MONDAY, 10.00PM
CYRIL MBATHA, one of two men convicted for the murder of Soweto doctor Abu-Baker Asvat, tried to reconcile the three different version of his story of the killing of Dr Abu-Baker Asvat before the truth commission on Monday.
Mbatha claimed his first version of events was contained in his confession used in his trial, and was tortured out of him by police. He said his second version, told to trutch commission investigators earlier this year, was also inaccurate because he knew nothing about the TRC and did not trust it with “the truth”.
He presented a third statement to the commission on Monday, in which he described visiting Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s house, where she had given his co-accused, Thulani Dlamini, the gun Mbatha used to shoot Asvat twice in the chest in his Soweto surgery. Prior to visiting Madikizela-Mandela’s house, Mbatha said Dlamini told him to book an appointment with Asvat — which Mbatha did, under a psuedonym. Asvat’s receptionist, Albertina Sisulu, took Mbatha’s thumbprint.
MONDAY, 4.00PM
Mbatha broke down in tears at the end of his evidence and begged the Asvat family for foregiveness.
“I want the Asvat family to forgive me, this comes from my heart,” he said. “All that I did, I did because I was tempted by a very clever person who was older than me, and she had all the means to convince me to do that.”
Mbatha said he and a friend were offered R20 000 to carry out the murder by Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, who told them “we would be doing it for the cause of our country”.
Mbatha told the Truth Commission that he and co-accused Thulani Dlamini visited Madikizela-Mandela who greeted them warmly and told them she “had a problem with a certain man who was disturbing her in her political work. She wanted us to remove this person.”
Dlamini had told her his revolver was not “good enough”, so she went inside the house and returned with a parcel covered in a cloth, which turned out to contain a 9mm revolver.
They then set off for the Asvat surgery, guided by a “young boy” sent by Madikizela-Mandela. This claim appears to correspond with the evidence of Katiza Cebekhulu, who said he had been selected as the guide.
MONDAY, 12.30PM
VETERAN ANC activist Albertina Sisulu was reprimanded at the Truth Commission on Monday for “trying your best to say as little as possible”.
Sisulu, wife of long-jailed ANC leader Walter Sisulu, who endured years under house arrest herself, is the key witness in the mystery death of Soweto doctor Abu-Baker Asvat, whose receptionist she was.
But after her testimony, commissioner Dumisa Ntsebeza told her: “My prima facie impression is that you are trying your very best to say as little as possible … is it because she is your comrade and the Mandelas and Sisulus go back a very long way?”
Sisulu said she had not seen Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, or her colleagues Xoliswa Falati or Katiza Cebekhulu at the Asvat surgery during the period of the football club abuctions.
She added that even if Madikizela-Mandela had visited the surgery, she could not have spoken to her as they were both banned persons. She knew nothing about a row between the doctor and Madikizela-Mandela, because her office was too far away, and denied claims by Cebekhulu that she witnessed the row.
She also contradicted a statement she made earlier in the year on a BBC television interview in which she confirmed that the handwriting on a medical card for witness Katiza Cebekhulu had been hers. On Monday she denied that the card had been filled in her own handwriting and said she had never seen Cebekhulu.