REV XUNDU: Opens hearing with a hymn and a prayer.
REV FINCA: We are going to remember those that you’re going to talk about, those who have passed away in different ways. We’ll light the candle to reflect their presence amongst us as we are going to witness about them.
Could you please stand while I read their names with reverence. We remember Deric John Whitfield, Boyce Michael Wheeler, Virginia Panziso, Jeff Wabena, Gerge Botha, Arnold Gush, Leon Meyer and Jacqueline Ann Quinn. May they rest in peace Lord and give them everlasting light. Amen.
We welcome everybody here to-day on the second day of our hearings in East London. We welcome those that are going to be testifying before this Commission, those people who are going to tell l the stories of their lives, the oppression and depravation of their as human beings. This hearing to-day will be live on radio and we ask that you will co-operate so that there is order in this hall so that all South Africans can get a clear understanding of the hearings to-day.
There are attorneys here, legal representatives who will appear before the Commission. They will be representing perpetrators as we sent them notices under Section 30 of the Truth and Reconciliation Law. If these attorneys could please approach the panel so that we can give them a stipulated time. We are going to start with perpetrators with legal representatives from mid-day however if there are people with special requests or if they want to change their time they can approach the panel so that we can organise it.
I’m going to hand over to Miss Maya to read the list of people who are going to appear before the Commission to-day.
MISS MAYA: Thank you, Mr Chairperson. This morning the tenth of June 1997 I’m going to read the list of people who are going to appear before the Commission, people whose rights were violated. I’m going to read these names in a chronological order. I’ll read the witness’s name, the victim, the nature of violation and the are of violation and then I will read the year of the incident.
The first five people that we have are people falling under the same incident when a hotel in High Gate was bombed. Doreen Rousseau who will be speaking about herself - attempted murder, Bernice Whitfield will be speaking about Deric John Whitfield who was murdered, Neville Belling will be talking about himself - attempted murder, Nkosinathi Gontshi will be speaking about himself - attempted murder, Francina Wheeler will be speaking about Boyce Michael Wheeler who was murdered. These are all the High Gate cases.
Norhoza Yenana will be speaking about Virginia Panziso who was murdered in East London in 1988, Nomakhosazana Mavubengwana will be speaking about Jeff Ngxeke Wabena who was murdered in East London in 1988.
Pralene Mora Botha will be speaking about George Botha who was murdered in Port Elizabeth in 1976, Mxolisi Leleki who will be speaking about himself - severe ill-treatment in East London in 1993.
Mandla Tobezweni who will be speaking about himself - tortured in Mdantsane in 1987, Mandla Engelani who will be speaking about himself - severe in East London (Duncan Village) in 1985.
Mxolisi Monakali will be speaking about himself - attempted murder Mdantsane in 1981, Naledi Gush-Nkula will be speaking about Arnold Gush - murdered in East London in 1990.
Christian Peter Meyer who will be speaking about Leon Lionel Meyer and Jacqueline Ann Quin who was murdered in Lesotho in 1985.
Zwelakhe Bkikitsha who will be speaking about himself - tortured in Mdantsane in 1987.
Joseph Cochran who will be speaking about himself - severe ill-treatment in East London in 1989.
Mawonga Gom who will be speaking about himself - tortured in Mdantsane from 1982 to 1986.
Mr Chairperson, number eight in our list excuse me, number seven in our list Nomakhosazana Mavubengwana has requested that she comes and gives evidence to-morrow rather than to-day as she has a bit of a problem. The High Gate incident was in 1993. Thank you Mr Chairperson.
REV FINCA: Thank you, Miss Maya. We are going to let you know that we have changed in our proceedings to-day. The families that are going to talk about the High Gate incident, we are going to start with Neville Belling instead of Doreen Rousseau.
Secondly, at eleven or eleven thirty the Commission is going to adjourn for about forty five minutes to an hour so that the Commissioners get a chance to go to High Gate where the High Gate massacre occurred. We’re going to give reverence to those who were injured and those who passed away during that incident. We would also like to inspect the site as we usually do when we deal with such matters. Thirdly, the notices I have for people who want to appear before the Commission giving their side of the story with allegations from witnesses, Mr T Jordan requests that he gives his side of the story in connection with Mxolisi Leleki’s testimony, Dudley van Heerden will represent ...(inaudible) Mdigane who has a submission in connection with Naledi Gush-Nkula’s testimony. He would like to rectify Naledi Gush-Nkula’s testimony. Mr ....(inaudible) regarding the same incident will represent Mr Citi Legol. We do not have a statement from Mr Legol on Tonga. If they are present could they please furnish us with these statements before we can call them onto the stand. Number fifteen, Zwelakhe Bkikitsha, Mr Bibi Ntonga will be representing Mr - who is apparently a perpetrator in this case. As they do not have a statement could they please provide us with that before they appear before the Commission. It is not clear to us whether Mr I.C. Clarke would like to appear before the Commission in connection with Gloyce Nomnono. We have a statement, if Mr I.C. Clark or the husband is here or Lewis Nomnono please let us know if you are present because the statement has to be read before the Commission. Subject to those alterations in our programme we will now proceed.
I will call to the podium Mr Neville Belling whom I understand is accompanied by his father, to take the stand.
REV XUNDU: Thank you, Mr Chairman. Can I find out the name of the other gentleman. Who is with Neville? He’s also Neville. Thank you. I’m going to ask you to take the oath starting with the Jnr. You don’t have to stand but I’m going to ask you to take the oath.
MR NEVILLE BELLING (JNR): (sworn states)
MR NEVILLE BELLING (SNR): (sworn states)
REV FINCA: Thank you, we welcome Neville Belling Junior and Senior. We will ask Mr Sandi to direct some questions based on the statement that you have supplied to the Commission and give you a chance to state your evidence to the Commission.
MR SANDI: Thank you, Mr Chairman. Good morning Mr Belling, let me say I’m glad that we have eventually met because we’ve been doing a lot of talking on the phone over the past few days. To avoid confusion when I ask a question to the father I will say Mr Belling Senior and when the question is directed to the son I will say Mr Belling Junior. As the Chairman of the panel has already stated I will ask a few questions. The idea is not to trick you or to try to say that your story is not true, the idea is simply to assist you to present your evidence to the Commission as it has been stated in your statement. I’m not quite sure how you’re going to present your evidence, are we going to start with Mr Belling the Junior and then the father to assist him?
MR BELLING: We’ll leave it to you.
MR SANDI: Okay. Mr Belling Junior as I go through your statement it appears that you will be talking about the shooting which occurred at the High Gate Hotel on the first of May 1993, is that correct?
MR BELLING (JNR): Yes, that’s correct.
MR SANDI: According to that statement you were one of the people who were shot on that day, is that correct?
MR BELLING (JNR): That’s correct.
MR SANDI: Can I now hand over to you to tell the whole story, how it happened what you saw and so on.
MR BELLING (JNR): Okay. On Saturday the first of May 1993 shortly before ten p.m. my cousin Roland Parker and I arrived at the High Gate Hotel, East London. On our arrival we immediately entered the bar and took up seating at the bar counter near the doorway to the poolroom, we then ordered bears from the bartender and shortly after our drinks had arrived I suddenly heard the sound of running footsteps approaching the entrance. I then turned my head to the right and looked directly at the bar entrance where I then saw a Black male person appearing in the doorway. This Black male was wearing black trousers, white shirt and a brownish coloured jacket. This Black male was carrying a rifle in his hand the make of which is unknown to me. I’d just entered the bar area and having just entered the bar area this Black male came to a halt and he then directed the barrel of the firearm to my position. I then chose for my well-being and dived to my left pulling my cousin Roland Parker to the ground with me.
On my crashing to the floor I suddenly felt that I had lost the feeling of my left arm and at this stage I was looking away from the door and although unable to see what was taking place I heard the gunman continue to direct fire at the patrons in the bar. While the shooting continued I suddenly heard a loud explosion coming from inside the bar area after which the light became dull. I then suddenly heard something roll on the floor behind me and fearing that this object was an explosive device I braced myself for a further explosion. No explosion came and I heard ssss sound over the gunfire. I then realised that teargas had been set off in the bar and I was choking on the teargas. Shortly after my having determined that the teargas was inside the bar area the shooting suddenly ceased. I then dragged myself into the conference room to escape the teargas and was later removed from this area by the paramedics.
As a result of this attack I sustained injuries of a serious nature to my left arm, left hip and also internal injuries and I feel that nobody had the right or permission to cause such injuries to me or attempt to take my life.
MR SANDI: Was anyone arrested in connection with this incident?
MR BELLING (JNR): I do not know.
MR SANDI: No-one has been taken to court on charges of having done this?
MR BELLING (SNR): No. The guy my son identified, he identified him from photos that were shown to him long afterwards and then it was told to me at a later stage that this very same guy that he identified as the guy who actually did the shooting towards them was shot and killed in Umtata in a robbery case, an armed robbery case there. So apparently he was shot then and they didn’t have any other person, they didn’t catch anybody in any case.
MR SANDI: So nothing has happened by way of criminal prosecution?
MR BELLING (SNR): No, nothing on that.
MR SANDI: Were you taken to hospital after the incident?
MR BELLING (JNR): Yes, I was.
MR SANDI: Can we talk about that part of it?
MR BELLING (JNR): When I arrived at casualty I had to wait for the specialist to arrive, I was conscious all the time. At that stage they only knew of my left arm that was shot because I was lying on my back and I was busy complaining about back pain. When the specialist arrived they turned me over on my side and found three bullet holes in my back after which they immediately rushed me to theatre. By the time I got to theatre I was unconscious as I had hardly had any blood in my body.
MR SANDI: Are you receiving any medical treatment to-day for the injuries sustained?
MR BELLING (JNR): Yes, I am.
MR SANDI: Can you talk about that?
MR BELLING (JNR): My medication?
MR SANDI: Yes.
MR BELLING (JNR): Well at this stage I’m going through six hundred tablets a month for pain and sleeping. I suffer from dizziness because of the explosion the balancing of my ears was damaged.
MR SANDI: I understand from your statement you were twenty at the time of the incident.
MR BELLING (JNR): Yes, I was.
MR SANDI: Were you a scholar or were you working?
MR BELLING (JNR): I was working at that stage.
MR SANDI: You’re not working at the moment?
MR BELLING (JNR): No, I’m not.
MR SANDI: Is that as a result of the shooting you sustained?
MR BELLING (JNR): Yes, that’s right.
MR SANDI: Is there anything Mr Belling Senior that you want to add to the testimony?
MR BELLING (SNR): He’s gone through a lot of pain and suffering. He was in hospital for a long, long time and he’s been through numerous operations, three different operations. His heart had stopped and they battled to revive him due to the fact that all the operations he was having. He had up to three operations sometimes in one week which is too much for an individual and this caused the heart muscles to weaken. I spoke to the anesthetist and he explain why. They were very scared to take him on at any stage to do any operations as there was a big problem to operate on him because the fear was that he wouldn’t come out of the anesthetic again. He’s had a lot of damage to himself and the specialist on the very first operation after the shooting told me that for the next thirty years he’ll be going in and out or hospital for different operations. The damage is so bad to his hip that they cannot replace his hip which needs replacement because a replaced hip only lasts for about ten years and they can only replace it twice. Therefore he’s got to wait until he’s in his fifties before he can have a hip replacement so until then he has to suffer with that hip and other ailments that he’s got and so on for which he is taking medication.
The other side which I’d like to mention to the Commission is what must be taken into consideration is his social lifestyle at his age I mean these are things which sometimes we do not think about. I’m discussing it because he perhaps wouldn’t mention these things and to me it’s not funny at all because at his age his friends are getting married and this type of thing. If you go that far right into it which is not very nice for him living like that, he’s sort of living on his own, he cannot socialise much in various places. He’s also got a colostomy, a permanent colostomy which will never be changed. That has been told to us. In the doctors’ reports which I’ve given to the Commission you can go through them at any other stage and you can see what I’m getting at. Even the Government on the Welfare side, their panel of doctors booked him as eighty percent disabled when they read these statements and I don’t why this has actually taken so long. I’d like to know, to find out if the Commission can go further with it. I have got statements here which I’ve sent in long ago, long before the Truth Commission was ever thought of, I’ve been working on this case ever since then but I never seem to get through to anybody. The first lot of documentation I sent through registered and so on didn’t go through it just disappeared and nobody knew what was going on. I eventually thought I must get somebody in Parliament to assist me now that we can talk directly. I eventually got hold of Senator Ray Radie. Everything with regard to what we’re discussing here you can refer back to Senator Ray Radie, he helped us out a lot to get through so that we can get into the Truth Commission. We were supposed to be in the first Truth Commission that came to East London but nobody called us up and the week after they’d finished off then only they got hold of us which was too late. Ray Radie had already spoken to them about us going in there otherwise we would have been through this Truth Commission then already but the delays went on and on. I’ve got letters here which I can show you which was now recently, last month that Ray Radie was sending to the Commission to get going with it and so on you know. There’s the claims that I’ve made you know which are claims to the Commission for compensation to him. That is all on paper and I won’t mention that now if you don’t want me to mention it but it is here, you’ve got it all there too because I’ve given it all in so we can go through those things.
On his side of it the basic fact is he is disabled for life, he’s got no social life anymore, he’s got a future to look at ahead of him and to look after him. That is why I’ve made that claim so that he can look after himself because my wife and I are not going to be around forever. Also this whole issue here has turned our whole lifestyle upside down. We are completely in a shambles since this has happened, it’s ripped us to pieces and my wife is ... it’s taken twenty years out of our lives, this issue. It was not funny at all and even now he’s got a lot of chances of having heart attacks, strokes and all this. There’s a lot to take into consideration and the medical side is a terrible issue because he’s now suffering with all sorts of things. He’s developed ulcers at a young age.
The other side of it is they changed the medication around to try and prevent the ulcers but all this medication ... what about is kidneys, he’s got a chance of his kidneys collapsing and so on with all this medication. We’ve got to think of all these things, it’s not you know funny to even ... you can’t even sleep nice and so on. He doesn’t sleep properly, he’s taking sleeping tablets. He’s got to live on these things and so on and he can’t even sit in one place even now he’s been complaining that he’s getting a lot of pain again. The hip is completely shattered, it looked like a spiderweb inside there and the specialist said to me only nature can take it’s course now because they cannot put a new hip in hip and he has to carry on suffering until he’s here in his fifties which is a long time until he can get a new hip change you know. This is a very bad business and so on, very bad.
MR SANDI: Do I understand you to say that you are not happy with the medical treatment he is receiving?
MR BELLING (SNR): No, the medical treatment is excellent but it’s the amount that he’s got to take due to the damage that’s has been caused by him being shot which is the big thing. The thing is what I’m getting at too is, I’d like to mention to the Commission that these were really innocent people, I’m talking about High Gate, King William’s Town, Queenstown and the St James Church. These were completely innocent people they had no connections or anything to do with political or criminal activities whatsoever. I feel that these are the people that should be brought in as priority, do you understand. They’ve never been in political issues that there was cause for them to be shot and so on. They were completely innocent people. Completely innocent. So I feel that all in all those four I mentioned should be given priority, do you understand? I don’t want to push other people away or anything but these are the completely innocent people, they had nothing to do with any political issues at all that they got involved in those issues to be shot or gave anybody any reason to shoot them. There was no reason whatsoever for these people to be shot. Completely on a social basis and they got shot. He went to his cousin and for the first time they went into a pub they went to the Kentucky Fried Chicken and on their way back they decided to go and play a bit of pool. These are not guys who go and live in the pub, they’ve not those type of guys. They just went in there to go and play snooker and they decided they will have a quick beer. They didn’t even have anything out of that beer. I saw it with my own eyes, I even took video footage of the whole issue because I was in the force myself and the blokes let me in there to have a look. I know exactly what that place looked like when I went in there. Everything was there, their change was lying there, their cigarettes, lighter and everything was there in place where they fell when they got shot at that particular place. It was totally uncalled for. It was completely uncalled for.
MR SANDI: Are there any specific requests that you would like to raise to this Commission so that it can pass them over to the State President and his colleagues?
MR BELLING (SNR): As far as I’m concerned the ball is in the court of the Government, okay. I say previous and present Government the ball is in their court and they must just pay out to compensate because there is an Act here that is in one of my statements. There is a Terrorists Act. I’ve got that Act in here where they should be paid out in any Terrorist activities and so on. I’ve got it here. I’ve given all these to the Commission too, everything is there. If you want to at some stage I can go through it with you to point these things out and so on you know then I can explain better on the issue.
MR SANDI: Are you talking about the Law pertaining to compensation to victims of terrorism?
MR BELLING (SNR): That’s right.
MR SANDI: We’ll talk a lot more about that when you show us the documents. Is there any other specific request that you would like to ... (interrupted)
MR BELLING (SNR): I would like to request to the Commission and you can pass that over, that these folks get compensated which I feel is no more than fair that they get compensated for their injuries. Take a case like him now or anyone else as a matter of fact I’d like to talk on behalf of the other folks too but being injured like this is not funny. In to-day’s time the cost of living is going up and up heavily. What’s it going to cost in another twenty five or thirty years time. Terrible. You know this is not funny. They can get that out they can sort something out. He can work on something that he can keep himself occupied. Do you understand? To make a little business or whatever he wants to do with it. He can keep himself occupied. At the moment he can’t work and he’s on a very small pension from the Company which is very good. He’s only on a very small paid pension and he can’t live on that and then there’s the medical aid which is assisting him yes but there is certain amounts he’s got to pay out and he pays out of the pension side of it so what does he really get out of his pension? Nothing he’s sitting and battling. So he needs that compensation which I feel is no more than right that the Government pay out.
MR SANDI: I’m sorry for the interruption Mr Belling, before we conclude and I hand you over to the Chairman I see that in the statement there’s something about psychological treatment. Would you like to explain that very briefly?
MR BELLING (SNR): Yes, he was sent in for psychological treatment to sort of rehabilitate his mind and so on. Coming from that area of shock that they went through has actually built up a lot of trauma in these guys and still now it’s never to be forgotten. He did go to Doctor Woods and he went on treatment and then Doctor Woods said that there’s nothing much that they can do for the simple reason that it’s got to be dealt with by him personally that he himself is the only one who can rehabilitate himself and sort it out. This was after Doctor Woods had gone through him. I can give you the name too. Doctor Woods. Treatment did not improve any symptoms at all. He did not improve after the treatment he had with the Psychologists. So he did go through all that and the specialist turned around and said he’ll have to go through with it but how long it’s going to take him is another story but these guys cannot forget the stuff.
MR SANDI: Thank you very much Mr Belling Senior and Mr Belling Junior. If there are any issues or information that you’ve forgotten to convey to the Commission you have time to do so when my colleagues from the panel ask questions. Thank you very much Sir, thank you Mr Chairman.
REV FINCA: June Crichton?
MS CRICHTON: Mr Belling Junior I just want to make a statement first and then ask you a question. I really do admire your courage in coming forward to-day considering the pain that you are in now. I want to clarify one thing, you are getting a disability grant is that correct?
MR BELLING (JNR): I’m not getting a disability grant I’m getting a pension from my work.
MS CRICHTON: You’re getting a pension from your work. Right. The second thing is just to ask you quite a personal question relating to how you actually feel about this matter yourself. We’ve heard a lot from your father about his feelings about it, can you just tell me what you feel even if it’s contradictory to what your father might have said.
MR BELLING (JNR): I feel very bitter about it. As my father said I’ve got no social life and I’m the age of twenty four now. I see my friends go ahead enjoying their life which I can’t do at this stage.
MS CRICHTON: Your father mentioned that should there be compensation you might consider having a small business .. (end of tape)
REV FINCA: Just one question to Mr Neville Belling Junior. It’s a question about your attitude towards this process of perpetrators of extreme acts of violence coming forward to own up to what they’ve done, what will your feeling be when a person who is responsible for destroying your life in the manner in which it has been destroyed if you were to come forward and confess and ask for amnesty?
MR BELLING (JNR): I don’t in my opinion feel that they should get amnesty. If they knew what we went through, the pain and the suffering, the pain you can’t explain it’s unexplainable I can’t explain the pain I went through. There were days when I felt as if I was dying and I was dying at some stage and it’s hard to forgive a person for that for what they’d done.
REV FINCA: Your attitude would be that having gone through what you have gone through those who are responsible for these acts must face the consequences of that by going to jail and serving their full sentence?
MR BELLING (JNR): Yes, I do.
REV FINCA: Mr Belling Senior you are a father to your son and you are able to articulate the pain that the family has gone through, I would want to direct the same question to you. How do you see this?
MR BELLING (SNR): I see it in the same light because they knew before they went there what their intentions were ... (interrupted)
REV FINCA: Turn the mike towards you.
MR BELLING (SNR): They knew before they went there what their intentions were so to me it’s a premeditated issue they’d already planned it because according to the witnesses I won’t mention it now but according to the witnesses there these people were sitting and having something to eat there and they got up and opened their jackets and they just ... or opened up the butts of the AK47’s and then they took off and that’s when they started shooting. So they were there long before, they had already sized the whole place up. These guys knew what they were doing before they even went there they knew what their intentions were so there’s no argument that it was done on the spur of the moment or anything like that. What he’s gone through is terrible. This guy had septicemia, he nearly died like he said he nearly died a couple of time without the heart problems. The one specialist phoned me at twenty to six on a Saturday morning, I’ll never forget it and he said to me Mr Belling I’ve got to rush your son into theatre because if we don’t operate he’s going to die and if we do operate he’s only got a fifty percent chance. Now you must hear something like that. It’s not funny really it’s not funny. This went on and on.
My wife was working and came home at night, we had a nurse looking after him for five days a week because he had a huge hole and I’m not exaggerating of that size on his leg. They had to drain it three or four times a day and their was an AK47 bullet in the leg and every time they X-rayed I marked of the X-rays and so on the bullet had disappeared. In the meantime it was moving up and down his leg. We’ve got the bullet. I should have brought it with me it was corroded and a badly corroded bullet. This is the type that the terrorist used. They come out of all the filthy places and I know because I’ve dealt with this before. Anyway with all the septicemia and so on he nearly died a few times and they had to operate on him and this was terrible things he had to go through. He’s had many operations on his hip. The authopedics had to sort him out. This guy went through endless pain and then my wife had to deal with him when she came home because the nurse went off. Many of the times she’d work right through the night with him and went back to work the next day with no sleep. This was killing to all of us it wasn’t funny at all. We had no lifestyle at all. There was no ways we could go out or anything like that not that we were people to do that but Saturdays, Sundays and right through the nights we went on and on with him to fight with him. I even built everything, an authopedic bed at home even on top of that monkey chain. I built all of that because I’m a versatile guy, I can do welding and that type of thing. I made all these things better than what they had in hospital. I had everything there that he could try to do exercises with weights. We went through everything and everything costs money. I’ve got no money left either because of all this. My money is also finished. We spent everything on him. It runs into money all the time it just runs into thousands of rands and it doesn’t stop, it doesn’t stop at all.
I’m just trying to explain to the Commission how we went through this whole issue and we still have got problems with him and he still goes to the doctors now and again although he’s settled down a lot. Our biggest problem is all this pain that he has, that he lives with. He’s got to take six hundred tablets a month which is not very funny at all. He’s forced to take them, he’s got to take them otherwise he can’t move around in any way. He’s still on crutches and he’ll be like this and suffer like this until he’s fifty odd. He’s got a colostomy bag too. That’s not a funny thing to have either because you can’t be in company with a colostomy bag and this type of thing. There’s nothing nice about it at all. We went through compete hell with this issue really and it’s just buggerd our whole life up completely. It’s messed our whole life up.
I feel that the Government should look at compensating these people. We were talking about a little business. It might be something small that he can keep himself and his mind occupied so that he can try and drift away from this issue that he’s been through because it’s never going to leave him completely. Even his cousin that was with him, if something bangs next to him this guy takes off like a bullet and he goes down on his tummy. He’s still very, very nervous this guy. He’s been going for treatment too but he was the worst hit out of them all except for those people that were shot and killed and also those who lost ... like Webber lost his arm and so on and Doreen and these people, they also got badly injured. He was really the worst hit. He was living in hospital all the time, all the operations he’s had is unbelievable. I’ve handed all the reports from all the specialists to the Commission so that you people can go through them and study them whenever you like. I’ve given you copies of that. Then you’ll really see what he went through.
REV FINCA: Thank you very much Mr Belling Senior you have referred to this as a premeditated act of brutal murder.
MR BELLING (SNR): Yes.
REV FINCA: And you have given us a glimpse of the kind of suffering that your family went through and how your life has been totally changed by one act of brutal even mad act of murder. You have referred to people who are victims of the High Gate murder and King William’s Town and Queenstown in this region and the church in Cape Town. You say that those people who are responsible for this must really be taken to court and face the consequences of their actions. Would you say the same for all people who have committed acts of murder during the conflicts of the past or would you feel that these four cases should be treated differently from the rest of the cases?
MR BELLING (SNR): I feel personally that it’s an act of cowardice because they’re hitting soft targets so called soft targets. These so called soft targets are targets where there’s no firing back, those people have not firearms with them and that is why they go in and attack those people that they know that can’t fire back at them and then they take off and run away but if somebody does shoot back at them and I’ve see it with my own eyes already, they run right out of their boots to get away they even throw their firearms away. The thing is these four places I feel that they were real honest soft target areas.
Take the Church for instance there they’re serving the Lord. This is where our big problem is that we have in this country too because Satan is leading everything and we must realise that the only way there is going to be peace or any peace that will come only one way and that is everybody opens their hearts to the Lord that’s knocking on that door then only then there will be peace otherwise there will be no peace and that is for sure. They allow Satan to take over and guide them and put everything into their heads and that’s exactly what is happening and we bypass that issue by not looking up to the Lord and having the powers and the spirits of the Lord upon you then only you will be in a safe situation but then you have to carry on otherwise Satan chases you all the time. He insisted to be baptised on the twenty eighth of February 1993 and he insisted to be baptised in a new Church of ours that opened up and then he was shot in that May and I explained to them afterwards that is where Satan is chasing you. This is one of the reasons where you got involved in that. How did he get out of all this? Only by prayers and the Lord’s powers to guide the specialists to do the operations to get him through. That’s the only thing that brought him through. We’ve got to look upon the Lord instead of looking at all these wild things that’s going on. It’s all Satan that’s driving these things into everybody. That is the big mistake we are looking at whereas if we open our hearts to the Lord let him come in then we will have peace in the world not only here in South Africa I’m talking about the world. Look right around us at what is going on, the most terrible things are happening, cruel things that one would never even have imagined seeing. I would like to say that those four areas are real soft targets they should never have just been hit like that. That was a cowardly act as far as I’m concerned. These people should be sorted out in a very harsh manner as to what the law takes it to. That’s what I’d like to see because these people are all in a bad situation especially a Church. How can they go and hit on a Church? They’re going to answer to the biggest judge of all and that’s God our Father in heaven. That’s the one they’re going to answer to for sure, sure. They’re going to all answer to Him so we’re not even worried what happens here. That day is coming, we will all go through that day. That day’s coming and judgement will be done. All those perpetrators they will for ever live in condemnation that’s for sure. We look upon it that way again.
REV FINCA: Thank you Mr Belling. Last question, Reverend Xundu?
REV XUNDU: Just to get the thing into perspective for my understanding, you are saying that all perpetrators should go the same route of being taken to court be they Sharpeville where people were just massacred without having guns, be they June the sixteenth. Shall we raise those names and say the amnesty process is irrelevant because I think that you are making a statement which I think makes the amnesty process an irrelevant process in terms of reconciliation for South Africa. I just want to get it on record that you are saying that all those people who have been perpetrators like in Sharpeville on June the sixteenth who suffered at the hands of the police and Maduna State in Uitenhage were just mowed down. That those people who committed that in your opinion should not be granted amnesty, they should be charge and imprisoned.
MR BELLING (SNR): Well, they did the damage they should have thought first and thought about the Lord first before they did things like that. They are doing acts and deeds for Satan himself. It’s acts of Satan that is going through .............. What he puts in their minds and they should have thought of that fist but to take an act like that and put it into action like if I had to go and start mowing people down here then I should be sorted out for that. Never mind who he is, who the person is. They should be sorted out according to the laws of the country. It should be sorted out and I feel the maximum should be dealt with, with these people because this is not the way that we should be living. That is why there is all this conflict. I don’t care who the person is White or Black there’s no discrimination with me at all. I look at the criminal that’s what I look at. I don’t care who he is if he’s done wrong he’s done wrong and that’s it. So then they should be sorted out.
REV FINCA: Mr Belling thank you very much, thank you Mr Belling Junior. You have told us that you are in extreme pain and I don’t know whether you are going to wait for the rest of the High Gate testimonies to be heard or do you want us to release you straight away? There are still four more other people from the High Gate incident who want to testify. Are you going to remain or do you want to be released?
MR BELLING (SNR): He’ll remain here.
REV FINCA: You’ll remain, thank you very much. I will convey a word of thanks to you all after you’ve all testified.
MR BELLING (SNR): Could I ask one other questions. With all due respect to the Commission is it not going to take another four years before we hear of any progress? I’m saying this with all due respect to the Commission because this had been a nightmare I’ve even got more grey hairs that my other grey hairs in these four years.
REV FINCA: The matter is completely out of our hands Mr Belling, what we do is to take the information from victims compile a report to the President and then the President has to act.
MR BELLING (SNR): I understand that’s why I say with due respect I would be happy if we could hear as soon as possible.
REV FINCA: Thank you.
MR BELLING (SNR): Thank you very much.
