Human Rights Violation Hearings — Soweto — 1996-07-25

YASMINE SOOKA: Sorry, Mr Dyasop, in your statement you basically deal with your treatment at Quattro. I think that perhaps you should tell us about what actually led to your confinement at Quattro, please.

UNKNOWN: Okay. Okay, I will try to be brief and I don't
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know whether you will understand. 
 So I can say, what later transpired is that we got disillusioned of the whole Eastern front.  We said we have been told that we are going to be here for some three months and now we are dying.  That is around, after December, when some of us got, who were in an ambush, we were ambushed and there were six people who died there.  So we said no, we are dying here, why can't we go and die at home, rather than dying here in Angola.  Because that was the time when even Sebe and Umtanzani was killing people and so we felt rather use - we were fighting a useless, we were protecting, defending a country whose people were not supporting us.
 Now of course, one thing led to the next.  When we found out that our organisation for a long time has not been holding a conference, a national conference, where leaders can be elected democratically, it was something that was lax in 1969, the Morogo Conference.
 So we said let us, we were so concerned about our organisation and about the whole liberation, and I am not talking about me alone, I am talking about almost 99% of the people who were in Angola at the time.
 Now I am coming to how I got, myself got into Quattro.
 Now we demanded that we be withdrawn from this Eastern front, back to Luanda, where we can settle everything.  When we got to Luanda, our administrators in the Luanda camp, that is in Vienna, demanded that we should disarm.  We said no, we cannot disarm because we know that the security of the ANC and us are not on good books.

YASMINE SOOKA: Sorry ...

UNKNOWN: Of course this was - sorry ...

YASMINE SOOKA: Could I just ask who "us" is, is your whole team
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of 15?

UNKNOWN: 15, I am talking about the whole group at the Eastern front, the whole group of people, we were around 500 to 600.
 Now I don't know whether you will understand this, because I am making such a rush-off ...
 All right, but I will try.

YASMINE SOOKA: Relax, please, take your time.  Try and focus on what you want to tell the Commission.

UNKNOWN: Because I want to take you step by step so that you can understand how I got to Quattro. But okay, I am saying now, we were in this Vienna camp and we were ordered to disarm, and we disagreed. We said no, we won't kill anybody, this is for our security and the security of the ANC had said, had labelled us as mutineers.  We knew that being labelled as mutineers, is tantamount to being - the next thing we will be sentenced to death.  That is something which we knew.  Something we knew, we had been told of.
 Now we kept our weapons to us, with us.  Until of course many things happened, whilst we were there.  For instance, the administration said we should elect 10 people who will represent our grievances and all like.  We elected those 10 people and they forwarded our grievances.  But then we never dropped our guard, we were always careful.
 What happened is that on the 12th of February 1984, there was a pre-dawn raid on our camp by the presidential guard.  Now when we got to this Vienna camp, because we were so many, some of us said occupy positions around this Vienna camp.  We had some positions, we had our bivouac there. Now I was asleep in my bivouac on that dawn, when I heard a combat bell "gang, gang, gang, gang", which means in 
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military language that we are being attacked.  I woke up and I could hear some fire.  All I did was to take my bazooka and my shells and my AK and I had around 500 to 600 rounds of ammunition and I ran - I didn't know what was happening, it was still dark, I was just running towards the trench, the nearest trench. I found that I was amongst the people who were related to wake-up.  So I thought it best that I should run to the nearest trench.  When I got to this trench there were another four people there.  Four comrades.  I thought the enemy would come from this side, so I was - we were just across the parapet, but then we find that the enemy was not coming from outside, it was coming from within. Although we had to aim now, we had to aim our guns and face whoever this enemy was.  We didn't know who the enemy was at the time.
 Then I could see that there were some armoured vehicles coming in and dropping soldiers, soldiers who - no, when they came, this was our Vienna camp and these soldiers were forming a skirmish around our Vienna camp.  Little did they imagine that they were encircled by us.  Because we were outside their own settlement.  So they were themselves encircled.
 So from my trench there was this APC, which was around 20 to 25 metres from our trench.  It was a trench to us.  Now at the time it was still dark, they didn't know, they didn't see.  They were only facing, they had their backs to us.  If we would have liked, we could have killed them, but we didn't want to, because we didn't know what was happening.  Until the sun rose from the east and they were getting tired, they didn't know what was happening.  Similarly they had gone inside the camp and found nobody, 
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only a few people who were there.  
 Now they were surprised, where are these hundreds, and now they were getting impatient.  Now the driver of this APC climbed onto the top of the APC. He opened this flip-top and climbed on top, still with his back to us, still facing the camp.  But now when the sun rose, he got less interested in his target and he got interested in the beauty of the nature.  That's when he came slowly, just looking how beautiful the nature was and I knew that we were going to be in problems, once they spotted us.  And he did spot us. And when he spotted us, he jumped inside the APC, opened the side door and called the commander who was down the skirmish and said hey, here are these people. 
 When the commander saw us, he came rushing and he said hey, come out of the trench. He was speaking in Portuguese, come out of that trench or I will kill you now.  We said but why, tell us why, what do you want here.   This commander was so impatient, he didn't even realise that we had our gains trained on them. He took out his grenade and he was about to throw it into the trench, and I imagined what would follow if that grenade landed in the trench.  What would follow would be our inevitable end.
 So what I did, with my bazooka, I pulled the trigger, aimed at the APC and I shot that APC.  When I shot that APC the sound that was emanated by the bazooka was the sound that disturbed this commander.  So he couldn't throw it at his own wheel. He was only letting go of it. It exploded some three or five metres from my trench.
 What happened is that my comrades assisted with fire power, their power, their fire power, but we were not aiming at these people, they were only aiming above their heads.  
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We were only scaring them away.  They ran helter-skelter towards the camp, towards the Vienna camp.  By the time this driver of the APC was trying to turn the APC towards our trench.  I had to realise that APC, and with the rest of my shells I shot that APC. I am made to understand the driver died. But I will be saving these other lives with my life too.  Successfully I saved those lives. They are alive now, happily with their families. I didn't know that that was going to be my scene.  Having saved those people, I didn't know, hardly you can imagine that it was going to change my whole life till today.

YASMINE SOOKA: What happened after that?