CHAIRPERSON:

Let us pray:

Please sit - good morning, from you all with warm hands in this gathering of the Commission, of the Truth Commission and reconciliation. We welcome you to this hearing of the Human Rights Violations Committee of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the Southern Cape.

We welcome you all very warmly but especially we welcome those who will be testifying, their families, and friends. We are deeply indebted to many without whose generous help and already difficult [indistinct] task would be rendered virtually impossible.

Our thanks and appreciation to them, cannot really be expressed in words adequately. We want to mention especially the following. The municipalities in George, Knysna, Mossel Bay, Plettenberg Bay, Oudtshoorn and Ladysmith for making their venues available to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission

We are deeply indebted to the NGO’s such as Black Sash in Knysna and Rape Crisis in Oudtshoorn and there are Steering Committees in George, Plettenberg Bay, Knysna, Oudtshoorn - for their general support in particularly in the taking of statements. And there are Government structures such as the police service, who are providing security. The traffic police, the Department of Social Services for physiological support and the Masakhane Centre.

There are designated statement takers and community briefers, people who come usually from NGO’s and community based organisations. A big thank you as well to those who will be serving as our interpreters, and I want to say thank you to my colleagues the Commissioners and Committee members some of whom are with me up here and the staff who have done a sterling job of work in preparing for these hearings. Louis and Melanie and all the other people who have been assisting and collaborating with them to ensure that we have a smooth and efficient operation.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has four regional offices, one in Cape Town, one in Durban the other in East London and the fourth in Gauteng. And each of them has a Commissioner as the convenor and for Western Cape/Northern Cape which includes the Southern Cape, the Commissioner convenor is Dr Wendy Orr who today is operating as one of the logistics team. And each of our regions has a regional manager and Ruth Lewin is our regional manager who has to ensure that all our staff operate as an efficient team and to them we want to say a very big thank you.

I have almost always expressed our appreciation to the media, the print media, the electronic media who have very-very largely down a superb job of work in helping to convey to our nation and to the world the kind of things that have been happening in our hearings and ensuring that the stories that we hear get the widest possible publicity. To them we want to say thank you and I do want to single out four special mention the SABC, that they have done a wonderful job in being unobtrusive with their cameras and ensuring that the stories to a wide audience as possible. And we say thank you too, to SABC radio who have given what was largely a live coverage of the hearings.

We are a little perturbed to hear that some of the local papers here have felt that they could not be present here. We had thought [indistinct - interpreter is speaking Xhosa] in a just system and by the conflict of the struggle to overthrow it and the resistance to that effort.

But most normal people have been appalled by what we have been hearing in the different centres that we have gone to. The price of our freedom has been very high and we pray that we will not devalue that freedom, we must cherish it with all we have. And we must commit ourselves to ensure that such evil and suffering should never happen again in our country, indeed in any other country. We must all of us black and white, young and old, say never again.

Yes we have been devastated by the horror and the agony, but we have been overwhelmed as well by the extraordinary people there are in this land. Many indeed most of those who have suffered and who have come to testify before the Commission have amazed us - have amazed the world with their readiness to forgive with their nobility and generosity of spirit. They are the people who have made possible the miracle that is this new South Africa.

The world looks on and marvels we pray that the offers to forgive will not go unhidden, that they will inspire others to be ready to say we are sorry, please forgive us, then - then this miracle will be complete. In these hearings we will not immediately be making a finding on whether a person is or is not a victim as defined by the Act that has set us. It will be a great deal later after the evidence that has been presented has been verified and after perhaps those who have been named as alleged perpetrators have been given an opportunity of making a response if they wish to do so.

This hearing is not a court of law, it is a forum in which especially the so-called little people, those who’s stories have not generally been told to a wide audience - are given the opportunity of telling their stories. But all though it is not a court, we seek to have a proper decorum - we hope that all of you are moved to want to have a dignified setting in which such often horrendous stories can be told. It is part of our response to those stories that we gave people a dignified setting in which to tell them.

I will not want to invoke the powers that are vested in us, when perhaps people do not conduct themselves as they might on the whole we have had very little trouble in - in our experience. People are generally well behaved and I don’t - I don’t think that the people of this area will be different.

I have said it is not a court of law but in one respect it has the attributes of a Court of Law, if anyone were deliberately to misinform, mislead the Commission then they would be guilty of the same offence if they had done that in a court of law. And as you may be aware, someone who came before the Commission and sought to mislead us, has since been found guilty and sentenced to a years term of imprisonment. So that we - we are concerned about veracity about truth, and hope that everyone is aware that the only way our land will be healed is when that truth is revealed.

I want to introduce the panel that is sitting here with me on my left is Joyce Seroke, she is a Committee member, not a Commissioner, she is a member of the Human Rights Violations Committee and comes out of the Gauteng region. On my right is Mary Burton, she is a Commission and a member of the Human Rights Violations Committee and is based in Cape Town. And on her right is Dr Ramashala who is a Commissioner and a member of the Reparations and Rehabilitation Committee and she is based in Cape Town. We are expecting a fourth panel member Russel Ally who is a member of the Human Rights Violations Committee based in Johannesburg, Gauteng. His flight has been delayed, we hope he will be able to arrive on time.

I have the privilege then of declaring this hearing of the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, Human Rights Violations Committee open.

MS BURTON:

Thank you Chairperson - there some announcements that we make just before we begin, many of you will have in your seats the - the headphone system, we don’t have quite enough for every chair in the hall, so if you sitting where there isn’t one, there are plenty more here at the front. The headphones are for the translation service that we provide. You - you operate them with this part of it and on Channel 1 you will get Afrikaans, on Channel 2, English and on Channel 3, Xhosa.

When you leave the room at tea time or at lunch breaks and so on, please leave the headphones and the gadgets that go with them on your seats. They need to be recharged, so please leave them on the chairs when you move about. Those of you who have cell phones, please make sure that they are switched off during the proceedings so that we have no interruptions and also we would ask you while witnesses are testifying please not to move around in the hall and distracts them.

I know that some of you are possible bothered a bit by these very bright lights, if you want now to move to a seat that you might not find it so troublesome, please do, there is space at the front.

We would like very much to welcome friends and supporters and members of the public who have come to attend this hearing. I can see that we have Bishop Adams from Oudtshoorn and Father Luyt here, there may be other people who require a special welcome, but we are very-very glad to have all of you here and we feel certain that as the witnesses tell their story, they will feel supported by the interest and concern of members of the public.