CHAIRPERSON: Let us now proceed to Mr Goqo.
VUYISILE MICHAEL GOQO: (sworn states)
MR SANDI: As it has transpired, Mr Goqo, it has become evident that you were one of the ambulance drivers at Diaz at the time of the incident, is that correct?
MR GOQO: Yes Sir.
MR SANDI: And on this day, you were on duty, is that correct.
MR GOQO: Yes.
MR SANDI: Could you please come a bit closer to the microphone so that you could be more audible. Could you just briefly tell us how long you had been employed at Diaz for, at the time of the incident?
MR GOQO: I was working at GM in Port Elizabeth and I left there after the labour relations soured before going to Diaz.
MR SANDI: Could you just tell us what happened on this day in March 1985?
MR GOQO: I was stationed at Kwanubuhle, and we were all called to Uitenhage and Despatch to an incident that took
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place in KwaLanga. When we arrived there, there were ambulances and we got there and parked and we were told that we would be called in. There were ambulances from Kirkwood and Patterson which were on the way and they met us there. We kept asking each other what had happened and we were told, no, there has been a shooting incident.
MR SANDI: Mr Goqo, could you please just raise your voice a little bit so that you could be more audible, so that the people at the back could also hear you.
MR GOQO: We got there and parked. I don't know what the name of the street is, and there were ambulances parked there already that had come from nearby from the provincial hospitals and more ambulances. I got there and I parked and we were told that we had to wait until we were called. More ambulances arrived from Kirkwood and Patterson and those places and they joined us and we waited. We were told to wait until we were called. A yellow vehicle then arrived from inside and called us and we all followed.
When we got there there were hippos that were parked in front of the police. The police were in front, the hippos were behind, and more police lorries and Landrovers and so forth, and each person got out to go about their duties. I then passed these policemen. Most of the ambulance drivers went to the right-hand side because some of the people fell in something that's in like a valley there at No. 16 which something which seemed like a bridge. Most of the people were on the right-hand side and most of the ambulance drivers went to the right-hand side. I thought no, everyone is going that way, I am going to go this way, and when I went the other way, among these people, looking for those that were still alive, I would pass over the deceased and I
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came across a child, and that is what disturbed me the most.
MR SANDI: When you saw this child, you were extremely disturbed?
MR GOQO: Yes, extremely.
MR SANDI: Is there anything that you did, any steps that you took, did you phone home or anything?
MR GOQO: After we had taken everyone to the hospital, to the provincial hospital, and after having cleaned the ambulances and everything, I phoned home and asked them at home if anything had happened at home, it was as if something might have happened at home as well because these people had been injured and passed away.
MR SANDI: These petrol bombs being mentioned by the police, did you see any of them at the scene of the incident?
MR GOQO: No, not even one, all you saw there was stones.
MR SANDI: And were there any other things that you saw at the scene of the shooting?
MR GOQO: Before I saw this child, I had a confrontation with somebody that was there, a policeman, because when I was looking at this child being shot, I saw that above her eyebrow there was a hole which was smaller than a 5c piece. It was clear that this child felt this wound before the child passed away and she was obviously holding it and lying on top of it and had her hand on it, so I moved the child's hand.
MR SANDI: Approximately how old would you estimate this child to be?
MR GOQO: The child wouldn't even have been able to sit up yet. It was a small baby.
MR SANDI: Let us just go back to the hospital. At the hospital, was there any doctor there that you encountered?
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MR GOQO: There was, you can't say you couldn't see a doctor because even the time we were washing the ambulances, I heard the ladies inside saying that this child has been shot.
MR SANDI: Did you see anybody there because in your statement you mentioned a Dr Nel?
MR GOQO: Yes, I saw him there at the scene and he was laughing, he wasn't doing anything.
MR SANDI: Was there anyone Dr. Nel was speaking to at the hospital.
MR GOQO: I did not notice him at the hospital, I noticed him at scene of the shooting, taking out cigarette after cigarette.
MR SANDI: Did you appear before the Kannemeyer Commission in connection with this incident?
MR GOQO: Yes.
MR SANDI: What did you say before the Kannemeyer Commission. Could you just tell us very briefly?
MR GOQO: They wanted to know, they wanted information from me in connection with this child and I told them what I had encountered and what the child had on. I described everything to the Kannemeyer.
MR SANDI: Were you called at work by your superiors wanting to know about the statement you made to the Kannemeyer Commission?
MR GOQO: When I left court, I went home and I went to work the following day. I went to work in a Bravo, these were the vehicles that were used to take us to work, near Vista University and when we approached Uitenhage I heard on the radio that a certain person should not be included in the roll call and that was me. I was excluded from the roll
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call because in the mornings there is a roll call to tell you who was delegated to which duties for the day, and I was told that I was excluded from the roll call and I gathered from that that I was being fired.
MR SANDI: Did they give you any reasons for dismissing you?
MR GOQO: Joor told me very well that after the shit that you spoke to Kannemeyer, I don't think that you'll ever get an ambulance again.
Please excuse my language but I am merely saying what he said.
MR SANDI: Was there any letter that was written by the people at Diaz stating reasons for your dismissal?
MR GOQO: Yes, there was a letter, but I don't know what happened to it.
MR SANDI: Is that all you would like to say before this Commission?
MR GOQO: No, that is not all. After our dismissal, I went looking for work. I couldn't find work otherwise I encountered places where I could possible find a position but I would be told, or I would give them my particulars and I would find that I had to fill in a form and the person would take the form away, out of the office, going to phone Joor, and come back and you would see by the expression on their face that I wasn't going to get the job.
MR SANDI: The period that Mr Berry describes at Church Street police station when you people were as drivers were being told what to say in your statements were you present?
MR GOQO: Yes I was.
MR SANDI: Can you tell us what happened at the police station?
MR GOQO: We went in. There was a certain captain, I don't
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know who he is, and we were told to write down statements as I explained to the commission and we continued until we got to the story about the child and we were told that that is sufficient and I also stopped and decided that I'm not going to mention this child again.
MR SANDI: Do you mean Mr Goqo, that when you got to the police station there was a statement that was ready?
MR GOQO: We spoke at the police station and they wrote down and I thought that I am going to mention the child but the Captain did not include that in his writing. He said that that was enough and that is were I stopped.
MR SANDI: In other words you mean that at the police station when they were taking your statement they did not give you a chance, sufficient time to state everything that you had seen there?
MR GOQO: No, I did not get enough of a chance because there were many of us.
MR SANDI: Is that the reason why you did not mention the child in your statement?
MR GOQO: Yes, that is why. That is because they said that that was enough and I stopped.
MR SANDI: Mr Goqo, is that all you want to say?
MR GOQO: For now that is all.
MR SANDI: Thank you very much, Mr Goqo. There are very few people who would do what you people have done to say what you had seen. Even today if this Commission has problems investigating these things because many people saw these things, particularly in the police force but they will not come forward and say what they saw. Thank you very much Mr Goqo, and Mr Berry.
Are there any questions?
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MS MAYA: Thank you Sir. Mr Berry I would prefer to direct my questions at you. The first question, when reading through the newspaper clippings of the Kannemeyer Commission, it appears that there is a lady officer who was employed by Diaz, who came with the testimony that the ambulances that were used by you and Mr Goqo normally, were never used on this particular day, what can you tell us about this?
MR BERRY: That is a concern that I had since yesterday, because the ambulance, and I can assure you this, the ambulance that I usually use was 660, the pride of the ambulance service at the time. I take pride in putting this to you because one of the most important things of an ambulance man is to keep his ambulance in tip top form. Now the reason why I say since yesterday it is a concern of mine is because even yesterday here were people I have mentioned to some of these officers here, we testify here and we name peoples names, thus implicating some people and some of them are here. Tomorrow you people as a Commission would go and find out whether this is a lot of lies or lies that we are telling you. That is your duty I believe, but when trying to establish the truth, how much time have the people that listened in yesterday and today and tomorrow or whenever they listened in, how much time have they got to destroy whatever you are looking for. It is a point of concern to me. I'm saying this because you know, I've also got the paper clip of what happened at the time and they for an example said that I used 661 which I did not use.
MS MAYA: Do you know how many ambulances the divisional council had at this time, how many ambulances?
MR BERRY: Oh, no no, that's impossible.
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MS MAYA: Was it normal procedure that when there were emergencies of this nature, some of the ambulances were not used, they were just kept there, not functioning?
MR BERRY: I'll tell you how the system works. Let me start at the beginning. If anything should happen here, right now, any of us would phone the ambulance service. The first thing they would ask, is what happened, where did it happen, what is the nature of what happened, and on what you are actually feeding them, they would dispatch the amount of ambulances. If needs be, if they haven't got that amount available there, they would pull in ambulances from other quarters. That is how the system works.
MS MAYA: Thank you Mr Berry, that is all.
PANEL MEMBER: Thank you Chairperson. I always thought that the story of Holanisa rang an echo from the past, now it is coming back to my mind, it's your story of dismissal that was ringing from the past. It's not the same thing, but I can't resist making the similarity. This Commission is about making sure that abuses of the past are not repeated so we try and make sure that when people give their testimonies nothing of this sort is repeated.
MR SANDI: You mentioned that the incident of the child always comes back to you. It is something that remains in your memory. I would like to hear from you, did you ever hear whose child it was, did anyone ever come forward to identify this baby as their own?
MR GOQO: I heard something like that happened there at the hospital.
MR SANDI: Was the child's mother employed at the hospital?
MR GOQO: No, I was told that the mother had gone to the hospital to look for her child, it was long after we had
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spoken about it.
MR SANDI: The child's mother. Does anyone here know who's child that baby was. Nobody knows. In your statement Sir, you mentioned that when you went back to wash your ambulance you saw a fire engine going towards the location what was the fire engine going to do there?
MR GOQO: I think it was going to wash the blood at the scene of the shooting.
MR SANDI: Was it something normal?
MR GOQO: It was the first time I had seen something like that in Uitenhage, but because so many people had passed away, what was going to wash the blood.
MR SANDI: That amazes me that it should happen so quickly, that the fire engines should rush to go and wash the blood and yet when peoples places were burning, the fire engines took forever to get there.
My last question to you is going to be, in your statement you mention a Deputy Chief Heuwa who said to you that you shouldn't say anything about this incident about what you had seen, or you shouldn't say everything to the people, is there anything that you noticed, anything in particular that you thought that he was referring to you not having to speak about?
MR GOQO: Heuwa was saying that at approximately 7:00, before we left to go home, he called all of us and said not one of us must release any information to anyone outside, and we all agreed.
MR SANDI: In other words, this guy was trying to say that whatever you had seen, whatever you had seen that was horrible and so forth, you mustn't mention to anybody? In other words, he was trying to protect the deeds of the South UITENHAGE HEARING TRC/EASTERN CAPE
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African Defence Force and the police?
MR GOQO: That is correct.
MR SANDI: I said that lastly, so finally in your statement you mentioned a policemen who was speaking in Zulu, and this policemen said to you, look at what you are doing otherwise you are going to die like these people, can you tell us why this policeman spoke to you in this fashion?
MR GOQO: It was when I saw this child when I was tending to this child. This Zulu guy said, hey you, do your work, leave that child, and I said to him, I was getting angry by then, and if I had a knife, I would have stabbed him at the time, I would of attacked him, I had replied, I said to him, listen here you, don't you have any compassion, can't you see that this is a baby. His gun was slung over his shoulder pointing up and he brought it down and I said to him, If you think you are going to shoot you are boarding the wrong bus.
MR SANDI: In other words, you would be messing with the wrong person?
MR GOQO: Yes, but because by that time I was getting very angry.
MR SANDI: We are now going to proceed and listen to the evidence of the victims. We think we basically have an idea of the events from there on, so from here on we are going to concentrate on people, when they take the stand, we ask that they do not start at the beginning, we know what happened by we'll rather like to hear their stories based on the evidence that we have heard, from Mr Nkobese's evidence through to the other witnesses. Just adding to that, their details and also add to that how this incident affected their lives, and finally place their requests before the
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Commission and I think from there we are going to use this system because the witnesses were arranged in the order that we received the story itself.
The people that are going to give evidence now are going to add their own perceptions to the evidence that we have already heard and then place their requests before the commission.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you Mr Berry and Mr Goqo. I just want to say very briefly that we are grateful for the testimony that you have given us as ambulance drivers. I want to say to you that Mr Berry says that there is a certain Mr M W Anderson who was the secretary of the Diaz Divisional Council who told you that you were fired because you had become an embarrassment to the council. He said that because you decided to stand for the truth, both of you, and because you stood for the truth at that time you became an embarrassment to their Council.
I want to say that on behalf of the Commission we hope the time will come and it shall not be long when this nation will pause and say you are not an embarrassment to this nation, you are in fact assets of this nation, because you stood for the truth. We are hoping that the nation should pause one time to say that to both of you. We are aware of the requests that you have made in terms of your dismissals and we are going to follow those up. You reminded us, both of you, that there was a time in this country when standing for the truth cost a price, and those comrades that became comrades in 1990 and 1991 after that sometimes forget that, that there was a time in this country when standing for the truth cost something. Some people lost their lives, others like the guy who was here lost their legs, their limbs.
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Others lost their loved ones and indeed many people when the crunch came decided not to stand for the truth because they preferred to nurse the opposition in light.
You told us of a Mr Pillay and a Mr Schulz who say that they did not see the child. You stood there and said that you saw the child. Thank you very much.
