Issued by: Truth and Reconciliation Commission
April 8, 1997
(The following summary of the applications, and the main points of the decisions and reasons therefor, is given purely to assist those journalists needing a quick initial summary of the applications and is not a binding document with any legal status.)
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission announces the granting of amnesty to three African National Congress members from North-West Province and to a Conservative Party and Volksfront member from the Eastern Cape.
It also announces the denial of amnesty to two applicants from the Free State, one an ANC member who killed a municipal policeman and the other a man who took part in a "gruesome and brutal attack" on people whom he alleged were suspected to be IFP members.
Amnesty has been granted to Peter Lebona, Thabo Solomon Lekitlane and Elias Busakwe, ANC members from Kanana, Orkney, who killed Zenzile Charles Dlamini, the leader of a vigilante group in their township who admitted sexually assaulting a woman, in July 1991.
It has also been granted to Saint Michael Schutte, a Conservative Party and Volksfront member from Stutterheim, Eastern Cape, for possession of seven AK-47s and 235 rounds of ammunition.
Amnesty was refused to:
- Derrick Tshidiso Kobue, an ANC member who killed Bothetsa Sekatame, a municipal policeman, in Kroonstad in December 1991.
- Justice Sekgopa, who took part in the killing of Shelly Erica Basson, Anthony , Mark Casey, Johannes P van Niekerk and Michael F Belelie at Mashongoville in the Odendaalsrus district in September 1990.
Details of the cases follow:
1. Peter Lebona, Thabo Solomon Lekitlane and Elias Busakwe:
The three men have been serving 10-year jail sentences for the murder of Dlamini, who was at one stage also a member of the ANC but later established a vigilante group called Kofifi.
The Amnesty Committee noted in the reasons for its decision that evidence had been led of various acts of harassment in the form of assault and rape committed by Dlamini, predominantly on members of the ANC and its Women's League. The applicants contended that they perceived Dlamini's gang to be collaborating with police, and that they suspected the gang was aided and abetted by the police.
The Committee said it was common cause that when Lebone and Lekitlane were taking Dlamini to the local police station - after the latter had admitted sexually assaulting an elderly woman and grievously assaulting her husband - Dlamini pulled out a gun. Before Dlamini could fire, Lebone fired a shot at him, using a firearm which Busakwe had supplied earlier. Then Lekitlane had stabbed Dlamini with a knife. Other members of a group accompanying Dlamini to the police station also took part in the attack.
The Committee found:
"Given the above facts, it is quite evident that the deceased and his gang disrupted meetings of the ANC, thereby impeding the ANC in their exercise of free political activity. They committed atrocious acts against members of the ANC and were generally perceived as an anathema in the community. The local community and the ANC leadership perceived them as collaborating with the local police to inhibit them from exercising free political activity in the township. We therefore find that the primary aim of the deceased's group was to and did in fact impede members of the ANC from exercising free political activity."
The Committee said the killing of Dlamini by Lebone and Lekitlane was "an act associated with a political objective" and accordingly granted amnesty. It said although Busakwe did not physically take part in the killing, he admitted facts which connected him to the murder, and he complied with the requirements for amnesty.
2. Saint Michael Schutte
Schutte did not appear at a public hearing of the Amnesty Committee because his offence was not a gross violation of human rights, as defined in the legislation governing the Commission.
He bought the AK-47s on a visit to Mozambique in September 1993, and was arrested carrying them at the Lebombo border post upon his return to South Africa on September 28. He was due to have stood trial in Nelspruit this month.
He said in his amnesty application that the weapons were bought with the intention of defending the white community of Stutterheim in the event of a civil war after the 1994 election, and of promoting the aims of the right-wing parties to which he belonged.
3. Justice Sekgopa
Sekgopa is serving 27 years' imprisonment on four counts of murder and one count of malicious damage to property.
Reviewing the evidence, the Committee said Sekgopa and other members of a crowd attacked the victims with pangas, knives, sjamboks and other weapons. Ms Basson's genitals and breasts were mutilated. The Committee said:
"It was submitted on behalf of the Applicant that his motive for participating in the gruesome and brutal attack on the deceased was that he believed that the deceased were members of the Inkatha Freedom Party who had come to attack his community....
"The Committee has grave difficulties with this argument because there is no shred of evidence to suggest that the Applicant and/or his co-assailants could have believed that the deceased were members of the IFP at all...."
After reviewing the evidence in relation to perceptions about the IFP, the Committee said it was "quite evident that the Applicant committed the offences for which he has applied for amnesty in an indiscriminate manner against private individuals." The Committee continued:
"This was a clear case of mob violence in which the applicant participated. There was no suggestion of prior common purpose on the part of the participants. We accordingly cannot accept the evidence of the applicant when questioned, that he participated in the attack in order to kill apartheid. There had been no prior discussion or agreement amongst the participants to achieve any political objective. Furthermore, the nature of the attack was such that there was no proportionality between it and the supposed political objective, namely, sending a message to the Government that apartheid be abolished."
4. Derrick Tshidiso Kobue
The Committee said evidence in this application was that Mr Sekatame had intervened in an argument between Kobue and his girlfriend in a restaurant/shebeen and threatened Kobue with a gun. Kobue, an ANC Youth League and Self-Defence Unit member, had run away and, when Mr Sekatame emerged from the restaurant, Kobue had his comrades had followed him and stabbed him.
The Committee noted that Kobue advanced as a reason for the killing the fact that the deceased was a policeman and that some policemen co-operated with the Three Million Gang, a declared enemy of the ANC in Kroonstad. Kobue also testified that the killing was on instructions from his commander in the Self-Defence Unit.
The Committee found:
"The reason advanced by the Applicant for the killing, namely that he had killed him because he was a policeman and collaborated with the Three Million Gang, seems improbable..."
However, the Committee said it had no other evidence before it in the case, and went on to examine the Applicant's evidence more closely. It concluded:
"There is nothing in the advanced reasons that could have given the applicant any reason reasonably to conclude that the deceased was a collaborator with the Three Million Gang, nor that he was perceived to be an enemy of the ANC and its structures by virtue of his office as a policeman and this evidence is accordingly rejected."
(THE FULL TEXTS OF THE REASONS FOR DECISIONS ON APPLICATIONS WHERE THERE WERE PUBLIC HEARINGS ARE AVAILABLE, FROM THE COMMISSION'S OFFICES FOR CAPE TOWN JOURNALISTS, AND BY FAX FOR THOSE OUTSIDE CAPE TOWN.)
Inquiries: John Allen, 082- 452-7859