Human Rights Violation Hearings — Welkom — 1996-10-10

PROF MAGWAZA: Where you a Comrade?  I thought you said you were not.

WITNESS:   At that time I was a Comrade.

PROF MAGWAZA: You say shortly afterwards there was another attack on your shop.  When you went to investigate shots were fired at you.  Do you have an idea who fired the shots at you?

WITNESS:   I don't have enough information who were shooting at me.  I went there because I have an assistance with an intercom which I use between home and house, which tells me if there is any problem in the shop, but when I arrived there I found the two people waiting for me, and this person was shooting three times - I shot three times, though I missed.  I was really make a challenge.  then he was shooing, then he ran away.  I hope that is because of the help of God that all these five bullets didn't come to me.

PROF MAGWAZA: You have no suspicions of who these people were?

WITNESS:   I believe this has been done by the police, because from there I went home, then I phoned the police.  then when arrived they collected all the cartridges and then they left.  They left me alone.

PROF MAGWAZA: After that you talk about another incident where you and George Daniels went to help with a case.  What case was it, and who was this George Daniels?

WITNESS:  George Daniels is a Comrade whom we were working together with. And what case was it?  You said you helped him with a case.  What were you doing together?   ---   There was a time when the community had problems, and then we would go to those people to hear their problems, and then we would go to the police.  But in this instance Daniels came to me and said there is something happening down there, I must go and help him there.  When we arrived there we stopped our car.  Then we met Vusi.  Vusi is one of the policemen.

PROF MAGWAZA: Can you just carry on.

WITNESS:   When he found Vusi there he made some threats, where I got these two names, that's Mapaoli and Lihloanyane, were the people who were involved in the burning of my property.  When we alighted the car he asked us what do we want, because what is happening here has nothing to do with us.  Then we said, "We have not come to you," because I was not aware at that time that the person we have come to is the very same policeman I was talking about.  He had two guns.  The other one was his own property, the other one was the Government.  Then he made threats.  Then we said to him, "If you want to shoot you'd better shoot now."  He was helped by Mataoli by saying, "By that time when we were burning your house I went outside and then I made some shots."  Then we waited to hear what was happening.  When we entered into that house they gave us the evidence of that day, that as from in the morning this man was outside.  Their daughter, who is Vusi's wife, wants to kill him, and these people locked themselves in the house the whole day.  All the windows were broken.  Then we talked to them that, "When we leave here we'll go to the charge office to report this matter, because it's now

PROF MAGWAZA: /"above

PROF MAGWAZA: above our control."

PROF MAGWAZA: (Inaudible) ... a few things.  You said there were two people who were involved in destroying your house.  Who were those?  Can you give me the names again?  The two people.  You went to this police and you learned for the first time that some people had been involved in destroying your house.  Who are the two, Mataoli and who?  You gave two names.

WITNESS:   The name is Mapaoli and Lihloanyane.

PROF MAGWAZA: And was Vusi also involved, the police?

WITNESS:   According to his statement he has a part to play in that incident.

PROF MAGWAZA: You also talked about the fact that the same day a policeman killed Maplanka and Tsotsi's son.  Who is this policeman?

WITNESS:   Well, to connect what I was saying about Vusi, when we left there we went to the charge office, then we reported what we saw.  The answer we got is that we are interfering with the work of the police and this is not our work, and the person who was in charge on that day, we explained to him that he will take all the responsibility of what would happen in that house.  We were chased away, and therefore we were not able to go back.  Then when Vusi left it happened that he went to one of the taverns around the township.  That is where he killed these two people.  If people were able to listen to us and took steps to go to Vusi to collect the two guns, or maybe locked him up, these people could have been alive even today.

PROF MAGWAZA: Then you go on to talk about the Three Million Gang, that you were visited by them.  Why did they visit you and why did you have this long argument with them?

WITNESS:   When these people of the Three Million came in my house it was in the evening, and we were sleeping when we heard some noise outside.  They were knocking.  They said they want to see me.  The first person who opened the window was a woman.  Then he met her eyes with Dewitty.  Then my wife said to Dewitty, "Have you come to kill my husband as you kill other people?  Have you forget that at the hospital we were the people who were helping you when you were ill.  When you were stabbed with knives we were helping you, and your life was in our hands.  If you are coming to kill my husband so kill me also and see as to whether how it continue and who is going to help you in hospital."  Then I opened the door after I made a short prayer.  Then I said to myself, "If I am supposed to be killed in the dark better I should rather open the door and be killed facing my enemy."  When I opened the door then the small boys were in front, and therefore they were not able to kill me because they didn't get an instruction from Dewitty to kill me.  Then thereafter they went away.  We didn't sleep that day.  In the morning when I woke up to go to the bakery to fetch some bread my car's tyres were all blasted.  During the day there was a meeting for taxi owners, because these people were obstructing people to go to work, demanding money from the taxi owners.  We went to one of the Comrades to ask him that as they have blasted my tyres what was the reason?  What he said is that that day he was not on - he didn't ... (inaudible) ... the car, but he took another direction, so he didn't know what happened, therefore he is not sure what happened.

PROF MAGWAZA: (Inaudible) ... leave Senegal, or you had to leave the area where you were.  You moved to Johannesburg, then Senegal, because there was also tension among the Comrades.  What tension was it?

WITNESS:   That tension that was there at that time, it was the power struggle, because some of the people thought that they would get other positions which are senior from other people, without being aware that what matters is the community.

PROF MAGWAZA: Ja, quite a very heart-rending story about the destruction of your property.  I am sure it's the property you valued and you had worked very hard for it.  But that was not all for you.  You also lost a brother who had gone to Tanzania and Moscow and New York, and then he died in October 1995.  How did your brother die?

WITNESS:   Up to this time I am not sure what killed my brother, but the information we had with our contact in New York is that he was sick, and then he was made an operation, and we didn't know what kind of an operation was that.

PROF MAGWAZA: (Inaudible) ... political organisation?

WITNESS:   Yes, he was a member of a political party who left with the exiles in the early 1960s.  We didn't know at that time which political organisation it was, but what he used to say was say his contact is a man with a pipe.

PROF MAGWAZA: He wasn't an ANC member or PAC member?

WITNESS:   We don't have enough evidence as to whether he was a member of ANC or PAC.

PROF MAGWAZA: (Inaudible) ... brother had died.

WITNESS:   We received a phone from New York, coming from Tsepo.

PROF MAGWAZA: Who is Tsepo?