Chiara Carter
Deputy President Thabo Mbeki’s brother is one of the missing African National Congress guerrillas whose fate the Truth and Reconciliation Commission failed to establish while probing human rights abuses committed at the ANC’s notorious Quatro camp.
Commissioners at an in-camera hearing earlier this year questioned General Andrew Masondo, the former ANC Angola commissar, about the disappearance of Jama Mbeki. Details of the hearing were leaked to the Mail & Guardian this week.
Masondo confirmed at the hearing that Jama Mbeki disappeared while in exile, but said claims that he had been executed in Angola were untrue.
“All I know is Jama Mbeki disappeared in Botswana. We in the ANC were worried,” he said.
Masondo said he dismissed rumours about Jama Mbeki’s disappearance because Thabo Mbeki had continually asked him for information. “When Jama disappeared, Thabo kept asking me: commissioner, what do you know, do you know anything? So I dismissed it, but I have no facts either way.”
The questions put to Masondo were apparently based on claims made to the commission’s investigative unit by an anonymous source in the ANC.
Jama Mbeki’s disappearance was not the only tragedy for the Mbeki family. The commission was also asked to investigate the disappearance of Thabo Mbeki’s son, Monwabisi, who vanished after leaving the country in 1981.
The boy’s mother, Olive Nokwanda Mpahlwa, said former exiles had told her that they had seen her son in exile in the 1980s. The commission failed to find out what happened to him.
The questions put to Masondo were part of a truth commission probe into complaints received about human rights abuses at Quatro. These included the imprisonment, alleged torture and subsequent execution of Timothy Seremane, brother of former land claims commissioner Joe Seremane.
One of the men accused of torturing Seremane, former Quatro commander Mthunzi Gabriel “Sizwe” Mthembu, has asked the commission for amnesty for assaulting Seremane.
The amnesty application is understood to provide much the same information as the testimony made to the commission by Mthembu during a section 29 hearing earlier this year.
At this hearing,EMthembu told commissioners he thought Seremane “might have been beaten up” while being questioned as to whether he was a spy. However, he denied claims by two inmates that Seremane was injured so badly he was unrecognisable. Later in the hearing, Mthembu conceded that he “might” have “klapped [hit]” Seremane during interrogation.
Mthembu said other ANC senior officials including his deputy, Lulamile Dantile, Chief of Staff Sam Mnisi, Joseph Vupe and a Captain Lindswi also questioned Seremane. He said ANC intelligence head Mzwai Piliso might have questioned Seremane.
During the hearing, he told the commission about tension between cadres at the camp as well as poor living conditions.
He said although there was a standing order that force should not be used, Piliso had on occasion said interrogators should use whatever means necessary to get vital information.
Mthembu said he had no doubt Seremane was a spy because he had been named by several people who were questioned. He did not say whether they provided this information spontaneously or were prompted by interrogators.
He did not know if the ANC verified claims that Seremane and others in the “spy ring” were handled by a Sergeant Mathebula based in Mafikeng as alleged by the ANC.
Prior to his arrest, Seremane had raised eyebrows with his conduct, which included wrecking cars and harshly punishing cadres.
Mthembu said Seremane was arrested after being named a spy by a man who had escaped only to be recaptured by Seremane and returned to camp badly beaten.