Amnesty Hearings — Johannesburg — 1999-02-19

CHAIRPERSON: Isn't another factor that must be taken into account here, that if, because I think one must accept that there are two kinds of informers.  There is the student activist informer that you just want him to tell you when there are meetings and this and that and there is the informer who is going undercover.
	If you fit somebody out with a transmitter strapped to his body, so that you can keep in constant contact with him, it would indicate this is an undercover informer, and that you would have known where he was going, who he was seeking to make contact with.
	Mr Dube says he worried about who was listening on the transmitter, but the police would undoubtedly if he was an informer of that nature, have known who he was going to make contact with and once he was killed that night, surely the only assumption one could draw is that if he was an informer, the police would have immediately visited the houses and the people they expected him to make contact with, to look for firearms, to test their hands if they had fired, the usual investigation?  There was nothing done whatsoever.

MR RICHARD: And indeed it goes further, there were a number of hours between the initial meeting, sometime around sunset and the execution.  There is no evidence that the police were in contact with Mr Dhlomo at that time, at all.

CHAIRPERSON: The informer is told he must go inside, and he goes and sits quietly inside, waiting for the other two outside.   He makes no attempt to escape.  The same when he is walking down the road with Dube.  He walks along quite peacefully.  None of this rings true of a person who knows he is an informer.
	It doesn't effect the fact that Dube might believe he is, but merely to strengthen your argument that there is nothing whatsoever to suggest that the deceased was an informer, none of his own behaviour was what one would expect of an informer.

MR RICHARD: And that means we must now examine Mr Dube's belief and see whether any reasonable man, taking into account the times that he was operating in and his situation, could possibly come to a belief.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes.

MR RICHARD: To be short on that point, taking the inherent absurdity of the factors that he had relied on in coming to his beliefs, I submit that there must have been some other reasons of which Mr Dube has not seen fit to take this Committee into confidence on.

CHAIRPERSON: Nobody else has suggested other reasons either.

MR RICHARD: Exactly.  Whatever those reasons are, we are as much in the dark today as people were in the past.
	It is trite at this stage to go through the Act and recount again the requirements of full and complete disclosure of relevant facts.  I am not going to go through the numerous contradictions and inconsistencies between the evidences of the evidence given by the various applicants and the written submission, except that I have never seen a worse attempt at taking people into confidence as to what true and full relevance facts of an incident were.

ADV SANDI: Sorry Mr Richard, if I can just ask you one question, looking at the evidence as a whole, is it possible for anyone to say or even suspect that Dube or anyone of the applicants may have acted out of personal gain, having a personal motive or malice?  Can one make such a suggestion on the basis of the evidence that we have before the Committee?

MR RICHARD: I simply say we cannot know.  There is the question of the money which substantiates nothing.  It is not consistent and beyond that, again, we can only speculate.
	On the level of speculation and on that point, it is my argument that it is not for us to redevelop as a matter of probability what might have happened, what could have happened.  It is for the applicants to take the Committee into their confidence and reveal what their case is.
	It is not for them to argue after four days' evidence, what case they might have been able to present if they had known what the evidence was going to be.  That is in conflict with anything underlying the notion of full disclosure.
	I have been reminded that the Dhlomo family would like to record their position in regard to this hearing.  They do oppose the granting of amnesty to the four applicants.  They don't condone what the four applicants did or accept their apologies therefore.
	But their opposition should not be seen in any way as an attack on the ANC, the political organisation that they have supported for many years.  Their opposition is based on their clear belief that the applicants attempted to place their criminal actions within the context of a legitimate struggle and in so doing, to demean the hero of the struggle, in this case, their son.
	The Dhlomos' trust that the findings of this Committee will dismiss the unsubstantiated allegations made by the applications that their son was an informer for the system that he dedicated his young life to fight, and died for.  Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Mapoma, have you anything to say?

MR MAPOMA: I have nothing to say Chairperson, thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Do you wish to say anything further, or should we wait to get a letter from you?

MR KOOPEDI: I will still wish to make final written representations.

CHAIRPERSON: How long will they take you?

MR KOOPEDI: It depends on what terms this Honourable Committee puts me to.  If this Committee lets me, I am going to ask for the record and be able to do it.  It depends how long this Committee gives me.

CHAIRPERSON: A week.

MR RICHARD: Chairperson, I will make a suggestion that I hand this to my learned colleague and I will print out another corrected version, where I will take the typo's out and forward it to the Chairperson.

CHAIRPERSON: When will you do this?

MR RICHARD: This weekend.

CHAIRPERSON: I will be in Pretoria next week, at IDASA.

MR RICHARD: I will get the document to Pretoria at IDASA's office.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.  And you have a copy of this you can work on and we expect you to let us have your written, extended submissions by Friday.

MR KOOPEDI: I will do that.

CHAIRPERSON: I will be at IDASA for two weeks, the matter has been set down for two weeks, so you can let me have them there by Friday of next week.

MR KOOPEDI: I will do that Chairperson.

MR RICHARD: As the Committee pleases.

CHAIRPERSON: I would like to thank all the members of the public who have sat here so patiently throughout this long hearing, and I can appreciate what an emotional strain it must have been for the members of the family concerned and we extend our sympathy to them for their tragic loss.
	Thank you all the rest of you and thank you all those who have appeared.  Thank you.
	I have forgotten to say thank you to the people who do the real work here, and that is the Interpreters.
HEARING ADJOURNS