MONDAY, 1.30PM
A SENIOR policeman has implicated either former state president PW Botha or his police minister Louis le Grange in interfering in the 1986 prosecution of Witdoek vigilante leader Johnson Nxobongwana, in testimony before the truth commission.
Testifying at a commission hearing into violence in Cape Flats squatter camps in the 1980s, Western Cape violent crimes unit chief Director Leonard Knipe said the interference led to Nxobongwana being released on R50 bail.
Knipe said that during an investigation into the murder of two young men in July 1986, he and his men raided a shack in Guguletu which contained evidence relating to a kangaroo court controlled by Nxobongwana, who was at that stage ”mayor” of Crossroads squatter camp. Nxobongwana was later arrested in unlawful possession of a military-issue firearm and charged with sedition and illegal possession of a firearm.
Knipe said had reported Nxobongwana’s arrest to divisional criminal investigations head Brigadier Ronnie van der Westhuizen who received the news enthusiastically. Knipe said he had opposed bail at Nxobongwana’s first court appearance. However, later that same day he had received a telephone call from a clearly agitated van der Westhuizen who instructed him to see to it that Nxobongwana was immediately released on bail. ”I obviously can no longer remember the exact conversation … but the impression was that he [Van der Westhuizen] had been severely rebuked because of our actions taken against Nxobongwana and that he had been instructed by either the state president or minister to see to it that [Nxobongwana] was released on bail.”
After Knipe telephoned the state prosecutor handling the case, Nxobongwana was released on R50 bail later that same day. Knipe said he was transferred out of the unit before the investigation against the squatter leader was completed. Although the case was withdrawn he believed the police had accumulated sufficient evidence to charge Nxobongwana with the murder of the two youths.
MONDAY, 4.00PM
Nxobongwana, now a National Party member of the Western Cape legislature, may be charged for failing to appear at Tuesday’s truth commission hearing. Commission investigative unit head Dumisa Ntsebeza said Nxobongwana had refused to testify as scheduled at the hearings venue in Guguletu because he feared for his safety. He had also refused an offer to be placed in the commission’s witness protection programme. Nxobongwana said he was prepared to give evidence only at a public hearing at the TRC’s Cape Town offices. Ntsebeza said Nxobongwana had already testified at an in camera inquiry on May 29 in Cape Town.
And in further testimony, Legal Resources Centre regional director Steve Kahanovitz told the commission that police made no arrests after 57 people were killed during the destruction of Cape Peninsula squatter camps by Witdoek vigilantes in 1986. ”I have not been able to find any record of a single prosecution in any of these deaths,” Kahanovitz testified.
Kahanovitz was a member of the LRC legal team which took Law and Order Minister Louis Le Grange to court in a R5-million civil damages claim brought by victims of the violence, who accused the police of complicity in the attacks, or negligence in failing to stop the violence. The case was settled by the state with no admission of liability. The state paid out R2-million to a trust fund for people who suffered losses as a result of the destruction of the squatter camps.
In testimony on Monday, the commission heard evidence that police had extensively colluded with Witdoek vigilantes who conducted a reign of terror against African National Congress supporters in Cape Flats shantytowns in the mid-1980s.
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