TRC Final Report

Volume 2

Chapter 4

Subsection 18

Torture

159 The ANC list included people who died from assault “as a result of excessively harsh treatment after committing breaches of discipline”. These included Mr Ntobeko Mabukane (MK Similo Lobengu) who died in 1979; Mr Isaac Motsoatsila (MK Oupa Moloi) who died in 1981; Mr Thamsanqa Ndunge (MK Joel Mahlathini Gxekwa) died in 1981; MK Amos Tsetsane, died in 1979; Mr Pharasi Motlalentoa (MK Elick Mabuza) who died in 1981 and Mr Walter Daka (MK Mr Reggie Mathengele) who died in 1981.

160 At the ‘recall hearing’, the ANC acknowledged that it used torture to extract confessions from those suspected of being enemy agents. This occurred especially in the period of the ‘spy scare’ of 1981. At the Skweyiya Commission, Mr Mzwai Piliso, the head of NAT, said that he had taken part in the beating of suspects in 1981. A plot to assassinate certain ANC members had been uncovered and suspects were interrogated over a period of two weeks. The suspects were beaten on the soles of their feet in Mr Piliso’s presence, because other parts of the body “easily rupture”. Mr Piliso justified this treatment on the basis that he wanted information and he wanted it “at any cost”. At the same hearings, Mr Mountain Xhoso justified the torture of Mr Keith McKenzie [JB05820/02PS] in 1987, also on the basis that he had information which had “life-or-death” implications for other people.

161 Evidence before the Commission shows that torture was used by members of NAT to extract confessions from suspected agents in the period from 1979 to 1989. Mr Gabriel Mthembu explained the circumstances in which this occurred:

Suspects were believed to be harbouring crucial information that could result in the death or arrest of comrades as well as the exposure of arms caches … Therefore the possible use of force was seen as a preventative measure under the circumstances.

162 Mthembu told the Commission that the ANC was generally very cautious about extracting information under duress. However, said Mthembu, “there were extreme circumstances where we literally had to scare off somebody” and in some of these cases, detainees were beaten. Also beaten were prisoners who had escaped and were recaptured. Persons found responsible for raping Angolan women were beaten “before being sentenced to death by the tribunal”.

163 Members of MK selected for intelligence work were sent to the USSR and/or the German Democratic Republic (GDR) for training in 1978 and 1979. At a section 29 hearing, Gabriel Mthembu testified that he was sent to the GDR for six months initial training, and then for a further course of specialised training in security and intelligence. He testified that the standard of training in the GDR was high, and that he was trained in counter-intelligence including the thorough screening of new recruits and the assessment of the potential of new recruits.

164 The Operations Report of the NAT states that the training received “emphasised that the use of force was counter-productive, and stressed the use of the intellect”. The NAT report provides details of interrogation techniques employed:

Various techniques were used in interrogation. It was common to ensure that suspects were sitting in uncomfortable positions to put pressure on them. Using force was explicitly against policy, but this did occur at times, particularly in cases where the Department was aware that lives of other people in the field were at stake. There were some cases in which suspects were severely beaten, particularly before 1985.

165 Confessions obtained under these circumstances were used to prove the complicity of the suspect before an ad hoc tribunal.

166 Torture (which is intentional and purposive cruelty, usually designed to obtain information or a confession) was not used in a systematic or widespread way by the ANC. It was used by a limited number of ANC members who were members of the security department and in specific time periods. It was not an accepted practice within the ANC and was not used for most of the three decades with which the Commission is concerned.

167 The relatively low number of such violations and the limited extent to which they occurred demonstrate that torture was not a policy of the ANC. The Commission nonetheless finds that the use of torture was unacceptable whatever the circumstances. There are no extenuating circumstances for torture; there is no cause which is so just that torture can be justified in fighting for it.

168 In addition, it must be accepted that any confessions obtained through torture are invalid, and people who were executed as a result of such confessions must also be considered victims of a gross violation of their rights – whether or not there was substance in their conviction, and whether or not they themselves were also perpetrators of human rights violations or were indirectly responsible for such violations.

169 The Commission received victim statements from a number of people who experienced torture at the hands of the ANC, and a few further statements from people who claimed that others were tortured by the ANC.

170 Mr Diliza Mthembu [JB00336/01GTSOW] told the Commission he was detained for over four years in Quatro camp and subjected to various forms of torture. Mthembu is currently a staff sergeant in the SANDF. He was one of the ‘Soweto generation’ who left South Africa in 1976 to join the ANC. He spent the following twelve years in Angola, became an MK Commander and, in 1981, was appointed chief representative of the ANC in Benguela province.

171 Mthembu was detained at Viana camp and Quatro on several occasions. He told the Commission that his torture included being given electric shocks, being suffocated with gas masks, hit with broom sticks all over his body, hit with a coffee tree branch on the buttocks continuously for a whole day, forced at gun point to simulate sexual intercourse with a tree; forced to chop down a tree full of bees and to climb a tree full of wasps; forced to undress and lie on the ground among ants, and forced to pull a water tank.

172 Mthembu also referred to food deprivation in Quatro which he claims led to the deaths of Mr Selby Ntuli and Mr Ben Ntibane [JB00336/01GTSOW]. Mr Ronnie Masango makes the same allegation about the deaths of Ntuli and Ntibane.

173 Mr Gordon Moshoeu [CT02913/OUT] was detained for four years and was tortured in Quatro camp from 1981 to 1984, accused of being an ‘enemy agent’. He lost his teeth and was scarred in the process. He names several persons who were allegedly involved in his torture which included having wild chillies smeared “on his private parts and anus” in Quatro camp in 1981. Gabriel Mthembu told the Commission that:

There was overwhelming incriminating information and evidence against Gordon Moshoeu and it was on that understanding, on the strength of such information and evidence that he was locked up at 32. He might have been beaten in the process of investigation when people were trying to get him to confess given the overwhelming nature of evidence against him.