MONDAY, 3.30PM
A FORMER police general told the Johannesburg High Court on Monday that senior African National Congress leaders contacted police on the eve of an Inkatha Freedom Party march through central Johannesburg in 1994 to express their concern about the potential for conflict.
Testifying before the inquest into the deaths of 19 marchers killed in central Johannesburg on March 28 1994, Lieutenant-General Koos Calitz, formerely Witwatersrand regional commissioner, told the inquest he receivecd telephone calls from Madikizela-Mandela, Tokyo Sexwale, Cyril Ramaphosa and Joe Nhlanhla on the day before and on the morning of the march.
The march on central Johannesburg by 50 000 Inkatha Freedom Party supporters demanding constitutional guarantees for the Zulu king left at least 50 people dead in its wake, and culminated in the so-called Shell House shootings, in which several marchers were shot dead when they marched on the ANC’s Shell House headquarters.
Calitz on Mons day told the inquest that Sexwale requested police disarm the marchers. He said he told Sexwale that it was dangerous and practically impossible to disarm marchers, especially in the city. He said previous attempts to disarm Zulu crowds had resulted in bloodshed and the deaths of policemen and marchers.
Calitz said Madikizela-Mandela called him on the day of the march and asked him to visit Shell House, the headquarters of the ANC, to see the situation for himself. Several groups of marchers were in the vicinity of the building.
Calitz said he and Brigadier Zirk Gouws arrived at Shell House at about 11am on the day of the march. They were taken to the seventeenth floor boardroom where they met ANC leaders Thabo Mbeki, Pallo Jordan, Gill Marcus and Nhlanhla. While they were discussing events, they heard gunfire from the street below. Calitz said it sounded like automatic gunfire and the firing appeared to be coming from Shell House. He said the group took the lift down to the ground floor. Mbeki accompanied them to the doors of Shell House, but did not venture outside.
Calitz described the scene outside as “chaotic”. Dead bodies were lying in the street and ambulances were arriving to treat the injured, he said.
The inquest continues.