| Time | Summary | |
| 12:10 | The late 1980s and even the early 1990s saw the emergence of several vigilante groups in many townships around South Africa. Groups that were formed originally with legitimate grievances but who were quickly infiltrated and used by the security forces as part of a counter mobilization strategy against the forces fighting for democracy. The Truth Commission’s Human Rights Violations Committee sitting in Ermelo in Mpumalanga this week heard the story of one such group, the vicious Black Cats. | Full Transcript and References |
| 12:43 | ‘When young lions became Black Cats, Report by Benedict Motau’ // Wesselton township, outside Ermelo, Mpumalanga. In the early 1990s the community was terrorized by a group of their own youngsters. | Full Transcript |
| 12:55 | At that time there was a gangster called the Black Cats. // And they said on that night we are going to shoot because we are not going to sleep. | Full Transcript |
| 13:06 | Steve Nkwenya, an attorney at the time, represented many members of the then Wesselton Action Committee and so-called comrades who were defending their community. | Full Transcript |
| 13:17 | Ermelo as such was a peaceful town, so during that time when they were negotiating with the local authority about the Rand boycott there was also a concern that crime was on the increase and amongst the members of the Wesselton Action Committee or people who associated themselves with that Committee, then formed what they called an anti crime campaign. These were youngsters who would bring to book all those who were harassing old people, pick pocketers and so on. But unfortunately after some time it so transpired that those very same people who were supposed to camp crime were committing crimes and this came to the notice of the leadership of the Wesselton Action Committee. I understand that at one of the meetings of the Wesselton Action Committee, this concern was raised and these particular individuals, who were now committing crime under the name of a structure which associated with the Action Committee, had to be approached to be reprimanded. That’s when the struggle started. | Full Transcript and References |
| 14:35 | Miss Mamane Mabuza, a resident of Wesselton township, lost her daughter Queen Mabuza, a matriculant at the time to the Black Cats gang who hacked her to death. | Full Transcript |
| 14:47 | When I saw my daughter her eyes had been gorged out, she had been stabbed on the breasts, and they had opened her chest and her internal organs were exposed. They also took out the uterus. They tied her feet; both her feet were tied together. | Full Transcript and References |
| 15:10 | The Black Cats were later taken for military training in Ulundi, where they joined the Inkatha Freedom Party. | Full Transcript and References |
| 15:18 | One of the stories that I heard is that when these people were taken to Ulundi they were found to be weak, they were asked to go back to Wesselton, to kill women, to come back with their private parts, to be used as muti. It’s then that for the first time the local police told us to stop calling these people the Black Cats, but to refer to them as members of the IFP. We were taken aback because at that stage we didn’t know that there was anything called IFP in our town. | Full Transcript |
| 15:53 | … other victims in the area, Mr. Fanyana Sibanyoni, lost his son, Jabulani Sibanyoni, leader of the comrades at the time who was fatally shot after a funeral of one of the young fighters of Wesselton township. | Full Transcript |
| 16:10 | They shot my son. They were leading a funeral of one of their comrades. He was walking in front leading the procession and that is when they shot him and still repeated him twice. When we heard the shots we ran away. I then decided to come home after all that confusion. When I got here they told me that it was my son who had just been gunned down. So I then ran down there and when I arrived I found him lying dead in a pool of blood. He had been shot twice, once above the eyes and another shot in between his eyes. We then took him with another neighbour and we took him to the mortuary. If they can cry with me and send condolences there’s nothing else that I see the government doing. That is all I ask for, for the government to cry with me and heal my heart. Because, when I remember my child, my heart aches, I remember all that pain because I loved my son. I believed in him. This boy used to look like me a lot. | Full Transcript |
| 17:15 | But the Black Cats was not a unique phenomenon. It formed part of a larger strategy. | Full Transcript |
| 17:22 | You had the Three Million Gang in the Free State, which played a particular role, which was very destabilizing to organisations there. You had the Black Cats in Ermelo, which even from the hearings in Nelspruit last week, it was very clear you have someone saying ‘I was paid by the police to kill an ANC member, I am a member of the IFP.’ you can see exactly the trend of trying to destabilize organisations, it is on your own records. You have the AmaSinyora, you had the A-Teams and you had the AmaAfrika, you had the Witdoeke, all of them part of the counter mobilization strategy of the police to a very large extent. | Full Transcript and References |
