MONDAY, 6.00PM:
The gardener who implicated a Truth Commission investigator in the bombing of a pub, has privately admitted to TRC chairman Archbishop Desmond Tutu that he had made false statements after having been tortured in 1994.
Tutu told a press conference on Monday that gardener Bennet Sibiya had been tortured by unnamed persons and told to memorise photographs of Dumisa Ntsebeza, chief investigator for the TRC, and his car registration.
“Sibaya said he had spent Sunday looking for me because he’s been living under a heavy burden of guilt,” Tutu said. Sibaya had begged him to call Ntsebeza so that he could ask his forgiveness, and wanted to make a public retraction.
Last week Sibiya told the commission he had seen a group of men transferring weapons into a white Audi shortly after a bomb attack on the Heidelberg tavern in Cape Town. He memorised the licence plates, which were later traced to Ntsebeza.
Ntsebeza’s lawyer told the Truth Commission last week that she had discovered that Sibaya had been given a house as a gift,and that he had substantial sums of money in a fixed deposit. Sibaya said they were gifts from a German benefactor, but did not explain the connection.
Tutu also announced that the commission had approached President Nelson Mandela and Justice Minster Dullah Omar to appoint a top-level independent inquiry to probe the allegations against Ntsebeza and whether there has been a conspiracy to discredit the Truth Commission.
Meanwhile, the full commission agreed at an emergency meeting to back Ntsebeza, saying it believed implicitly in his integrity. “This must not be construed, however, as representing a judgement on the facts in the current matter,” Tutu said.