The Shobashobane massacre has come to trial, but the list of suspects is decreasing and people question whether justice will be done. Ann Eveleth reports
DUMAZILE NYAWOSE watched helplessly as armed men stabbed her 17-year-old daughter Phindile to death. They propped her limp body in a sitting position in a waterhole and moved on. Amos Nyawose eluded his would-be killers, but was unable to stop them from disembowelling his cousin Kipha and cutting off his genitals. Alpheus Shabane cannot forget the sight of his small son in the marauding crowd.
More than a year after an army of killers descended upon the tiny rural village of Shobashobane wielding knives, spears, guns and sticks, those accused of taking part in the massacre have come to trial in the Durban Supreme Court.
Survivors of the attack early on Christmas Day 1995 have come to the witness stand, one after another, to recount the events of the day, and to testify to the horror they saw.
Twenty-one defendants are sitting in the dock, charged with the murder of 18 men, women and children. They had been identified as African National Congress supporters; Shobashobane was an Inkatha stronghold.
It was in this courtroom barely four months ago that former defence minister Magnus Malan and 19 others were freed from murder conspiracy charges.
The prospect of a repeat hovers over the public gallery, where observers from both parties watch the proceedings.
The list of 23 suspects already has been reduced to 21. One suspect died, and the state was forced to withdraw charges against Richard Nzama last week because photographic evidence linking him to the attack had “disappeared”. Charges against eight other suspects – including three Izingolweni police who were among the first arrested – were dropped last year.
According to testimony in court, as many as 2000 attackers descended upon the tiny village. An observer outside the courtroom asked: “Where are the rest of them?”
Only a few of those named in the witnesses’ testimony sit in the mega-dock built last year for Malan and his co-accused.
Dumazile Nyawose, for example, testified that she heard a woman name the murder weapon that should be used on her daughter, who was running to the Shongwe River when she slipped and fell and was cornered by her attackers. “I heard some men saying that this woman could not be shot. A female from up the hill said `Cut her throat with a cane knife’ and I recognised the voice of this female,” she said.
There are no women among the accused, only 19 men and two youths, all of them looking bored, some casually resting bare feet on the front of the dock. Some stiffen slightly when a witness identifies them by the number in front of them.
At least four witnesses have placed Inkatha Freedom Party Izingolweni leader Sipho Ngcobo at the scene of the attack. They have testified that he was armed with a shotgun. His girlfriend, Isabel, sits every day outside the court. She says she knows nothing about the attack. Although she lives in Izingolweni, she says she was not there on the fateful day.
Ngcobo’s new ANC counterpart from Shobashobane, local government councillor Anderson Nyawose, is trying to restore peace to the place where his uncle – former ANC leader Kipha Nyawose – was hunted down. Anderson Nyawose says there can be no peace unless Ngcobo spends some time in jail.
“We as the ANC support amnesty,” he says, when asked about the special amnesty deal under consideration in the province.
“They will all get amnesty one day, but they must go to jail for some time before we can accept that. But so far I don’t feel happy because I don’t know who will get convicted. We are sleeping at home now, but the people don’t feel safe since the [alleged] attackers got bail and the violence started again,” he says.
“Sometimes we talk about peace, but the following day we hear the guns.”