anything about Fountains he was leading evidence about other things yesterday.  We are still not told what incident at Fountain or how he was assaulted there.

ADV MEMANI: Well Mr Chairman in the first place you first accept that there is an application by Motsamai regarding Molefe.  Then your problem with Mr Stander is why is he leading other evidence that is not related to that.  That should be the problem that you should be asking him to deal with not that I should be saying to you that there is an application and you're saying there is no application when this was done ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: We have heard enough from you Mr Memani at the moment.
	Will you please Mr Stander tell us what incident you are talking about.

MR STANDER: Mr Chairman, unfortunately I do not have a copy of the document in front of me.  If one of my colleagues could just please get the document to me, one of the ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: What document?  I'm talking about - what do you want to call this man to give evidence about?

MR STANDER: I want him to come and give evidence about assault on the 5th floor of Fountain Street in Bloemfontein on strength of the fact that clause, I'm looking over my left shoulder here as far as I can, I believe it's on page 148.

CHAIRPERSON: Who by?

MR STANDER: I'm referring you to bundle A.

CHAIRPERSON: Who was the assault by?  Who committed the assault, Mr Stander?

ADV MEMANI: It was Mr Motsamai who was present Mr Chairman, and there were also other members of the security force present.

CHAIRPERSON: ...[inaudible] Motsamai participated in an assault on him?

MR STANDER: That is true.

CHAIRPERSON: Therefore it falls into the category, that incident, but we don't need a long prior history of other assaults which are not relevant to the present applications ...[no sound] appear to be concerned.

MR VISSER: Mr Chairman, you've got the notes which I mentioned to you yesterday, I'm not going to repeat them.  The point as I understood my - as I intended by objection to be based upon, was that there was an incident in Fountains Street in 1993 as we understood the evidence and we simply said that's not part of the papers before you.  Now it's been related to 13 and I just want to make this one point Mr Chairman, there was nowhere in the pretrial, on the record or anywhere else in the world where we ever agreed that Clause 13 of Motsamai's application referred to anything else but the group of 19 people who were arrested in the Ladybrand area.
	There was never any agreement by us that that should mean so.  If you're telling us that on a proper interpretation, you're going to interpret it that way, we will deal with in argument.  But because we say can't possibly mean that otherwise Clause 13 would be tantamount to a general application for all assaults 
...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: What you're saying is we assaulted people there regularly, I can't remember all the names and that's the evidence he's given, isn't it, that time and again assaults took place there and he wants amnesty.  	I know that your version is we've never assaulted anybody here and we never heard a scream and we never knew what was going on and that, that is as I read paragraph 13.  It is that he was involved in these other assaults and tortures.
[End of tape 2A, - no follow on sound].
... "of detained and/or arrested political activities"
It's two different categories he's talking about.

MR VISSER: Mr Chairman, if the interpretation is that throughout the history when Motsamai was a member of the security branch, for every person that he assaulted, he's asking for amnesty in paragraph 13, we will address you during argument.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes, right.

MR VISSER: That's all I'm saying.

CHAIRPERSON: Right.

MR STANDER: Thank you Mr Chairman, I would like to call Mr Molefe back to the witness stand.
RECALL OF MR MOLEFE

SERAME MOLEFE: (s.u.o.)