CHAIRPERSON: Is Mr Cele here perhaps?
MS MTANGA: Sorry, Chairperson?
CHAIRPERSON: Our Investigator.
MS MTANGA: Yes, he is, Chairperson.
CHAIRPERSON: Did you have the opportunity to explain to him what the dispute actually is?
MS MTANGA: Yes, Chairperson, I have done so.
CHAIRPERSON: Would he be prepared to take the oath?
MR CELE: Yes, Mr Chair.
CHAIRPERSON: Which language would you prefer to speak?
MR CELE: I will use English, Mr Chair.
JOSHUA SKUMBUZO CELE: (sworn states)
CHAIRPERSON: One of the applicants said that there must be a misunderstanding, and I wish to refer to page, for convenience it could be page 45 of the affidavit given by Mr Tembe. Have you got it?
MR CELE: Yes, Mr Chair.
CHAIRPERSON: He testified that Mr Ntlantla who was the bodyguard of the PAC, chaired a meeting.
MR CELE: Mr Chair, I understood him very well when I took down this statement and as soon as he told me that they had a meeting, I asked him "who chaired the meeting" and this is how it came about, the name of Mr Ntlantla.
CHAIRPERSON: And he said there wasn't a meeting
"This meeting had nothing to do with what happened the next, but we were discussing some other issues of the organisation."
If I understood him correctly, and I would like my colleagues and everybody else to - I haven't got the note before me now, that my first impression was that there was no such meeting at all and then later on it seems as if he said well there was a meeting, but Mr Ntlantla wasn't chairing the meeting and they discussed general affairs sort of.
MR CELE: Well Mr Chair, what I put down in writing is what I was told by him in the presence of his mother, who was sitting in the lounge at their house where I took the statement, and this is exactly what he told me on that day.
ADV BOSMAN: Were you conversing in Zulu, Mr Cele? And is that your mother tongue as well?
MR CELE: Yes, Madam.
CHAIRPERSON: Ms de Klerk, perhaps you could put the differences to him and ask him about it.
CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MS DE KLERK: Thank you, Mr Chair.
Mr Cele, I put it to you that Mr Tembe did answer questions to you - did answer to your questions that you had put to him, however when you wrote these answers down you didn't write the answers as he had told them to you. Can you comment on that?
MR CELE: Well I disagree with you, Ma'am, in that after I interviewed Mr Tembe, I went to the prison to interview the other applicant and the statement that I recorded from the other applicant, if it was my intention to change anything that he told me, I would have done the same on the second applicant, and I don't think I was in a position to do that, to change anything that he was telling me.
MS DE KLERK: Is there a possibility that you could have misunderstood him, perhaps - let me make it clearer, perhaps he was referring to some other incident, for example in paragraph 5 on page 45 of the bundle, where he said
"We noticed certain white people in civilian clothes assaulting some black street hawkers with sjambocks."
... is there a possibility that he could have been referring to some other day, not specifically the day of the incident on the 9th of October, and that you could have possibly got confused and recorded the incorrect information?
MR CELE: There's no such possibility, Madam, I would have recorded it exactly as he was saying that he was referring to other incidents if it was so. And I also noticed this contradiction when I was interviewing the second applicant and after I finished taking the statement of the other applicant, I did bring this to his notice, I asked him on several times whether he saw any white people assaulting the black street hawkers and he said no. And then he told me if person is outside of a prison he doesn't think that is how he responded to me, the other applicant.
CHAIRPERSON: You never went back to this applicant and said to him "are you sure this is correct?"
MR CELE: Well Mr Chair, I looked at it as in my opinion it will be prejudice, or I took it as if I was going to make him to change the statement that he made and tell me what the other applicant is saying at that time.
CHAIRPERSON: And at that time, were you very sure that you're correct in your interpretation of what he told you?
MR CELE: Yes, Mr Chair.
MS DE KLERK: Just one more question, Mr Cele. After you wrote down this statement, did you read it back to Mr Tembe?
MR CELE: That's correct, Madam, I actually gave him the statement to read, but he preferred that I read it to him, so as I was reading it in English I was again translating each sentence in Zulu again.
MS DE KLERK: Mr Cele, I wish to put it to you that you didn't read back the statement to Mr Tembe, in fact what you did was you told him "this statement reflects an interpretation or a translation of what you've just told me and I require you to sign this". Can you comment on this?
MR CELE: Madam, that is incorrect, I'm taking statements for a number of years and I actually know the requirement of, and as to how we take statements. And it is his own, the deponent's statement, I have no reason to change what he wants to be reduced in writing. And I actually did, I read it to him and I re-interpreted it again sentence by sentence and he informed me that he understood, and then I also read out the declaration that he's under oath and he signed his statement.
MS DE KLERK: If I understand you correctly you said that you're fully au fait with taking statement because you do it quite often, okay. Do you normally commission something which you have translation, is this the normal procedure, or was a different procedure supposed to have been adopted in that an independent third party should actually commission that particular affidavit? Can you comment?
MR CELE: As far as I'm aware as the Commissioner of Oaths, I do commission my own statements, the deponent's statement that has been given to me.
MS DE KLERK: Would you agree with me that having an independent person would have alleviated the problem that we are now faced with?
MR CELE: There was no other independent person. I don't know if I didn't understand your question well.
MS DE KLERK: Would you not agree with me that had the affidavit been commission in the proper manner, that we wouldn't be faced with these two contradictory sets of evidence today?
MR CELE: ...(inaudible)
MS DE KLERK: I withdraw the question. I have no further questions for this witness.
NO FURTHER QUESTIONS BY MS DE KLERK
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. I think on behalf of the Panel I would make a request to you to avoid future disputes, after you've written out the statement, if at all possible and even take trouble to take the statement-maker to a police station or somewhere else where he could take the oath before another Commissioner of Oaths, so that you wouldn't stand being accused of trying to alter or not interpreting correctly what has been said.
MR CELE: Yes, Mr Chair, I understand.
CHAIRPERSON: And thank you for your trouble of coming and explaining to us what happened.
MR CELE: Thank you, Mr Chair.
WITNESS EXCUSED
CHAIRPERSON: Are you in a position to address us? Argument?
MS DE KLERK: Yes, Mr Chair.
CHAIRPERSON: Please proceed.
MS DE KLERK IN ARGUMENT: Mr Chairperson and Members of the Panel, it is my submission that both applicants have substantially corroborated each other's version, save for the parts which I've pointed out to the Panel. It is my submission that the second applicant has satisfied this Committee that he was incorrectly - his statement was incorrectly taken insofar as those paragraphs 4, 5 and ...(intervention)
CHAIRPERSON: No, wouldn't it be better to say he casted doubt on whether he was ...(intervention)
MS DE KLERK: He did, he did.
CHAIRPERSON: Yes, I'm not so sure that satisfied is the correct word.
MS DE KLERK: In relation to the first applicant, it is my submission that he was a good witness, he was open and honest, he revealed exactly the way he perceived the whole incident to have occurred, and I believe in my submission, that he has satisfied the necessary elements to qualify for amnesty being granted to him.
CHAIRPERSON: And in this respect, would I be correct in saying that this was not a racial attack, in the sense of a racist attack but he attacked the whites because he saw all whites as symbols of the then governing regime?
MS DE KLERK: That's correct.
CHAIRPERSON: And in that sense it wasn't purely a racist attack, but an attack associated with a political objective and political background.
MS DE KLERK: That is correct. He even went as far as saying that he didn't distinguish between apartheid and white people and the National Government of the time, he saw them all as one. So as part of the objective to disrupt the government of the day, the retaliation on white people. And it was random, it's common cause that is was random, they didn't know the political affiliations of these white people, they didn't care about the political affiliations of these people ...(intervention)
CHAIRPERSON: Would you say he would have killed Mr Slovo if Mr Slovo was on the beach that day?
MS DE KLERK: I submit they would have, they didn't distinguish between any white people, it was just purely white people.
I'd also like to submit that it would appear that the first applicant played more of an active role in the actual planning and decision-making, than the second applicant. It would appear that the second applicant sort of followed as a member of the PAC, but didn't adopt as stringent an attitude as the first applicant did. And I submit that in light of this, the first applicant shouldn't be prejudiced by the lack of attention which the second applicant paid to detail, to the exact planning and decision-making and the whole incident on the 9th of October.
CHAIRPERSON: No, I don't think we could use the second applicant's evidence to prejudice the first applicant, the only thing is whether we would be satisfied that the second applicant, on his own version, would qualify for amnesty.
MS DE KLERK: In relation to the second applicant, he has corroborated to a substantial extend the first applicant's version and I submit that this Committee cannot make a credibility finding between him and Mr Cele, as it's Mr Cele's word against Mr Tembe's word, and we don't have any evidence to corroborate either of their versions. Mr Cele admitted that he - well he didn't admit, he refused to admit, but it's my submission that, Mr Chairperson, after you rephrased the question to him, he went as far, if I may say admitted that in order to avoid a similar situation, a third person, an independent person should have commissioned that affidavit, which would have then alleviated the problem that we're now faced with, in that if it was read back to Mr Tembe and he then understood that - in Zulu, in his mother tongue, and he then understood that he had made an error or an error had been made in the translation of his version, that could have been rectified then.
However he has, I submit that there is a probability that the second applicant's version is true and that he didn't realise that his version had been put forward on a different note.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.
MS DE KLERK: Therefore it's my submission that both the first and second applicants should be granted amnesty in this matter. Thank you.
MS MTANGA ADDRESSES: Chairperson, I have been instructed by Ms Aden Pearce who was here this morning, that she does not intend to oppose this application and she's like to leave this matter in your hands.
In regard to the advertisement that I indicated was put in the paper for the rest of the victims who are not here today, I received a copy, it was advertised on the 9th of March, it was on a Thursday, 9th of March, in the Daily News. I've got a copy of the - a tear-sheet of that.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, we accept that.
MS MTANGA: Thank you, Chairperson.
CHAIRPERSON: Could we start with the next one?
MS MTANGA: Chairperson, I would like to get a five minutes adjournment just to consult with the victims who are here.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.
COMMITTEE ADJOURNS
