Joe Seremane, whose brother was killed by the ANC in the infamous Quatro camp, is determined to discover the truth behind his murder. Peta Thornycroft reports
AN African National Congress leader accused of torturing the brother of chief land claims commissioner Joe Seremane in the infamous Quatro detention camp has been identified as Gabriel Mthunzi Mthembu, a senior manager in the National Intelligence Agency (NIA).
Two statements in the Mail & Guardian’s possession name Mthembu, alias Sizwe Mkhonto, as part of the team who tortured “Chief” Timothy Seremane at the camp in Angola in 1984.
Chief Seremane was later shot after a “kangaroo court” trial. The ANC labelled him as an apartheid spy in a previous submission to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
In a passionate statement to a truth commission hearing into prisons at the Old Fort in Johannesburg this week, long- standing ANC member Joe Seremane asked investigators to help him find out about his brother’s so-called trial and subsequent execution by an ANC firing squad.
He asked the truth commission to find the originals of the affidavits signed by two of his brother’s colleagues which he had sent to the ANC’s “commission of inquiry” chaired by businessman Sam Motsuenyane in 1993.
This commission considered evidence about gross human rights violations by ANC officials, but the Seremane case was never heard.
The commission never acknowledged receipt of the two documents – copies of which have now been handed to the M&G. It listed Chief Seremane as a spy. The commission said it believed Mthembu had tortured another prisoner during interrogation in Angola.
The statements tell a shocking story of persistent cruelty by members of the ANC’s feared intelligence unit Mbokodo and guards in several camps in Angola.
The statements were made by William Mashotana (MK name Sizwe Ndela) and Goitseone Gordon Moshoeu (Godfrey Pule) who, like Chief Seremane, had volunteered for service with the ANC’s military wing, Umkhonto weSizwe, after the Soweto uprising in 1976.
When they returned to South Africa in 1993 they immediately went to see Joe Seremane and told him how his younger brother had first suffered and then been killed by the ANC in Angola.
Pule says in his statement that in 1984, Chris Hani, then the MK chief, came to Quatro and took him and 11 others away and placed them under house arrest in the town of Quibaxe.
Hani “told me about what he referred to as a tragedy. A tragedy of the execution of my brother and others. He among other people mentioned Chief Seremane as part of the tragedy.”
Joe Seremane told the truth commission, as he had also done in a letter published in the M&G in 1993, that he wanted his brother’s “bones” to be brought home. He told how he had approached President Nelson Mandela, but that the president’s secretary, Mary Xadana, had told him that “many people had phoned to speak to the president about similar matters, and that I should go to the truth commission. So I did.
“I still do not know why Hani never said anything to me about Chief’s death when I saw him two months before he was assassinated in 1993.”
Seremane said that two weeks ago he had contacted one of the two young men who wrote the affidavits. “He is scared. He was shot at recently, and so he laid a charge of attempted murder, and the old Quatro people, now in the police, made sure a counter- charge of attempted murder was laid against him. So I understand if now he doesn’t want to come forward.
“The other man is in the army. I have his phone number and hope he will come forward and either make another affidavit or sign the copy of the one he originally made. It was for these young men I wanted to speak to the president. Because of their sensitive positions.”
Seremane, a doughty foe of the former government, who headed the South African Council of Churches justice department until 1993, said some ANC prisoners, like his brother, were “branded” like cattle: “MPLA soldiers were told they could shoot ANC people who were branded.”
The truth commission’s chief investigator, Dumiso Ntsebeza, told the M&G: “I will be going to the ANC and I want answers. I undertake to find out the truth for Joe Seremane.”
A National Intelligence Agency representative said: “This should be directed to the political parties involved. It has nothing to do with Intelligence.”