OWN CORRESPONDENT, Kibla Park | Tuesday 9.30pm.
A FORMER Gauteng commander of the Pan Africanist Congress’s armed wing, the Azanian People’s Liberation Army (Apla), told a Truth and Reconciliation Commission amnesty hearing on Tuesday that he ordered the Eikenhof ambush in the Vaal Triangle in March 1993 in which a woman and two children were killed in a car.
Three African National Congress cadres — Siphiwe James Bholo, 29, Sipho Samuel Gavin, 27, and Boy Titi Ndweni, 22 — known as the “Eikenhof Three”, were convicted of the murder in 1994.
Judge DJ Curlewis sentenced Bholo and Gavin to death but their sentences were later commuted to life imprisonment. Ndweni was given a 17-year jail sentence.
Committee chairman Denzel Potgieter said the amnesty committee has been approached by the Johannesburg High Court to set aside Dolo’s amnesty application in relation to Eikenhof, pending certain court proceedings.
Last month the three brought an urgent bail application before the Pretoria High Court. It was postponed when Judge Curlewis refused to hear new evidence — although he did agree that another judge could hear new evidence for the bail application.
Dolo, who is serving a life sentence for murder, has made a seperate amnesty application for attempted murder and illegal possession of arms, ammunition and explosives. He told the hearing that he ordered and led an ambush in Soweto in May 1993 in which a policeman was killed. Dolo said the attack was in response to a police swoop on the Pan-Africanist Congress offices a few weeks earlier.