Human Rights Violation Hearings — East London — 1996-04-17

GUSUMZO BIKOLE: I will accept that.

MR NTSEBEZA: Thank you.  There is just one missing link, and I don't know whether we shouldn't say it through you, Norwi's link.  Do you know now what Norwi's story is? That is, what impression did it leave when she said the conversation could not be finished between them?

GUSUMZO BIKOLE: Well my immediate impression was that, look it
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was not a normal conversation.  Knowing Sizwe and knowing Norwi that it can never be abruptly stopped without any reason. So when Norwi said to me that they didn't finish their conversation, I was surprised, and I asked her as to what happened.

MR NTSEBEZA: In fact Norwi says in the story she has told Mrs Kondile, that the conversation stopped abruptly, but she could still hear the sound of traffic on the other side, even if the conversation stopped, as if somebody had just left the telephone hanging.

GUSUMZO BIKOLE: I read that in her statement but she never said that to me when I spoke to her that time.

MR NTSEBEZA: That is all.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much, are there any further questions?

MR SANDI: Mr Bikole, you have said it is not automatic that one will get amnesty, once he applies for amnesty.  Were you referring to the fact that there are those requirements with which the applicant has got to comply?

GUSUMZO BIKOLE: That is correct.

MR SANDI: Thank you.  Can I further ask, the confusion which is said to have happened about the disappearance of Sizwe, do you perhaps have any views as to how it could have happened, what could have been....... (end of side A tape 15)
(start side B)...have driven the car out of Lesotho on his own, because that was a known car, a car that was used by Comrade Chris Hani.  The agents of the South African Police knew more about the car and he could not have gone through the border post with the car, because we also enquired when we were looking for him, we checked several border gates as 
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to whether a car fitting that description had gone through.  It was negative.  We didn't expect it to be positive, because even if it had gone through, it would have been done with some collusion of some kind between those at the border post and the South African Police, given the might of the then apartheid state.

MR NTSEBEZA: Was the car ever recovered?

GUSUMZO BIKOLE: It never came back to Lesotho, I do not know,

MR NTSEBEZA: Except for the statement attributed to some of the newspapers and Dirk Coetzee.

GUSUMZO BIKOLE: Except for those statements...(intervention)

MR NTSEBEZA: ..that it was on the Swaziland border or something.

GUSUMZO BIKOLE: Yes.  But the car never came back to Lesotho.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very very much for your testimony. We hope that in the telling of your story and the vindication that you have received, admittedly so gruesomely, that there will have been some contribution to the process of healing.  I thank you very much for coming before the Commission.  We value enormously your contribution.  I  suggest that we take a break and come back at a quarter to five.
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