On 15 October 1987, the men fired several shots at Ms Tshabalala’s moving vehicle outside her business premises in Clermont. She survived the attack. On the evening of the 10 February 1988, Pearl Tshabalala was shot dead in front of her five-year-old child as she was leaving her business in Clermont [KZN/MM/992/DN].
On 21 February 1988, Mr Obed Mthembu and his wife Zuzwe survived an attempt on their lives. Obed Mthembu, who chaired the North Coast Chamber of Commerce, was opposed to incorporation and had delivered a speech at Pearl Tshabalala’s funeral just four days earlier.
Taxi owner Nicholas Mkhize was killed on 15 July 1988. He, too, was a prominent businessman opposed to incorporation. He was shot dead by Mzisi Hlophe [AM1779/96], who was later convicted for this murder.
On 28 February 1988, Jamile instructed a ‘Caprivi trainee’ to kill UDF supporter Emmanuel Norman Khuzwayo, who was also opposed to the incorporation of Clermont into KwaZulu. Again, Jamile asked Mzisi Hlophe [AM1779/96] to accompany the assassin as a guide. Khuzwayo was killed on the same day.
191 In 1991, Jamile and Hlophe appeared in court facing fifteen charges, including five counts of murder, seven of attempted murder, and three of incitement to murder. In the indictment, Jamile was accused of being involved between 1987 and 1989 in the killing of UDF-associated persons opposed to the incorporation of Clermont into KwaZulu. Two ‘Caprivi trainees’ who were implicated during the trial, Zweli Dlamini and Vela Mchunu, were hidden by the KZP until it was over. Owing to the inability of the police to trace these two suspects and other witnesses, Jamile was convicted on only two counts: one of murder and one of attempted murder. Hlophe was convicted on two counts of murder. Jamile was sentenced to life imprisonment but was released in terms of the Indemnity Act of 1992. He had served just one year of his sentence. Hlophe was granted amnesty by the Commission in 1996.
THE COMMISSION FINDS SAMUEL JAMILE ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE GROSS VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS OF CAPRIVI TRAINEES IN CLERMONT TOWNSHIP.
Sabotage and bombings
192 In April 1984, Mr Anamalai ‘Daya’ Rengasamy and Mr Leelavathi Rengasamy were killed and approximately twenty people were injured in a car bomb explosion on the Durban Esplanade. Less than a fortnight later, on 13 May 1984, there was an RPG-7 attack on the Mobil Oil Refinery, Durban. In an ensuing shoot-out at the refinery, four insurgents and three bystanders were killed. The Security Branch claimed that the four dead men could be linked to the fatal car bomb explosion on the Esplanade, as well as other attacks over the previous two years.
193 On 12 July 1984, five people were killed and twenty-seven injured in a car bomb explosion on Bluff Road, Durban. Mr Oliver Tambo asserted that the bomb had been intended for a military convoy and condemned the bombers for being “inexcusably careless” by causing civilian casualties.
Five people were killed and over sixty injured in a bomb explosion on 23 December 1985 in a shopping centre at the upper South Coast seaside town of Amanzimtoti. The limpet mine had been placed in a refuse bin outside the Sanlam shopping centre. Most of the victims were holidaymakers doing last minute Christmas shopping.
Mr Sibusiso Andrew Zondo (19) was arrested in connection with the bombing in February 1986. Two other MK members thought also to have been involved in the bombing, Mr Phumezo Nxiweni (20) and Mr Sipho Stanley Bhila (31), were subsequently executed by the police (see above).
The state’s main accomplice witness in the case, a Mr Mofokeng, told the court that he provided the limpet mine and accompanied Zondo to the shopping centre. Mofokeng claimed that the explosion was in retaliation for the South African security forces’ raid on Maseru, Lesotho four days earlier, in which nine people were killed.
Zondo, who admitted his role in the bombing, was convicted and given five death sentences. He was executed on 9 September 1986.
Mr Cornelius Smit, whose son Johan died in the explosion, told the Commission that he saw his son as a martyr whose death had helped usher in the new South Africa [JB00193/02/PS]. Other victims of the explosion
VOLUME 3 CHAPTER 3 Regional Profile: Natal and KwaZulu PAGE 229