But the TRC’s extraordinary decision will not lay the controversy surrounding the young activist to rest
Piers Pigou
With the stroke of a pen and seemingly little thought or reasoning, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) granted amnesty in late February to the four men who confessed to killing student activist Sicelo Dlomo on January 24 1988.
The confession by the Umkonto we Sizwe (MK) activists that they had carried out the execution-style killing was one of the biggest bombshells to explode during the TRC amnesty hearings, shattering the popular belief that the Soweto student activist had been eliminated by the security police.
But far from laying the matter to rest, the TRC decision leaves many questions about the assassination unanswered. Many of the discrepancies hinge on the question of whether the killers were linked to the security police at the time of the killing.
The Dlomo family, and especially Dlomo’s late mother, Sylvia, always believed the police were responsible for her son’s death. Even after the African National Congress cadres’ confession she continued to believe that somewhere the police had had a hand in the murder.
The amnesty applicants claimed Dlomo himself was a police informer and that to “protect the unit” they had summarily executed him – a seemingly fantastical version of events that appears to have been accepted by the committee. The amnesty application was opposed by Sylvia Dlomo and other family members.
Although the amnesty committee said there was no evidence that Dlomo worked with the police, the tribunal accepted the killers had acted “on the information available to them which they believed to be reliable”, and “they came to the decision honestly and accordingly believed they had to take action to protect themselves, the MK and ANC from further police investigations”. This was the crux of the committee’s decision to uphold the amnesty application.
The committee, however, failed to point out that all the “evidence” against Dlomo emanated from one man, John Dube, the overall commander of the unit.
Dube claimed that he had caught Dlomo spying on him, that Dlomo had been arrested and released on the same day despite being in possession of illegal arms, that Dlomo had “disappeared” for three months from October 1987 to January 1988, and finally that when Dube confronted him on January 24 1988, he discovered Dlomo was wearing a radio transmitter “used by intelligence operatives”.
None of the other applicants were able to present any evidence to support this version. No corroborative evidence was placed before the committee regarding Dube’s allegations that Dlomo had been spying on him or that he was arrested with weaponry and released on the same day. In terms of the latter matter, Dube claimed he had read about this arrest in the press. No such article was ever unearthed by investigators.
The committee apparently ignored witness testimony of two former colleagues of Dlomo who testified that he had not “disappeared” after his arrest and release in October 1987, but had been working quite openly at the Detainee Parent Support Committee offices in downtown Johannesburg. One of these witnesses claimed that she had even seen two of the applicants at the offices during this period.
Nobody could corroborate the allegation that the device found on Dlomo was a transmitter and the commission also ignored the family’s representations that Dlomo had for some years regularly worn a small black “Walkman” on his hip – this was well-known and provided the most reasonable explanation for the device Dube claimed was a transmitter.
None of the applicants offered any explanation of fundamental contradictions between their written and oral evidence. The committee, however, decided that “their evidence generally coincided with Dube’s testimony” and “although there were some discrepancies, these [were] not of such a nature that they amount to material contradictions.” This is perhaps one of their most mind-boggling findings.
Dube claimed he had reported the matter to senior members of MK’s special operations unit in late 1988. The TRC’s own investigations indicated that the incident was well-known within certain sections of the organisations and the suggestion by the committee that the applicants had come forward voluntarily is at odds with the fact that there was considerable pressure from within the ANC for Dube and his colleagues to confess.
Dlomo’s lawyer suggested Dube was in fact a police operative, that Dlomo had discovered this and that Dube ordered his execution to cover his own back. Dube eventually admitted that he had worked with the police and that his handler had been Anton Pretorius, a notorious Soweto security branch operative who has himself applied for amnesty for a number of murders and other incidents. Dube insisted that this was after 1990 and that he had in fact infiltrated police ranks on ANC instructions. No attempt was made by the TRC to determine the veracity of this counter-claim, and the ANC has to date remained conspicuously silent on the matter.
In the light of these inconsistencies, it remains to be seen whether the Dlomo family will challenge the committee’s findings in the high court. There is every reason to believe they have a strong case.
Piers Pigou was formerly a Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigator