Human Rights Violation Hearings — Bisho — 1996-11-19

DR GILDENHUYS: Thank you Chair.  The National Peace Secretariat is a statutory body.  It was established under the National Peace Accord, and the purpose was to promote negotiations and negotiate a settlement in order to diffuse potentially violent situations, and also to prevent the escalation of the violence which was occurring in our country at that stage, and as Chairperson of the Peace Accord I tried wherever possible, to be present where EAST LONDON HEARING TRC/EASTERN CAPE
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violent situations develop and to try and diffuse the situation, and to arrive at some kind of settlement which would avoid bloodshed.
 I should add, at this stage, that there was also a march to Bisho by the ANC alliance during August 1992.  I played a role in achieving a settlement which avoided bloodshed during that march.  
 The ANC alliance decided to have another march which was planned for the 7th of September 1992 and it was expected that I should go to Bisho and try to do what I can to avoid such march resulting in bloodshed.
 I flew down to East London a few days, I can't remember exactly how many days, and I started discussions with the parties.  I knew Admiral Putte who was one of the Ciskeian ministers at the stage and he facilitated a number of meetings with Ciskei government officials and also ministers.  Admiral Putte and many of the people I spoke to was of the opinion that the attitude taken by Brigadier Gqozo, namely that the march can't enter the Ciskei at all, was too rigid and that some sort of accommodation should be found, while others took a more hardline attitude, namely that Ciskei is independent territory and no march would take place there without the necessary legal permission.
 But it was very clear to me during all these discussions that nobody would move without the say-so of Brigadier Gqozo.  These discussions were all informal, off the record as we used to operate at that stage and I don't think any notes of the discussions were kept.
 I also spoke to the organisers of the march.  Their attitude was that political march is a legitimate political expression, that they are entitled to a permit to have the 
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march, and that they are going to see that they are going to get the permit, if necessary apply to court to get it.
 I spoke to South African authorities, mainly the police, but also authorities in government.  They were very, very anxious that I should do all I can to achieve a settlement, but they were reluctant to get involved themselves because they still considered Ciskei as an independent state in which they, according to their view, had no rights.  But there were I know high level discussions between the South African government ministers and Brigadier Gqozo also to no avail.
 After a few days it became clear to me that we are heading for a big clash.  Neither the Ciskeian authorities nor the ANC alliance was prepared to budge and I thought I needed assistance.  I then telephoned Mr John Hall.  He was Chairperson of the Peace Committee which was the overall supervising body and asked him to come down, and also Reverend Stanley Magoba who was the deputy chairperson, and they undertook to come and to give whatever support they could.
 The plan by the Ciskeian authorities to keep the marchers from entering the Ciskei was to cordon off Maitland Road, I think it was, it's the road leading from King Williamstown into the Ciskei with razor wire.  They had done that during the first march also and we negotiated over the razor wire.  On Sunday I learnt that an application is being made to the Bisho Supreme Court.  I attended the application which was heard by Judge Pickard, and Judge Pickard issued a "mandamus" to the magistrate to whom an application was lodged for a permit to hold the march, that he should make a decision on the application previously, the Judge did 
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nothing about the application.  The magistrate I think was a Mr Tali.  That order was served on the magistrate to the best of my knowledge and I was told that late that night he made an order that the marchers could enter the Ciskei but their route would be restricted to entering through the main entrance from Maitland Road and then off into a nearby stadium.  And the time in which they were allowed to remain in the stadium was very, very limited.  I thought so limited that it would be impossible to adhere thereto to get 50 to 70 people into the stadium and then out again within the time limit, I think it was a couple of hours, was, in my view, totally impractical if not impossible.
 I discovered the next morning that the Ciskeian authorities then left open a passage from the main road into the stadium fenced off with razor wire so that it would be possible to come from the King Williamstown, off the main road, through this narrow passage with razor wire on both sides and then enter the stadium which they had permission to do.
 Mr John Hall and Reverend Stanley Magoba arrived early that Monday morning.  We first met with the various peace monitors.  The Peace Accord had monitors working for them, they had distinctive clothing and they were at watch at various positions along the march and also at the entry point into the Ciskei.  We had a meeting at a furniture shop in King Williamstown belonging to a Mr Walton where I briefed everybody on the current situation.  The peace monitors were then set up along the route and also on the razor wire fence at the turn-off into the stadium.
 After that Mr Hall, myself, Reverend Magoba I think was present and also Mr Dion Rudman who was then the Secretary 
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General of the Peace Secretariat went off into King Williamstown.  The people were already gathering at the stadium there, there was a very large number of them, and we there spoke to the leadership of the ANC alliance and asked them what are they going to do.  Are they going to abide by the permit conditions and restrict the march to the stadium, or are they going to force entry somewhere or other into the Ciskei itself?  I can't remember exactly whom I spoke to.  I'm sure Mr Alan Hendriks was one of them.  I think Mr Jehandra Naidoo also, quite probably Mr Steve Tshwete and also the late Mr Chris Hani.
 They told me that they are going to march up to the razor wire barrier and that they'll decide there what they will do.  I arranged with them that I will wait for them at the barrier on the Ciskei side so that if there are negotiations to be handled I could move from that barrier to the Ciskeian authorities, and I left them on the basis that we will talk when the march gets to the barrier.
 We then accompanied the march for some distance.  I may say it was a very peaceful march.  There was almost a kind of carnival atmosphere amongst the marchers.  When we went some distance with them we thought well we had better get up to the barrier and around it before all the roads were blocked off and we can't move through.  We then left the marchers and went up to the stadium, and went round the stadium on the northern side to get to the Ciskei side of the razor wire.  In the process we had passed the fence on the north-eastern side of the stadium, but I did not see the gap in it of which I was later informed.  Actually we were so busy talking in the car that I didn't look round me.  My mind was more on how are we going to solve this immense 
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problem.
 We got to the Ciskei side of the razor wire and there we waited for the marchers to reach us.  The first group of marchers arrived shortly after we arrived with Mr Ronnie Kasrils amongst them, and I should add that Mr Ronnie Kasrils was not one of the ANC leadership with whom I spoke down at King Williamstown and with whom I had an arrangement that we will see what they are going to do when they arrive at the razor wire.  
 He then made a statement to Mr Hall and myself to the effect that we must please impress upon the Ciskeian people, by that I mean the Ciskeian government officials and ministers that they were coming in peace and that they must not try to stop them.  My reply to him was that we had an arrangement to negotiate with the leadership of the marchers as soon as they arrived and that we will then start talking.  Then suddenly after this rather short discussion he went off in the direction of the stadium through the narrow passage left open and my first thought was one of great relief that he must have decided to accept the permit conditions and go  to the stadium instead of trying to force his way into the rest of Bisho.
 A short while after this, while the marchers were coming up in a steady stream and pouring into the stadium I heard gunshots from the north-east, that's on the other side of the stadium, and it spread around very, very quickly to the soldiers also employed on the southern side of the stadium where we were.  We, that's Mr Hall and myself and Mr Rudman flung ourselves to the ground and later we rolled into a nearby ditch.
 In the vicinity where we were I could see no reasons 
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for the soldiers opening fire on that section of the crowd at least, because they were totally peaceful, moving in a steady line into the stadium.  The shooting lasted for about a minute or two, it's impossible to estimate time, it sounds for ever while it lasts, and it then died down.  There was a short period of silence and then it started up again and lasted perhaps for another minute or two and then it stopped.  While the shooting took place I heard a number of explosions on the far side of the stadium, I don't know how many and I also don't know what caused them.  I am not an arms expert by any means.
 After the shooting abated we ran to a nearby casper, that casper was left there for our protection that we can find shelter in there should the need arise.  We sat in the casper for some time as the press was first into it and there was very little room left when we got there, but anyway we availed ourselves of the shelter and when we surmised that there would be no more shooting we got out and we then ran back to the razor wire.  It was easy to lift the wire with a gun or something and then to crawl underneath, Mr Hall and myself did that.  We rolled on our stomachs under the wire to the ANC alliance side, and we then went down the road to try and find the ANC leadership. Whilst we did that we passed several bodies of people who were clearly shot.  
 Further down the hill we met Mr Cyril Ramaphosa and many of the other ANC leaders, they had vaseline on their faces to protect against teargas and they were clearly dazed and in a total state of shock.  They couldn't understand why the shooting had taken place and my first thought was that we from the National Peace Secretariat should do all in our 
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power to make sure that people disperse peacefully, that we don't get an escalation of the shooting which could easily occur, the people were angry, and if they then decided to invade the Ciskei out of anger we could have had many more people killed.
 Mr Ramaphosa told me that the group or the large majority of them would want to stay up on the hill as a form of wake in memory of the people who have been killed, and I then set out to arrange that with the authorities.
 I went back to the South African authorities and urged them not to take action to get the marchers off the hill.  I had an undertaking from Mr Ramaphosa that the wake would be peaceful and I conveyed that undertaking to the South African authorities.  
 At the same time the South African authorities who were working from the South African Embassy had to deal with a sit-in of several people who entered the Embassy and refused to leave.  We had to negotiate that.  Eventually the South African authorities agreed that they would allow the marchers to remain on the hill.  Many of them returned, it turned bitterly cold that night, but a large group of them remained.  It was totally peaceful, Mr Ramaphosa kept his word.  The organisers kept their word and in the morning they dispersed.