TRC Final Report

Volume 3

Chapter 5

Subsection 25

Paarl

154 The surge of unrest from August to November 1985 saw several deaths and injuries in Paarl. The first death in 1985 was that of Mr Adri ‘Aaron’ Faas [CT03207, CT00434] on the day of the Pollsmoor march. Faas was shot dead by Lieutenant Colonel WH Oosthuizen who used his private firearm. Police officer Captain Clayton, who was on duty that night, described events before the shooting to the Commission.

A white or a yellow Ford Cortina came into the entrance of the police station. And I could see that there was Lieutenant Colonel Oosthuizen and I don’t know who the passenger was. And he took out a shotgun which did not look anything like the police issue and his words were: “You people take too long, I am going to shoot a hotnot tonight.”¹⁰

155 Adri’s father, Mr Alexander Faas, described his efforts to establish what had happened:

As we were walking away, two white policemen came there and I asked them: “Please sir, who had shot my child?” … What broke my heart is that I never could think that white people will also belong to a church, that they could behave like that and this Oosthuizen took his finger and pointed on his chest and said: “I killed your child.” And my heart dropped into my shoes.

156 Mr Faas described the funeral:

When the hearse stopped, they started shooting at 6, 7, 8-year old kids, and I got out of the vehicle in which I was in and I went to stand in front of the hearse and said to him: “Shoot me, I am at peace with this whole thing.” Because by then I was bitter.

157 Faas’s death was followed by the fatal shootings in October of Mr Neil Moses [CT00439] and Mr Pikashe [CT00282] in street protests.

De Aar

158 In the Karoo town of De Aar, several casualties occurred as a result of police or administration board shootings. On 16 June 1985, civic leader Booi Mantyi was shot dead. Thirteen-year-old Leslie Kelemi [CT01517] was shot and seriously injured and blinded in one eye by police in July when fetching paraffin. He was later charged with public violence. On 9 July 1985, in Malay Camp, riot police shot and wounded a seventy-one-year-old woman, Ms Ida Koko Tantsi, her granddaughter, Ms Beauty Tantsi (30) and great-granddaughter Wendy (8) [CT00556]. The two women were then charged with public violence. A consumer boycott was launched until the end of the year to protest at the ongoing shootings and repression experienced by the residents and to demand the release of those detained and arrested. Police records indicate that Ms Vivian Tshadi, who allegedly broke the consumer boycott, was hacked to death and her body burnt in July 1985.

159 Incidents in Upington and Phillipstown clearly illustrate the close relationship between police shootings and subsequent attacks on so-called collaborators. They also illustrate the different judicial consequences for police personnel and ‘comrades’.

Upington

160 In November 1985, a series of events was set in motion that would dominate Upington for the remainder of the 1980s. On 10 November, a mass meeting in Paballelo to discuss community issues ended in the fatal police shooting of a pregnant woman, Ms Beulin Isaaks [CT04113]. Mr Ronnie Sipho Naphakade [CT04421] was shot, arrested and assaulted. Mr Harold Vuyo Mjethu [CT00699] was shot and injured, resulting in permanent damage to his right arm and loss of hearing in his right ear. Ms Miriam Blaauw [CT00435] was shot and injured and was later also charged with public violence. All three were then charged with public violence, and the first two given prison sentences.

161 On 13 November 1985 a crowd of around 3 000 gathered on a soccer field, hoping to talk to police about the shootings. They were told to disperse and were finally teargassed by police. Chaos erupted as the crowd fled. About 200 people gathered in front of the house of policeman Lucas Tsenolo ‘Jetta’ Sethwale [CT01418]. The house was pelted with stones. Sethwale fired two shots from his bedroom window, injuring an eleven-year-old boy. When he fled from his house, he was chased by the crowd across a field where he was caught, struck down with his pistol, assaulted and burnt.¹¹

162 Police moved in and arrested numerous people, including three women. Twenty-six were accused of murder and tried in a high-profile political trial that dominated both Upington and South African judicial history.

163 Some of those detained, including the accused, were assaulted and tortured in an effort to extract confessions regarding their role in the murder. Mr Justice Bekebeke [CT03074] was beaten with fists and kicked all over his body. He was also made to stand next to a road sign while shots were fired at the sign. Bekebeke applied for amnesty for the killing of Sethwale [AM6370/97]. Mr Zongezile Mokgatle [CT00698] was beaten, sjambokked while naked and beaten with branches of a thorn tree by policemen, to force him to make admissions.

164 The trial, presided over by Justice Basson¹², started eleven months after the murder and continued for eighteen months. A ‘trial within a trial’ debated the admissibility of the confessions made by some of the accused, but the judge ruled them to be admissible and they served as the basis for the later convictions. Twenty-five of the accused were convicted in April 1988, on the basis of the controversial ‘common purpose’ doctrine. Fourteen were sentenced to death.¹³

THE COMMISSION FINDS THAT THE USE OF THE PRINCIPLE OF ‘COMMON PURPOSE’ ASSOCIATION FOR THE PURPOSES OF CONVICTIONS IN POLITICALLY RELATED MATTERS WAS INAPPROPRIATE. FURTHER, THE COMMISSION FINDS THAT THE IMPOSITION OF THE DEATH PENALTY FOR POLITICALLY MOTIVATED OFFENCES CONSTITUTED A GROSS HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATION. IN THIS TRIAL IN WHICH FOURTEEN DEFENDANTS WERE SENTENCED TO DEATH, THE COMMISSION PARTICULARLY FINDS THE IMPOSITION OF THE DEATH PENALTY ON SIXTY-YEAR-OLD GRANDMOTHER MS EVELINA DE BRUIN TO BE EXCESSIVELY HARSH EVEN WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF THE LEGISLATION AT THE TIME.

Phillipstown

165 On 21 December 1985 Ms Sophie Butele [CT00513] was shot dead by policeman Silingo Tshemese in Phillipstown. Several members of the Tshemese family worked for state institutions and were seen as ‘collaborators’. A huge crowd of people gathered outside the Tshemese home and began a prolonged attack. The Tshemese family locked themselves in the house. Some were injured by the flying stones and bricks and others were attacked with an axe. Mr Geelboy Tshemese [CT01518, CT02907] was dragged outside and assaulted with axes and spades, then burnt with petrol and tyres.

166 That evening, police and farmer reservists swept through Lukhanyisweni, beating and arresting residents. Several people were charged with murder, including Mr Nelson Sinxoshe [CT01518], who had found his sister Sophie Butele dying outside the Tshemese house and was allegedly involved in the axe attack. Nelson Sinxoshe has stated that he was severely tortured while in police custody. Along with several others, he was sentenced to thirty-five years in prison. No one was charged for the death of Sophie Butele.