TRC Final Report

Volume 6

Section 4

Chapter 2

Subsection 7

Failure to make use of the Commission’s database

77. The Johannesburg unit did not appear to have used the Commission’s database to cross - reference its work, nor did it access the HRV statements in the possession of the Commission, many of which contained valuable corroborative information.

Inadequate consultation with MK commanders/operatives

78. Although the unit did, in certain instances, consult with relevant MK personnel and/or commanders, consultation should have been done in every case to establish the nature of the mission and to confirm the identities of the operatives involved. Consequently, identities were sometimes assigned to the deceased without proper corroboration from commanders based inside South Africa or neighbouring countries.

Problems in identification

79. In the course of its audit, the task team discovered that it was extremely difficult to make positive identifications. One example of such a difficulty is the case of Richard ‘Bushy’ Lentsela. This case also demonstrates the considerable d i fficulty encountered in attempting to establish the fate of Mr Lentsela, and how important it is to corroborate each piece of information received .

The case of Richard ‘Bushy’ Lentsela

80. Richard ‘Bushy’ Lentsela disappeared from Schweizer-Reneke during the mid-1980s.

81. According to one of two HRV statements received from family members, it was believed that Mr Lentsela was an MK operative who was killed with three others in an incident near Warrenton. The statement also referred to a community pamphlet that circulated in the Schweizer-Reneke area during 1986, listing the identities of the four persons killed in this incident. This information provided the first line of enquiry.

82. Mr Lentsela’s name was not contained in the ANC submission, nor was it on either of the lists of MK combatant deaths. Various sources confirmed that an incident had occurred near Warrenton on 13 December 1986.²⁷ However, all of these sources indicated that one person, and not four, had been killed.

83. Two sources identified the MK operative shot dead as Zonwabele Livingstone Ntolokwana, also known as Lungile, whose name is recorded on the MK lists. The sources indicate that Mr Ntlokwana died on an unknown date in 1987, although one of the lists records the place of death not as Warrenton but Mafikeng. Despite this contradictory information, the identity of the person killed in the Warrenton incident was established as Livingstone Ntlokwana (on the basis of an HRV statement by the Ntlokwana family and an entry in the Warrenton mortuary register). This ruled out the possibility that Mr Lentsela had been killed in this incident.

84. Former activists in the Huhudi-Vryburg-Schweizer-Reneke area were contacted with a view to locating the pamphlet referred to in the HRV statement, said to contain photographs of four persons, including ‘Bushy’ Lentsela. All three former activists spoken to believed he had been killed in the Warrenton incident, although one indicated that he had heard that Lentsela had been killed in a skirmish elsewhere in the Transvaal. One of the activists traced a copy of the pamphlet, which turned out to have been issued by the SAP. It contained the photographs of four activists wanted by the SAP, one of whom was indeed ‘Bushy’ Lentsela. While this confirmed police interest in Mr Lentsela, it provided no clue as to his fate.

85. One of the Security Branch photograph albums in the Commisson’s possession contained photographs of suspected MK combatants, including a photograph of Mr Lentsela. The photograph had been crossed out and his name cancelled on the index. The ‘cancellation’ of an activist from the album generally indicated that the person concerned was no longer of interest to the Security Branch, because s/he had either died or been arrested or recruited. This suggested that sometime after the pamphlet had been issued, the Security Branch lost interest in Mr Lentsela.

86. Further investigation and research indicated that ‘Bushy’ Lentsela had, in all probability, been killed near Nietverdiend in the Western Transvaal. The incident took place on 25 June 1986, when a group of four MK operatives entering fro m Botswana were shot dead. This incident is confirmed by several sources. Two of these indicate that one of the four people killed was one Tumagole Richard Lentsela. However, Lentsela’s name does not appear in the record of the Rustenburg state mortuary which received the bodies, although one of the names is recorded as one Wilson Bushy Senne. It is possible that the names recorded in the mortuary register were obtained from false identity documents carried by the operatives, as none was identified by their families at the time.

87. Attempts to locate the inquest documentation were unsuccessful. Several Western Transvaal Security Branch operatives applied for amnesty for this incident, but subsequently withdrew their applications. In a final attempt to establish whether Mr Lentsela was involved, the Commission approached two MK commanders who had been based in Botswana at the time of the incident. They were only able to identify one of the persons in the incident, although one of them thought it possible that one of the others may have been a person named ‘Bushy. ’

88. While the evidence suggests that Richard ‘Bushy’ Lentsela was killed in the Nietverdiend incident, further investigation is required to confirm this. Although it is known that the bodies of the ‘Nietverdiend Four’ were buried as paupers at Hartbeesfontein, no exhumation was conducted, and the identities of a further two need to be established.