Wonder Hlongwa and Ann Eveleth
The role of police in the brutal Shobashobane massacre will come under the microscope for the first time next week amid fears that senior police management will try to shift the blame to a single station commander.
Eighteen Inkatha Freedom Party supporters were convicted early last year for shooting and hacking 18 African National Congress supporters to death in the tiny south coast village on Christmas morning, 1995, but the families of the victims have waited more than two years for answers to questions about why police failed to defend them.
Next week a commission of inquiry will begin to hear evidence about how police conducted a weapons raid of the ANC area the day before the attack; why police failed to heed early intelligence warnings that an attack was imminent in the area; and why local police across the valley in the iZingolweni stronghold of the attackers failed to come to the defence of the victims during the four-hour attack.
The then iZingolweni station commander Shaun van Vollenhoven claimed this week that much of the blame was being shifted into his lap, a sign that police may use this a strategy in their defence before the commission.
Rejecting as “ridiculous and far-fetched” allegations that he facilitated the attack by instructing Shobashobane residents to close their shops and stay off the roads on Christmas Day, Van Vollenhon said: “It’s a typical example of police management now trying to shift the blame on somebody else.”
Van Vollenhoven also claimed he had been denied access to legal representation and received his subpoena late. He is one of several police officers subpoenaed to answer questions at the inquiry, which is expected to last at least 10 days.
Van Vollenhoven pointed fingers at police management shortly after the attack as allegations of police complicity began to mount. But violence monitors have maintained since the massacre that he cannot escape culpability for the killings which took place in plain view of his station.
Network of Independent Monitors director Jenni Irish said the inquiry would have to look at the role of police at various levels of command. “The most obvious question of possible local police involvement in planning and assisting the attack needs to be addressed, but equally important is understanding why senior police management from area to regional level never responded to the threats of attack,” she said.
Violence monitor Mary de Haas says she phoned the police to warn them about a possible attack in Shobashobane, but no action was taken. She could not comment further because she will be giving evidence at the inquLifelong scars: Survivors of the Shobashobane massacre, like Tabane Cele, still wonder why the police didn’t come to their assistance. photograph: greg marinovich/picturenet africairy. “I will be giving evidence about my interaction with the police and about their failure,” she said.
But Van Vollenhoven, who was the local station commander at the time, says he never received information that there was a potential attack in his area. He added that the area was controlled by the Internal Stability Unit (ISU) and was patrolled by Port Shepstone police at the time. After the attack he said he could not account for the ISU’s absence from the area that night.
It is widely suspected that early warnings of the attack reached higher levels in the police echelons than the local station Van Vollenhoven commanded.
While Van Vollenhoven was officially denied legal representation because he tried to bypass area police management by sending his request directly to provincial police legal officials, he suggested the refusal could also be tied to an attempt “to make sure that I’m not prepared”. The same could also explain his late receipt of his subpeona, he said.
But advocate Marumo Moerane, who is chairing the inquiry, said he personally signed all the subpoenas and they were all served in December. Moerane could not remember the names of the other police officers he subpoenaed, but the inquiry is expected to hear extensive evidence, including that collected by former investigation task unit head Frank Dutton and then police reporting officer, advocate Neville Melville, in the months following the attack. The Dutton-Melville team compiled dockets which KwaZulu-Natal Attorney General Tim McNally declined to prosecute.
So far not a single policeman has been convicted of the Shobashobane attack, a gap that has raised long-standing questions about the efficiency of the criminal investigation team headed by director Bushy Englebrecht. Although Police Commissioner George Fivaz announced shortly after the attack that 10 officers faced possible arrest, only four were arrested. Charges against three of these were dropped shortly before the criminal trial and the fourth was acquitted due to lack of evidence at the end of the state’s case.
Fivaz appointed the commission of inquiry after a public outcry about the conduct of the police during the attack.