12 October 2001

---------------------------------------------------------------------

From anonymous

Andrew Masondo is currently a Major General in the South African
National Defense Force (SANDF). His notoriety for torture, killings
and oppression of political dissidents in the ranks of the ruling
African National Congress/Communist Party while in exile is legendary.
So much so that in a Zulu parody on both his name and that of armed
wing of the ANC/SACP he was referred to my inmates and guards of the
detention camps in Angola as Mtondo weSizwe. He has been feted since
1994 by both the US and British military.

His witness is remarkable for its evasions and blame shifting, in
many cases onto the shoulders of the dead. Much of it is self-serving. 
Recently the subject of a television expose for squandering public 
monies meant for the integration of guerilla forces of the PAC and 
ANC/SACP into the SANDF, he remains a favorite of president Thabo 
Mbeki as he was with Joe Modise (past Minister of Defense) presently 
embroiled in the armaments procurement scandal. 


-------------------------------------------------


Page 1	

TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION
SECTION 29 HEARING
"IN CAMERA'
DATE: 26-03-1998
NAME: GEN MASONDO
HELD AT: JOHANNESBURG

CHAIRPERSON: Ladies and gentlemen, this is a Section 29 enquiry, in
other words it is an enquiry held in terms of Section 29 of the
Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act. It is a private
enquiry and as such only the witness and members of the Commission
are permitted to be at this enquiry.

The panel is composed of Ms Yasmin Sooka, Ms Mary Burton and myself
and the persons who will be assisting the Committee by putting
questions to the witness will be Mr Zenzile Khoisan and Ms Pumla
Dwane-Alpman.

Let me extend a word of welcome to you, General Masondo and indicate
our greatest appreciation for you having been willing and able to
come, at what virtually amounts to a little more than short notice.

I do note that in terms of the Act, you are entitled to legal
representation, and I would assume that this was indicated to you. I
would just like to clarify whether you do have legal representation
or whether you have chosen not to be represented?

GEN MASONDO: Well, I do not have legal representation, but I don't
think it is necessary.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much General. I don't know there will be
- just on the procedural issues we will take a break at about eleven
or half past eleven, which will be a tea break, and then we will
continue thereafter if needs be.

General, I don't know whether you take the oath or whether you
affirm.

GEN MASONDO: Any one of them is - it doesn't matter.

CHAIRPERSON: In which event I will ask Ms Yasmin Sooka to swear you
in before you testify.

GENERAL MASONDO: (sworn states) 

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Khoisan.

MR KHOISAN: Good morning Gen Masondo. 

GEN MASONDO: Good morning.

MR KHOISAN: Thank you for joining us here today. General, just in
terms of this particular hearing, as is customary with the Section
29's that we have conducted with people, before we get into the body
of the matter, we would like to extend to you an opportunity if you
so wish, to put whatever issues you have on the record.

If you have a statement that you wish to read, if you have any
information that you want to, that you wish this panel to take
cognisance of, then we would like to extend that opportunity to you
to do so now.

Page 2	

GEN MASONDO: Okay, I haven't prepared anything in writing, but I will
make a few remarks. In the first place I was a National Political
Commissar of the African National Congress as a whole, from 1977 to
1985, and at the time there was a time when I also acted as the Army
Commissar until Chris Hani came back from Lesotho and we then split
the role of National Commissar and Army Commissar.

I have been going through a number of documents just now, glancing
through them and it is I think important for me to give certain
background. I think the Commission might have the knowledge that I -
I left this country after I served 13 years in Robben Island, having
been a lecturer at the University of Fort Hare and having started the
Department of Applied Mathematics as a separate Department.

In the position that I held, I had no personal reason why I should
have gone into Umkonto weSizwe, except the fact that the situation in
the country demanded me to do so.

I have gone to Robben Island, spent 13 years. I am among the first MK
people there. I have been able, whilst I was there, to battle for the
rights of our own people. I suit the government whilst I was in
prison, for the way it treated our people. The record is there that I
even said there that the reason why I did that was not money, but to
make sure that the conditions were proper.

I left this country in 1976 after I had been banished to Natal and it
was a decision of the President of the ANC, Oliver Tambo, that I
leave this country, because he thought I would go back to jail.

I got outside, I went to the Soviet Union to go and train as a
military man and came back. In 1977 I became a member of the National
Executive Committee and also the National Political Commissar.

I was responsible for drafting the Umkonto We Sizwe code of conduct
for the sole reason that I believed that we needed to have a document
that would run the military properly, a reference so that we do not
have just kangaroo courts.

I also am responsible for the revamping of the structures of the
African National Congress outside. When I came back, the President
gave me comrade Thabo with whom to work so that we revamp the
structures of the African National Congress because I thought those
structures needed revamping so that we are able to handle the
situation.

As the National Commissar, I was the representative of the cadre and
the political organisation in the Army, even in the National
Executive itself. I was a member of the Revolutionary Council and as
Commissar also I acted as the Deputy Commander.

I think apart from comrade Mzwandile Piliso, practically nobody has
spent as time with the ordinary cadre as myself.

Page 3	

When, in 1976 whilst I was still in the country, the Soweto uprising
took place. I said to the Special Branch who visited me in Umlazi
where I was banished, why do you people do such a thing because these
kids were only worried about the fact that they were taught in a
language they do not understand.

I was also a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party
and at a Central Committee meeting in 1977 in (indistinct), in the
statement I introduced the phrase "Soweto entered the debate of the
legitimacy or otherwise of the armed struggle."

I might be wrong, but I believe that we were at war and I told the
cadres that we were at war. I also believe that as the Political
Commissar, it was my duty to make sure that the cadres of the African
National Congress came back home, not in bags, but still walking, and
also that I should motivate them that we should fight and win the
fight.

I went to, I sat in this Commission that I have never in my life
expressed personal feeling towards cadres. I dealt with them as part
of the liberation movement. There are a number of things that I think
I know more than other people do, about the African National
Congress, and that is the situation of the cadre and I paid more
attention to what the cadre said.

The only Commission I was called to, was the Stuart Commission,
because of some of the allegations that were made there. Some of the
allegations were that I did not take into account the problems of the
cadres. I don't have to prove that myself. I think the records of the
ANC if gone into, will say that the mere fact that even up to the
present moment, the ANC cadres still calls me Commissar in spite of
the fact that I am a General.

One thing that I developed very early, was that I don't tell my
people lies. If I think they are wrong, I say so. To give an
illustration, when there was the mutiny in Viana and at that time I
wasn't there, and I said to people if I was around, I would probably
have been able to avert that mutiny because I would have known what
is happening.

Not from the security as people always thought, I got information
from the security. I normally got information from the ordinary cadre
who came and told me. I think for instance I knew more about the
problems even of female cadres and some females in the African
National Congress because the cadres had confidence in me.

Now, when we got there, after Chris had had the problem with the
mutiny there, we got there with the Commander, Joe Modise and we
discussed that matter and told the cadres that irrespective of what
problems they had, what they did was counter-revolutionary.

CHAIRPERSON: General, I don't know maybe if I am not going to cut
across your trend, but I am - I would possibly request if you could,
not to assume anything on the part of the

Page 4	

panel, simply because you have that voluminous documentation, because
I think what has happened is that we have been loaded with a lot of
information, and I think the value of having you here, would possibly
to get you say in your own words, what your own perceptions are.

In other words if for instance, now that you are beginning to get in
say for instance, the mutiny, if you could possibly say when you
left, where did you go when you left South Africa. Get to Angola, set
up the structures there, and develop then and build up to the period
where the Stuart Commission took place.

GEN MASONDO: Okay, I will do that. I left here, went to Swaziland,
from Swaziland I went to Maputo where I met the President because he
was waiting for me. Then he instructed me to go to Tanzania. From
Tanzania I then went to the Soviet Union to go and do my military
training. I was there for the whole year.

I came back at the end of 1977 and went to Angola. I attended my
first meeting of the National Executive Committee in 1977, I came
back from Angola.

That is when I discussed the question of structures. I then went to
Katenga. When I got to Katenga, I then realised that we had a very
serious problem. First and foremost, when our people came there, even
if you had money, you couldn't buy things because it was during the
time when the Angola itself had a problem within the MPLA. When
people like (indistinct) were busy trying to undermine the
government.

There was a lot of economic problems. I remember for instance the
first group which left with Dr Neeto from Tanzania to Angola. I was
involved with General Sidebe to prepare them to go there, before I
left for Moscow.

I remember whilst our young people were in Tanzania, one day they
went on a hunger strike and I asked them why are you on hunger
strike, and they said, no, that time they didn't even know I was the
Commissar, they just saw an old man who was among them. I remember
them making me guard the whole night.

I was saying to them, no, you must eat, they said no, we are being
made fat here, and our people are dying at home. I said to them, no,
but eat. When I came from Moscow, they were there and the situation
was tough. They were eating condensed milk that is put in water. They
were eating powdered egg that was just put in water, there was no
fat.

Then they said to me Commissar, no, no, things are bad.

(Indistinct) said to them you remember that you can't be fat, because
the people at home are dying. That was a way of making them
understand that in life, situations changed.

I discussed it with them. One thing that happened when June 16th,
people got there, the leadership of the ANC was very, very touched by
these kids that had been killed and as a result, we didn't search
people. People just said, no, these are our kids,

Page 5	

but there was something we didn't know, that the enemy, one had
infiltrated.

Two, they themselves you know, when I was discussing with them,
sitting and discussing how they got out. They would just start
telling one another, tomorrow I am going away and the word spreads
around and they go. And those that, some people would know that they
were going, but they still remain. That shows how the security of the
movement, was still very, very at a low level.

But I came just after the Black September, Black Wednesday, when our
people were poisoned. Katenga had more than 500 cadres. They were
purging, they - everybody in that camp was just helpless. Have it not
been for the Cuban Doctors, we would have lost nearly the whole of
that camp. But fortunately the Cuban Doctors were very near, we just
went to Bengela and got those Doctors and then they worked on them.

Because also we had Cubans on the camp.

CHAIRPERSON: When did this poisoning take place, what year was it?

GEN MASONDO: It was 1977.  

CHAIRPERSON: 1977?

GEN MASONDO: September. Now, that was one aspect that began to say to
the leadership there is something here. We need to begin to tighten
the security.

One of my tasks as the Commissar, I had access to nearly all the
Departments, any Department that had to do with cadres, I could go to
them and say there is a problem, what do you do.

When I got there, they had started catching a few of the agents and
these people were given to the Angola, they were locked up by the
Angolans and as the Commissar, I went to visit them.

In visiting them, I asked how they felt, how we could help them, did
they need some material to read and they gave me that type of
information. But it is true that the Angolans were beginning to have
a problem with our people being there, because at a certain time,
some Angolans themselves assisted some of the people to escape.

So it was a problem and I think the laws of the country also couldn't
allow them to just detain people who - people who were still going to
investigate how far they were involved. I think at that time we had a
young lady there, coloured in this. I visited there, ultimately she
never went to Quattro.

MR KHOISAN: General, can you just put that name back on the record, I
just didn't catch it correctly. The person that ...

GEN MASONDO: I had forgotten her name, but she was coloured and she
ultimately, she went to Sweden from Angola, but she was still - she
was detained.

Page  6	

I used to visit her there. Because of this problem of the Angolan law
and this, the Angolans indicated that it might be better if we had
our own place and Pango was built.

I was involved in the building of Quattro. We ...

CHAIRPERSON: Excuse me General, was Pango something different from
Quattro?

GEN MASONDO: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON: So we are talking about Pango now?

GEN MASONDO: No, we are talking about Quattro. That is the lock up
area.

CHAIRPERSON: Oh, I see.

GEN MASONDO: You see, in Kibashi were three camps. Camp (indistinct)
which is what normally people refer to as Kibashi.

Then you had Pango, Camp 101, then we have Quattro which was the
place where we kept the people who had problems.

CHAIRPERSON: In other words it was a detention centre? 

GEN MASONDO: It was a detention centre.

CHAIRPERSON: So when the Angolans said look, we can't keep your
people any more because of all the problems that you know, we have
law and others being assisted to escape etc, then did they then say
here is a place and they gave you Pango, or was Pango already there?

GEN MASONDO: No, Pango, yes, Pango is a different Quattro was like
all our camps, you know, you came there and they gave you let's say
an old farm, farm house.

And then we began to develop the place. Now, the same with Quattro.
They gave us a place, now there was a comrade who was with me in
Robben Island, I will remember his name, he had been with me in
Robben Island, he was arrested at the beginning for criminal
activity. He is one of the people that we organised in prison.

When he got out, out of prison, then he left and joined us.

Now, he was a good builder so comrade Mzwandile Piliso and I then
said to him, look can you renovate some of these things so that we
can keep the people who have problems. So that is what happened.

MR KHOISAN: General, just as a matter of clarification, at the time
that the Angolans came to the conclusion that they couldn't handle
issues regarding the detention of suspected South Africans, and
decided to cede the position to the ANC, to handle your own affairs
in that regard, can you give me an idea of what numbers we are
talking about.

How many people at that time were in detention in Angola which had
caused them to arrive at this conclusion, and also who was involved
in those deliberations to move from that position to the position
which would be the establishment of Quattro in effect?

GEN MASONDO: There were about 10 of them detained at various places
in Angola there. The negotiations were entered


Page 7	

into by the National Executive of the African National Congress. The
President was involved in that because they would inform the
President that the situation is that way, and now in the actual
carrying out of that instruction, comrade Mzwandile Piliso, myself,
Joe Modise, the people who are in charge of that area, would then get
into discussions as to where, how, because that is how we got most of
our camps.

So, then we decided okay, we will have Quattro and we started putting
people in Quattro. Now in 1979 comrade Mzwandile Piliso and I,
because we were monitoring Radio RSA, heard Vorster say they are
going to attack a camp, a Swapo camp, but the mistake he made, he
actually called it by name, and said Katenga.

We sat down with comrade Mzwandile and we said, and by the way by
that time comrade Mzwandile was not Chief of Intelligence. He was
actually the Personnel Chief. The person who was in charge of
Intelligence at that time, is a man called Dr Elias Pule Modwa, who
ultimately left, he was a Dentist also.

There was also a situation where you had National Intelligence which
looked after the security people, then we had camp within the camp.
We had what we had recording officers, who were more or less under
the Chief of Personnel, just to check what was happening, and they
gave information so that later, the two were brought together and
they became one.

The recording officer for instance, didn't have powers to arrest
anybody for whatever misdemeanour which was connected with security.

MR KHOISAN: General, just while we are on that question of security,
and just so that we understand clearly, in terms of the personnel who
were actually involved in the security apparatus of the ANC at that
time, what was the chain of command. If it was a vertical command,
who was the, what was the apex of that command and ...

GEN MASONDO: The apex of the command was the President. Then from the
President, you had the Chief, a member of the National Executive who
was in charge of security and at that time, it was Sipho Makhana, and
then in Angola you had Dr Poole, together with a chap we called
Fapla, who were in charge of that structure.

But that was apart from the others, what we called the recording
officers. They were strictly local and under the personnel.

MR KHOISAN: What I am trying to establish here General, is and just
to be very clear about the chain, so the chain in terms of the
security of the African National Congress, stretches down from the
President of the Organisation, reaches into with - this is in
consultation with a member of the NEC and you have ...

Page  8	

GEN MASONDO: There is, you see, the President is the supreme
Commander of Security. It is one of those Departments which are in
the President's office.

MR KHOISAN: What I am trying to establish General, whether there was
a vertical chain that reaches from if you can, I understand what you
are telling us that the recording officers are the people who were
local, they were on the ground, they physically capture the
information or deal with the people, whatever.

I am trying to find out what the chain was, so it is from the
President ...

GEN MASONDO: The President to the Member of the National Executive
Committee, to the man, the regional man in charge of security and the
head cadres there, who could go into the camp and do, and check
whatever they liked. Those were people who were in the security and
intelligence departments.

But the recording officers at the beginning, were not in that, that
is why they could for instance not take somebody, interrogate
somebody. All they did was just to assist personnel about information
that might be - which would then have to be reported to security.

MR KHOISAN: Okay, I think what we are trying to do here, is to
establish procedural issues because if you are telling us that the
security apparatus, the final say so of the security apparatus rests
with the late President OR Tambo, that is what you are telling us,
physically understand that.

GEN MASONDO: Yes, the final responsibility was with the President,
but ...

MR KHOISAN: But I don't understand where, because you have informed
us about, who you referred to as comrade Sipho Makhana, Dr Poole and
a fellow called Fapla, but I don't see where you are located in that
intersection.

GEN MASONDO: No, I wasn't in Security, I have never been in Security.
I have always been the Commissar.

MR KHOISAN: Now, that is what I am trying to establish. I am trying
to establish what is the role of the Commissar relevant to the
Security apparatus, if you can explain that to me.

GEN MASONDO: Yes. I told you that I had access to all the Departments
of the ANC, all of them. For instance I could go into Security and
say to Security, why does it seem that your people don't attend
political meetings.

I could go to Security and say to Security why is it that I hear that
your people are ill-treating people. I could do that because if the
cadre told me something, then I could go and ask Security, I could go
to the revolutionary council where I was, and put it across.

I could go to the National Executive Committee where I was, and put
the problem across. So in essence I was the link between the soldier
and the leadership of the African National

Page 9	

Congress, and that is why I could go to prisons and sit with the
people, and find out what ...

I will give examples as we go on. In fact if you want, for instance
whilst I went to, I was visiting the Angolan prisons, there was a
chap called David Dumela, no David Kotsokwane.

Now, David Kotsokwane was a policeman. A policeman who was
infiltrated into the African National Congress.

He was taken to the Soviet Union, trained. When he had completed his
training, comrade Joe Modise and comrade Joe Slovo went to the Soviet
Union to go and check how well trained these people were. As people
were involved in the actual combat units inside, they then had an
interview with David and David said, the report from the Soviets were
very good.

I mean the chap was doing exceptionally well, because after all he
was being retrained. And he said to them, and then they said to him
where do you come from, and he said no, I come from the Natal area,
he told them the area. They said yes man, we want somebody like you.
So we want you to go back and David said to them, no, I am not going
back.

They said but why are you not going back, he said no, no, I am not
going back. Ultimately when they pressed him, he said no, I am a
policeman and I don't want to go back and go and sell my people.

I was indoctrinated about communists and all that type of thing, now
I come to the Soviet Union, now I am trained, the people who are
called communists, they treat me well, so there is something wrong
with what I was told.

Then he was taken, because he had confessed, he was then taken to
Angola and locked up. Whilst I was visiting, I met him. He said to
me, Commissar I am very, very much unhappy. At that time the two
Commanders had not yet informed me about him.

He said I am very unhappy, and you know, why am I here and he tells
me the whole story. So I said to him okay, I will go and see the
Commanders to check whether your story is correct.

So I go, I check, they say yes. So I asked the two Commanders, why do
you lock him up, they say no, we just sent him to Angola, but the
Security people decided to lock him up.

So I said, well all right, we must do something. Whilst we were
talking, that is the time we transferred people to Quattro.

He went to Quattro and when he was there, I again went to see him.

Ultimately we decided no man, this man doesn't need to be here, so we
got him out, then he went to Mazimbo. We sent him to Sweden to go and
become a teacher, he came back and taught at Mazimbo.

That is the type of thing that I sometimes did.

MS SOOKA: General, I wonder if I could ask you a question please.
When these camps were set up, in a sense what I am

Page  10	

hearing you say is that there were two parallel systems running.

Was the distinction between who had control, based on whether the
misdemeanour was one of a criminal nature or whether it was one
essentially of a political nature?

GEN MASONDO: All right, if the misdemeanour was one of a criminal
nature or bridge of this, that was the Camp Commander, together with
the Camp Commander also who is there, but if it was political, it was
Security. It was Security that did that.

Now, for instance, I mean if let's say if somebody did something
wrong in a camp, and the camp had a Commissar, the Commander could
get the chap, punish the chap. The Commissar might find out that when
maybe the sentence was too harsh, you would go to the Commander and
say Commander, but are we really achieving what we would like by
punishing this chap this way?

You also went to the cadre himself and say to the cadre look here,
you did this, don't you see that it has this problem, that is why you
have been punished, and then you discuss the - so that you try to
rehabilitate rather than just punish.

That is the - the Commissar also was a social worker in the camp. The
Commissar was also the confidant of the - I mean some cases you had a
chap who had a political problem in fact in terms of Security. He
could come to me and say, Commissar I've got this problem. How do I
handle it?

So we sit down and discuss it and I say, maybe I think you should go
and tell the Security people that you have this type of problem.

MS SOOKA: I wonder if I may follow that up with one more question.

GEN MASONDO: Yes.

MS SOOKA: It seems quite clear that the Angolans in a sense were
abdicating a legal problem to the ANC, and that is what led in a
sense to the setting up of these detention centres.

Now, did the Executive Committee then develop some kind of code in
terms of which offences would be categorised and set out what the
basis of proof would be, you know that sort of thing?

If you could tell me if that happened, and who developed that code in
a sense?

GEN MASONDO: I actually started the development of the MK military
code whilst I was still - I got there and I said, what supposing
somebody did something wrong, how would we know whether we should
detain this person, whether we should just make this person do
fatigues, whether we should just reprimand this person.

So we, myself and the Commander of Katenga, the late Julius or
General Sekeshe, started to draft a code. But I did this having
discussed with the Commander, Joe Modise. At that time, even the ANC
itself didn't have a code.

Page  11	

So whilst we developed the MK military code which was the one that
for instance that was given in the submission of the ANC, was the
revised one, not the original one that we had drawn up, and in that
one we put quite various things, what was a serious act, what was an
ordinary act, what were the punishments, which punishment would you
apply to this and that, that is what we did, and then we then
presented it.

CHAIRPERSON: Were there any prescribed procedures as to you see, I am
asking because comrade Mac Maharaj indicated to us here that there
were people who were executed without even as much as having had a
hearing, let alone a legal one.

He indicated that as one of the shortcomings and deficiencies of the,
you know, or one of the things that could be pointed at as having
been shortcomings of the whole situation in the camps, without
necessarily saying whether it was Pango or ...

GEN MASONDO: No, in a camp, in a camp, like in all military
institutions, if you've got - you have done something wrong, you are
put before the Commander. Now, the Commissar must be there, because
in most cases the Commissar acts on behalf of the cadre to see to it
that the cadre is properly represented.

I mean sometimes, somebody can be given a punishment and I could
come, maybe the camp Commissar couldn't, I could come and determine
and say no, I think this punishment was too much, and I would argue,
I could argue on that and they would probably release the chap, or
reduce the punishment.

That was the situation. In the politically motivated ones, I also
happened to have been in the Review Committee, that was established
by the President.

For instance ...

MR KHOISAN: And who were the other people who constituted the Review
Committee, just so that we ...

GEN MASONDO: Unfortunately most of them are dead, I am possibly the
only one living, Moses Madida, Titi Nkobe, John Motsabi. Yes, I think
it was the four of us, and then we always had the Commander of
Quattro as part of this, because he would then give us the - and
there was a tribunal also that - so if the tribunal for instance had
given people a sentence, then it would be brought to us as a Review
Committee, and we could say no, this is not enough.

It is true, that we did not have at the time, a provision for a legal
representative. That is a fact.

CHAIRPERSON: But was there any representative by, let's take the
situation where somebody, I will take two instances. The one instance
is where a cadre is being held for an allegation by a female cadre
that he has raped the female cadre.

GEN MASONDO: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON: Now, what was the process, what was the procedure? You
are not there because you are a political Commissar, or were you
there? Who would represent that rapist

Page  12	

and before what forum would that rapist appear because I got the
distinct impression from Maharaj's testimony that there were
instances where people were executed where there hadn't been any
representation whatsoever?

GEN MASONDO: No, no, I - with due respect I think Mac doesn't, didn't
know much of the procedures on the ground, with due respect.

For instance, I know of a specific case where one girl said the chap
had raped her. Now, we took that very seriously. You rape a woman, it
is keeps. We said because it is a serious matter, I was there myself,
we brought in some of the you know, the whoever was the witnesses, I
mean of this thing and we listened to this.

And ultimately we came to the conclusion that in this particular
case, it wasn't true. The chap was left. In some cases, because a
Commissar must be in that thing to see to it that the cadre is
represented.

That is one thing that must always be there. If the Commissar himself
is not good, well, then we have a problem, but when the little
tribunal is instituted, the Commissar must be there, and he normally
has to see to it that the person who is accused, is given a fair
trial.

MR KHOISAN: General, just and I know we are about to break for tea in
a little while, but you know, in your pre-, in your, when you gave us
your views earlier, before we began this discussion, you put some
things on the table in terms of your relationship with the cadres on
the ground.

GEN MASONDO: Yes.

MR KHOISAN: And from my understanding of things, it is usually you
know, a good Commissar is one who has touch with people in all
echelons of any movement.

GEN MASONDO: Yes.

MR KHOISAN : What was your disposition, you know, four years later
after the thing blew up, when the Stuart Commission was formed, what
was your position with regard to the Stuart Commission, did you have
any position when it was constituted?

GEN MASONDO: Well, I was - when the Stuart Commission was
constituted, I was still the National Commissar. When the Stuart
Commission was constituted, I was still in the National Executive
Committee. The Stuart Commission was constituted because after we
took the people from Quattro, I mean from the I took them to Pango,
one group to Pango. The other was taken to Kibashi.

Once we have sort of, you know brought a bit of normality, then we
discussed the matter in the National Executive Committee and said
there needs to be a Commission of Enquiry. The very Stuart Commission
was introduced by me to the cadres. MR KHOISAN: Then what was your
position, because you see the issue is when the Stuart Commission was
formed, to take on


Page  13	

review the disturbances at Quattro and the factors which may have
predicated those disturbances, they made a series of findings, and
one of the primary findings of the Stuart Commission in fact on point
1, it says that the Commission found that amongst the cadres, there
is a general criticism of comrade Masondo.

GEN MASONDO: Yes, I was reading that, just now.

MR KHOISAN: They believed that he has failed as National Commissar
because ...

CHAIRPERSON: No, no, I think I had asked that General Masondo must
give us a chronological account. As far as I understand, we are still
at 1979.

GEN MASONDO: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON: I would like though quickly, I would like you to be able
to get to a point where, then you can introduce that sort of period.

GEN MASONDO: Okay, no problem.

CHAIRPERSON: But I think, let's take that after tea. GEN MASONDO:
Okay.

CHAIRPERSON: I think when we come back, I would really please when I
say don't assume that we have read any of these things, because I
think the value of this should be that we should now hear from a
person who was there, what happened, how the structures were set up,
what happened.

Like now, you are able to say no, comrade Maharaj was overstating
things. Please give us the benefit of your own knowledge and
experience of the structures. Don't assume that we know why there was
then a Commission of Enquiry.

GEN MASONDO: Okay.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. We will take tea and we should resume at
about twenty past. COMMISSION ADJOURNS

ON RESUMPTION

GENERAL MASONDO: (still under oath)

GEN MASONDO: So I am saying that then we got to Katenga itself, that
was our first day 1977, when I got there. That was our main base.

I remember one time, at the beginning we had a problem of the June 16
group, who had been fighting the system, when I got to the camp, were
continuing to think that authority is you know, is bad per se. I
remember some of the chaps who came from university thought they
couldn't salute.

They said to salute was an old (indistinct) thing, so I then said to
them, no, (indistinct) hangover, I said to them no, before you can
say saluting and military courteous is a (indistinct) hangover, I
must first teach you what (indistinct) is and also what a hangover
is, so that you use it properly.

Page  14	

But we had to explain to them that you know, there is a difference
between hostile authority and your own authority.

And after a time, I think we were able to begin, whereas we taught
them the politics and everything, were able to go on quite well.

1979 came. In 1979 Vorster made that announcement that they were
going to attack Katenga, which is a Swapo camp, because they couldn't
say an ANC camp. So comrade Mzwandile Piliso and I sat down and said
to the Cubans, we must do something, the South Africans are coming.

The Cubans were not convinced that the South Africans could come, we
battled and convinced the leadership no. So we then created
underground bunkers and they did come. When they came, they came with
six cannon bearers and they bombed that place.

Fortunately by then we only had eleven people within the camp. So we
lost one Cuban and one South African. We shot down, we shot one of
the planes that came there, but we said it was the Angolans.

But you see, when we started to check what was happening, we found an
interesting thing about that raid. We had changed the anti-aircraft
positions and when those chaps came, they hit where we had the
anti-aircrafts. They also chose a time when we would be on parade or
inside the dining hall.

So they had a very good information. I was lucky that at the time I
was in Luanda. I just arrived in Luanda, I was in a meeting to go
back to Katenga. So the following day I was there, went around
checking and trying to keep the moral of the young people, and try to
analyze. I think after that raid, then we began to realise that we
might not take our people back home. You must also remember that
around the same time, they attacked Luso, the ZAPO camp. They
attacked that one just before the Rhodesians'.

Then you had Katenga, and I must say I definitely said we were at
war. That is what I told the cadres, we are at war. And we had to
tighten security. That is in fact, I think it is after that when the
recording officers and the security people, we found that they could
work together, so we made them more or less under one command.

I think our hearts became to be a bit hardened, because we were
beginning to say when we also got now further information, we found
that we should have been - you see in 1977, I think the agents were
rather too hasty. They should have poisoned us and then the raid
happened.

Now, you can imagine what would have happened if they came to raid us
with, they threw about 300 bombs onto that camp. If we were in the
state that we were, it would have been a massacre. We became so
serious about our security that we even

Page  15	

said to the Angolans, nobody flies above our camp space without
telling us.

I remember one day we nearly shot down the Minister of Defence of
Angola, because he came, he didn't tell us and we ordered the
anti-aircrafts to start controlling that thing by shooting. Then they
had to move out, and then they told us it was the Minister of
Defence, we said sorry sir. We never knew.

Our friends, must tell us when they are going to fly over us. Even in
Kibashi also, our friends the Cubans came, they were doing an
exercise. They went, they came into our space and they didn't tell
us, we started replying because we were reaching a situation that we
were not prepared to say oh, what a pity, the poor children have
died.

We thought we owed it to our people to bring those children back. We
tightened, obviously I am sure during the course of the tightening,
there would have been mistakes that I made, but another aspect, maybe
it is even worse, in terms of the tightening, was 1981.

1981 the onslaught on us became very strong. I remember when I was in
Dar Es Salaam and at the school there, visiting, we started getting
problems in the school. Whilst we are saying we are having problems
in the school, there started to be problems in Lusaka.

While we thing there are problems in Lusaka, there start to be
problems in the camps. We don't understand what are this, because you
know, what was interesting for me, we have had times when things were
tough, and the young people took these things and things were
beginning to improve in terms of food and things like that, but at
this particular time, it was like an onslaught. Now, information was
heard that there is a network that is busy organising against us.

I must say the reaction was rather, was rather harsh because then I
think we unleashed all, not only the Security, I mean people in
Lusaka were collected, checked and then sent to Angola. It was in
Angola that we actually started to deal with this matter a little bit
more, with a bit of better insight, less agitated.

That is when we did find out that some people in the course of that
onslaught, which was called Shisheda, they just said things and
implicated people. Whilst we locked them up, then we came back and
tried to check whether really some of the statements they had made,
were truly you know, the same. The were not trying to implicate
themselves simply because they feared that they might have been
beaten up and things like that.

In some cases, we were able to take some people out.

Maybe it is at this point that I need to indicate something about
Kenneth Seremani. Now Seremani was a trusted member of the ANC, as he
came in. He used to work, he was made Commander in Kibashi, camp 13.

Page  16	

But I kept on hearing that no, Seremani as a Commander is not playing
his part. Now, I never, I know for instance at the Stuart Commission
they said I was told by Seremani and I did nothing about it. I
watched him, then I said he must be removed in camp 13 and he went to
Funda. Funda was the place where we prepared our chaps for the last,
when they were preparing to come home.

One day I go there, I find that Seremani had hung a chap with his
arms. A chap called Anderson.

MS DWANE-ALPMAN: Sorry, could I just interrupt there.

You just mentioned that he went to Funda. Was that, was he going to
do part of the training for the special operations?

GEN MASONDO: Yes, he was actually going to be the Commander.

MS DWANE-ALPMAN: So he was part of that group?

GEN MASONDO: Yes, he was going to be the Commander of that centre,
that training centre. Because you see, what we thought, because
people were telling us things and we were not sure whether it is a
question of maybe he is a tough Commander and therefore you see, camp
13 was a bigger camp, so I wanted to take him to a smaller place, to
check whether actually you know, he had any problems with maybe some
of the people there, or in fact, there was a problem with him.

CHAIRPERSON: What was the nature of the things for instance?

GEN MASONDO: Well, they used to say that he tended to be cruel to you
know, they said. The other thing why I wanted to observe him in a
different place, one of the Commissars who kept telling me this
thing, was my son.

So I wasn't very happy that you know, I should be listening, although
I know me and my son, we normally say things, but it wouldn't have
been nice, because the main report would have been from my son, and
the Security chaps.

So I said no, let me take him to another place, so he was there.

MR KHOISAN: No, this is Funda. GEN MASONDO: Funda.

MR KHOISAN: Yes.

GEN MASONDO: So, he said no, this chap Anderson is a sell out, so he
had hung him there. Again we checked, and people said but Anderson
has got some problems, Anderson, but they were not coming out very
clearly. Again, we said all right, let's remove him from this camp,
we sent him to Pango.

We started hearing now things. He was destroying motor cars. He is a
camp Commander, he would go out with a truck, he would come back, he
has capsized the truck, or something is wrong with the truck, but he
is all right. And we were being getting information from the Swapo
Intelligence that they are

Page 17	

having a serious problem with people who are sent by the enemy to
come and destroy their transport.

And you know, that is an important way of dealing a serious blow to a
guerilla movement, if you can deal with their transport. So one day,
he is still Commander, we haven't removed him, he is Commander there,
I take an ambulance, I take a driver, I go to Pango, I say to
Seremani, you see this car, you must never drive as a Commander.

Here is the driver for this car. So I go, the next time Seremani has
driven that car, and destroyed it. So I decided although the
Commissar doesn't lock up people, this one I am going to lock up. So
Seremani was actually locked up by me.

But that was before the Shisheda thing. The other thing, just before
that, again a chap who was smoking dagga, Makateng. Again Seremani
instructed that he should be beaten up. He knew that we would be, we
didn't like people who smoked dagga, because they used to steal our
things, go and buy dagga and they created problems.

But he hit that chap and sent that chap to Quattro, and when we found
that, that chap died. Now, I then decided I am going to lock him up,
then another one, because I am going to talk of these three, because
I locked them up the same day, Godfrey Mswewo. That chap was a camp
Commissar. He with a chap called Stix, I have forgotten his real name
now, he is a Major in the Defence Force.

Stix was the Regional Chief of Intelligence and Security.

They go to a camp the two of them, they beat up a cadre, using the
bat of a gun and I don't, and after that I find that when all they
ask where is the gun, the gun is not there. And this very Chief of
Intelligence we had a Mercedes Benz car there, that we used, he goes
and drives that car without oil, and knocks the engine.

So I begin to think, these chaps are doing something wrong.

So I remember this day I went, Mswewo and Stix were in Luanda. I went
down, collected the two, got to the camp in Pango, collected Kenneth
and the three of them, I said they must lock them up because I wanted
them to find out why are they doing these things.

Those two I locked up, and I locked them up ...

CHAIRPERSON: excuse me, can I just ask, is he the same as Seremani?

GEN MASONDO: Yes, he is Seremani. 

CHAIRPERSON: Okay.

GEN MASONDO: You see, the two chaps, I was now beginning to realise
the two chaps were actually violating human rights in the camp.

I might say at the time, I didn't lock them up because I suspected
that they were enemy agents, no. I just locked them up because one,
all three of them now, I have noticed that they beat

Page  18	

up people. And particularly a Commissar, I couldn't understand that.

So I then took them, locked them up, but it then turned out that when
they said, you see that game and they were now being interrogated,
then other things began to be revealed.

Another person who were, I think I should also at this very time,
come up Anderson, it is Mswewo's brother, Rodgers.

Now Mswewo's brother was in the front, he was in Zimbabwe with a
group of MK chaps who were fighting, side by side with the zebra
chaps. In the course of that battle, he vanished and his other
colleagues were looking for him. He comes up later, he can't explain
his disappearance.

They investigate, they find out that the had had contact with the
enemy. Now, that was during battle. So they took him back to Angola.
When he got to Angola he was court martialled and sentenced to death.

I was in the Review Committee that reviewed this and once this had
happened, we knew that he had a brother. I was instructed and it was
my duty as a Commissar, to go and inform him brother, Godfrey.
Godfrey got to know that his brother was executed, because I told him
in my capacity as the Commissar.

MR KHOISAN: I would just like to put on the record that we have been
speaking about Godfrey Mswewo. Just maybe, that is maybe the way you
have known him. I think we are discussing the same person who is also
known as Gordon Mswewo.

GEN MASONDO: No, there are two chaps there. There is, oh yes, you are
right, that is Gordon Mswewo. His brother is Gabriel, that is Rodgers
Mjala. He is Godfrey Poole, his surname. Yes, that is Gordon.

So he got to know about his brother's death because I told him.
Later, Gordon was released from Quattro. He came to me and we sent
him to Sweden to go and study. He studies, he came back, was in
Mazimbu for a short time. Then one day, he complained that the
Security people were sending back to Angola and he hadn't, he doesn't
know why and I said to him, okay, I will check why they are doing
that.

If we release you, why are they taking you back again. So I contacted
the people, I said but why are you and they said no, we are not doing
anything to him, he is just scared, we just wanted to ask him a few
questions. I said but no, why do you want to send him to Angola, he
is becoming worried about it.

But I then indicated that - now at this point I think I had left
being the Commissar, I was now the Chief, the Head of the Manpower
Development. But normally people still came to me when they had
difficulties.

So that is the question about this chap, Gordon Mswewo.

Even now, when he came back, because he also confessed to have been
an agent according to the records. You see, there is something very
interesting. There was a school in

Page 19	

Bophutatswana, I don't know whether it is Bakahla High School or
something like that, but quite a number of these young chaps came
from the same school.

And our information at that time, that there was a chap called Shedo
who was either an agent of this, or who was a Special Branch, and he
used to mobilise this people.

For instance, another one who was here, is it Philip Balile. Balile
also was brought to Quattro, apart from when people started talking
that he was said to be in the same - but he too, he used to work in
Lusaka in Treasury, but he was notorious also for destroying ANC
cars, driving them without oil. Destroying cars. Stix was destroying
cars and they seemed to have come from the same handler. But when the
ultimate thing was that during that Shisheda, then people started
talking about, saying this about the one, that about the other, but
that was the questions of the Intelligence people, they gathered that
information.

That is the Shisheda time. During that time, an interesting thing
came up. Some of these people who we were looking for, made contact
with Canadians and they ran away. Some of them made contact with
other Intelligence, and they ran away. A chap called Banks, who was
the Head of the CIA in East Africa, that is 1981, we are talking
about, the Shisheda time, he said after we had been able to sort of
control the situation, he said he cannot understand how the ANC
survived that onslaught.

MR KHOISAN: Shisheda?

GEN MASONDO: Shisheda.

MR KHOISAN: Just give us a little more background on that General,
from your perspective.

GEN MASONDO: Shisheda was a general clean up of enemy agents. It came
out of a general situation of disorder from Tanzania, Zambia, in the
camps and we got information that it was being orchestrated and that
is when the ANC started arresting people in various places and
bringing them to Angola for interrogation.

That was Shisheda, and it happened in 1981.

MR KHOISAN: Maybe we can just get some, to put things in perspective
here. Because we are spanning a wide period.

GEN MASONDO: Yes.

MR KHOISAN: And maybe we can just concentrate it. At the time, we
started with the issues which predicated the formation of Quattro.

GEN MASONDO: Yes.

MR KHOISAN: All the precurses to Quattro including the poisoning, the
bombing, etc.

GEN MASONDO: No, no, Quattro - the bombing didn't precipitate
Quattro, but before that, yes, there were bombings, there were this
thing, but Quattro as I indicated was because of the Angolans.

Page 20	

MR KHOISAN: The Angolans, yes, but I am just putting it in
perspective, certain things which might have affected the situation.

GEN MASONDO: All right. Yes, the tightening of security yes.

MR KHOISAN: Things that were taken into consideration.

Now, on the question of the establishment of Quattro, what were the
five or three or five or six things that were established, were set
down as minimum guidelines for somebody to be brought to Quattro and
also can you discuss the issue of the vatting of the Security
personnel who would be in charge of either the facility physically,
or the process that would lead them to that facility.

In other words your screening apparatus and stuff like that?

GEN MASONDO: Basically the type of person who went to Quattro was the
person who the movement thought he was still acting in the interest
of the enemy.

The movement thought he was, he had done grievous things inside the
country. Like a chap called Stofileho, we found out that he was a
policeman and he had shot children inside the country. But you see,
the normal way the ANC vets people, you come, let's say you go out
via Swaziland, you reach Maputo.

You write your biography, write your biography and tell us where you
come, what made you come in? It is kept, then you go to Lusaka maybe
on your way out, if you don't go straight to Angola. You get to
Lusaka, you write your biography again.

A copy of that and the one in Maputo is - follows you. You reach
Angola, you write a biography as you come at the transit area like
Viana. You write your biography, it is kept. Then you go to let's say
Katenga or Pango or Camp 13, Kibashi, you write another biography.

Then, the security people are then given all these biographies. They
go through them. If they should find discrepancies, they then call
you to come and answer for some of these discrepancies. If there are
serious problems, they then call another panel to come now and
interrogate you about these things.

And should they find that there is a thing you can't explain,
seriously and it leads them to certain suspicions then they would be
able to say no, let's do an intensive check. They would possibly try
and check with some people inside the country, in some cases where it
was easier, they might find out that in fact, you were arrested and
you didn't say that you were arrested.

Because for instance, as a person who was in Robben Island myself, I
knew that there are people who were arrested and then released. Our
people outside here thought that they were still the old people, when
it was different people.

Now, those are the type of things that - so now, some people what
they - people would say this one, we can't clear him

Page 21	

completely, but no problem. Let him go to the camps, we will still
observe him.

And some go to the camps, they start doing certain things which begin
to tally with the suspicions and they are taken in again, for
interrogation. There are quite a number of people for instance who
confessed, who never went to Quattro.

They were in the camps, because when they confessed, people checked,
they found that they were telling the truth, like Kotsokwane. That is
why we said no man, but why did they lock him up?

There is a number who had confessed, but there was that for instance
some of the people who went to Quattro, you also found that inside
the camps, they were busy creating divisions.

MR KHOISAN: Could it be General, that some of the people who were
taken to Quattro, were also people who would have held political
views which may have been ideologically divergent from the main
position of the African National Congress, and as such they needed to
be vatted in terms of that?

CHAIRPERSON: If I could piggyback on that question, and I think the
value of your being here, will be assisting us. There was a view and
I can tell you that that was a fairly either popular or notorious
view even whilst for us, inside here, that some of the people who
were executed, were killed simply because they held a view that was
not in keeping with the Congress' view.

For instance, some of them were these young people, and they still
upheld Steve Biko as a hero and things like that. It was difficult
for us to believe that the African National Congress would then go so
far as to kill people simply because they held oppositional political
views to that of the ANC.

GEN MASONDO: Let me tell, and that was basically my task.

I remember one chap called Motwa, he actually had come from the PAC
understand, and he still has that, and one time he was being
interrogated and the people were saying, no, no, he is putting the
ANC view. I went there and said to them, no, that is not the
security's task, it is my task as a Commissar.

There is a chap called Cyrus. Apart from some of the funny things he
did, but he held certain views, but I used to sit with him, as long
as somebody hasn't got different views, and doesn't go around
propagating against the ANC, within the - I don't think that could
have ... If we talk about the Black Consciousness, I mean they
constituted the majority.

Once we took the chaps who came from university, they were in the
majority. I mean the people who were ANC fanatics were these little
chaps from SASM, but the rest were Black Consciousness, but we sat
with them.

And I mean to - for instance to lock up a person because he was - you
know he revered Steve, would be silly because as you know, we were
busy when Steve died, we were busy trying to get Steve to Lusaka.
 
Page  22	

And also, you heard I mean some of us understand the ANC. Some of the
varied leaders of the ANC, your Tambo's, your Mandela's, were rabbit
nationalists who were sometimes bordering on being anti-white.

But, as they were developed to see, and that is what we did with most
of the BCM chaps. Once a person held different views and did things
which indicated that he wanted to disrupt, then it is a problem.
There is a chap called, we used to call him Faroh.

That chap was a political instructor.

That chap was very good in terms of ANC policy, he also had a
background of ANC parents. But we locked him up ultimately, for
having found out what he was doing.

So that one, it is not ...

MR KHOISAN: But General, I am just trying to put to you, I am trying
to put it on the table because to use a case which has been very much
in the spotlight, within the series of Commissions which have
reviewed these things, the case of Dr Palo Jordan came up and
specifically issues with regard to his detention.

Why I put my earlier question relating to the vatting of security
personnel was whether they could handle the issues with regard,
because when you are detaining somebody, there is, even though you
are a liberation movement, you have to exist within your own judicial
framework, there has to be some basic standard, there has to be some
procedures you follow, and obviously people are going to be
influenced by the policy of the organisation.

The issue of Dr Palo Jordan, maybe I should bring that up and see how
you respond to that, because there is a view that has been put that
some people feared that Quattro was a place when you stepped out of
line, politically, you challenged something that you could end up
there, and if we had to dispel that particular position, we need to
explore it in this hearing, if you get me.

GEN MASONDO: You know, I agree. I mean, look, Palo was at the top,
top. So his detention would be a question discussed
at the top. So there must have been something else because
unfortunately when Palo was actually locked up, I think it was after
1985, if I am not making a mistake. At the time I had ceased to be
the Commissar.

But, everybody knew that Palo had a (indistinct) background. It was
not a you know, something you hid. And he didn't sort of hide it, you
understand. So he would be more in contradiction sometimes not so
much with the ANC policy, but with party policies.

And even there, certain areas of party policies. Now, I doubt if it
would have been just because he default.

MS SOOKA: General, I wonder if I could step in here and ask a
question. It seems to me that during that period, you have a kind

Page 23	

of paranoia developing in the camps, about the possibility of agents
infiltrating.

Now, could one reasonably assume that where people possibly because
you know, the kind of political convictions they held, they were the
kind of people who left the country, to join the ANC, and because of
their kind of outspokenness, and perhaps a natural opposition,
perhaps to an authoritarian position, that that descent was then
interpreted as being one which related to developing the aims of the
enemy within the camp situation?

Could there have been that room where perhaps your security officers
were so over zealous in their duties, that descent would be
interpreted as being anti an ANC position, and that led to a lot of
people being put in camps later on, being executed?

GEN MASONDO: No. No. Why am I saying so? In the camp, one, we had the
Commissariat. You could go to a Commissar, for instance nobody had
the right to refuse anybody to come and see me.

Two, we used to discuss politics. In fact, MK was the hot bed of ANC
politics. People, I mean one time a cadre said to me as Ponolo says,
you Commissar, you are an intellectual, and Lenin said beware of
intellectuals.

I would sit with it. I said yes, Lenin was right, but Lenin was an
intellectual. How do you square that? It is not the sanction of a
political nature, it is particularly if you do things underground.
You know sometimes what used to happen, the security chaps would come
to me and say, that chap is a problem.

I say, why do you say so? They say he is doing this, and I say is it
not possibly just that he is naughty? I go to him, I say look, the
security chaps are saying you are doing one, two, three, why do you
do it? Don't you think that if you do it this way, it might turn out
that they might think you are now doing certain things?

But you see, if he was an agent, what he would do, he would listen to
me, but start doing the things in a more underground fashion. The
other thing is when we were outside, if I come, the question of
people - we discussed this thing in a group so as far as politics is
concerned, we couldn't lock up people for politics because we knew
that we are dealing with people who were not ANC from the beginning.

We would be left with nobody. They were in the majority.

So what would that be, our days? But, it is possible that sometimes a
person who might disagree and he's got a position in the security,
might bring certain information, but that would have to be checked
before the person can go to Quattro and be executed.

MR KHOISAN: But General, just on the point of the politics, I think
what, just to further the point that is raised by Commissioner Sooka.
There is the position that there

Page  24	

particularly in Angola, some of the people at Pango, Kibashi and
other places, they and some of the people in Luanda even, were
beginning to raise problems with regard to how the struggle is to be
prosecuted?

There were issued that were raised about combatting what they
interpreted, or what I hear Unita and dealing with the Unita problem,
rather than dealing with what they considered the primary problem,
and so as such over time, they raised this question, and there was a
view that has been presented, that the security apparatus of the ANC,
was a bit handled, this issue quite shoddily in terms of dealing with
this particular problem and complaint. How do you deal with that
particular thing?

GEN MASONDO: Okay, Unita. There has always been a desire by MK chaps
to get into battle, that has always been there and it was never
treated as a threat.

One time I went to the camp in Katenga, they raised this question. I
then went to the President and said to the President, the comrades
want to join Swapo to go and fight with Swapo.

Then the President said but why are they saying so. I tell him that
no, they are saying President, that they are just sitting, they want
to get experience.

Then we went to Lushulara, MPLA. We said to him, look, I was with the
President that day, we said to Lushulara, Lushu, we would like our
people to go down with the Swapo people.

Lushulara said to us, no comrades, we don't want to even to fight
Unita, nor to fight with Swapo. If you continue the way you are doing
it at home, it is better for us because once you join that, then we
might be attacked. I went back and informed them.

We never fought Unita until a certain time. We were in Khakulama,
when we started Malandi and Kamalundu, those camps. One thing I can
tell you about MK chaps, with all their weaknesses they were prepared
to make a lot of sacrifices for the female comrades.

Now, we there was a girl called Caroline, she was in Logistics. They
were transporting food and Unita attacked that convoy and Caroline
was killed.

I then went to the camps. Firstly I discussed it with Chris,
discussed it with Mzwali and I said to them, look, we cannot force
people to fight against Unita.

But I went to them, I went to the camps. When I was at the camps, I
said to the comrades, Unita has killed Caroline and some of our
comrades. Now, Unita wants now to cut our lines of supply.

We want to fight Unita to make sure that it does not do things like
this any more. I even told them that (indistinct) if you swear at my
sister and I don't fight, it means I am afraid of you. Unita had done
something which we couldn't take, but I said to them nobody is going
to go to fight Unita by force.

Page 25	

I said that. Then they said, well, I mean also there was also I think
mob psychology was there. Everybody said no we are going, but I said,
you must go there and ask people to volunteer.

Many people went, we started fighting Unita. We were fighting Unita
because it had started to attack us. And we did deal with Unita
thoroughly. But you see, then Unita started the mine warfare. Our
chaps had never experienced mine warfare.

Now mine warfare can be intimidating. I mean you don't see any enemy,
you just tramp on the mine, and some of our chaps lost their limbs.
That was, there started to be a problem about that. Some people
started getting afraid of that situation.

But, it was a very small minority. But what is interesting because
this leads us to the Viana, the last one (indistinct).

Again the South African radio, that is why we monitored it so much,
suddenly we heard a broadcast that said there were very serious
divisions within the old people and the young people about how the
struggle is run.

We have been discussing the question of how the struggle is run with
the chaps. In fact when we started to hit some of the oil refineries
and things, some of the young people had discussed it with us. Why
don't we do that, why don't - we would say all right, no, we will
see, we will see.

Because you wouldn't say to them we are going to do something,
because you don't know - these are underground issues.

MR KHOISAN: So according to you General, I mean is the point taken,
it wasn't necessarily the issue of Unita. I was more trying to put a
point on the table, that could that have been the necessary end point
of political or ideological disagreement, Quattro that is, that for
instance comrade, I disagree with the strategy to deal with this, or
comrade I disagree with this or with this, could that have been one
of the factors which could have landed somebody ...

GEN MASONDO: No. 

MR KHOISAN: Okay. 

GEN MASONDO: No, because look, you know just before that, we were
aware of some of the problems that come out naturally.

I mean a chap has been for six years in a camp, right, he wants to go
and some times we used to make mistakes.

Chaps would choose the wrong people to go home, and they get home,
they do the wrong things. The cadres know about this, they bring it
up. Just before that mutiny thing, when (indistinct) and Chris went
to meet, they were discussing things that were there, things -
because every time people, if you are a military man, if people
discuss with you some of the problems that you face, it makes you
better.

We were not dogmatic about how we fight that and the Unita thing,
there couldn't have been disagreement about it because we, ourselves
didn't want to fight Unita. Unita forced us

Page  26	

to fight them, because Unita was given - at first they didn't fight
us. They were given instructions from here and that is why we started
to, after we fought them down there, we then started to fight them
even in the north.

So Unita, it is quite certain, could not have said that a person
didn't agree with fighting Unita, wouldn't have sent him to Quattro
because all he would have had to say is that I don't want to fight
Unita, and we say yes, after all it is voluntarily.

MS BURTON: I understand that response, but if I could just follow on
that a little bit. Would you say that perhaps there might be some
people who had a political difference, would raise it in the
discussions that you have spoken about, and that would have been
accepted, and therefore not punished?

GEN MASONDO: Yes.

MS BURTON: But there might also have been people who started from a
point of view of a political difference, but then took that into
shall we say fermenting division, and creating groups and that it
would that kind of thing?

GEN MASONDO: That kind of thing obviously could get you into trouble.

MS BURTON: Okay, so it might start with a political difference of
opinion, but it might lead into trying to generate support for that
opposing position, and that would be seen then as disobedience and a
certain ...

GEN MASONDO: You see, for a guerilla army, anything that brings about
division, even if you didn't have any difference, but if you started
a mutiny, that or something that could lead to a mutiny, the MK code
says it, the MK code says it.

The other thing for instance, you know, if we were very, very - some
people would go around, collect them and shoot them, and it would be
in their right to do so because they took an oath, an MK oath.

And in that oath, you actually say that should I contravene these
things, I am willing to be punished, even by losing my life. The
oath. Now, there are people, after a time, we carried out the oath, I
remember even coming to give people oath here in Swaziland at night,
the President one day said to me, Andrew, we are administering the
oath, do you think that it is accepted in the spirit that it was
written?

And I said to him sir, I am not sure. He said, let us stop for a time
and examine it, because there is no point administering this oath,
that is why you find some people never took the oath.

But the people before 1984, took the oath. Now, you see there are
certain things which, for instance, even now in the Defence Force, if
we were in war, and you deserted, it is death.

If you disobey the command during a battle, it is death.

But if you disobeyed the command, we then sit down and try to find
out whether the command was unlawful, you see that point, because the
situations are different.

Page  27	

MS BURTON: Now general, when you look back at that time, I would
envisage that there would be quite a grey area between what was
legitimate political discussion and differences of opinion, and what
became subversive or became seen as subversive to the movement.

Would you now, looking back, see that there might have been mistakes
made in assessing who was worthy of punishment and who was expressing
what might be a legitimate political difference?

GEN MASONDO: No. What I would say is simply this. That if we talk
political difference, I cannot reach a conclusion where I can say
interpret in political differences to the extent where we had to kill
people, we made mistakes there. Where we could have made mistakes,
and that is possible, is where for instance in analysing this, then
you get some other person, you know the corroborating statements, and
find that you were given also disinformation.

That I think, there is a serious possibility of mistakes there.
Secondly, where for instance the people, because some, the people in
for instance Quattro, were young, that is why I used to go to them
and stress that look, you mustn't use third degree as the first
because sometimes a person can tell you what they want. I mean I have
a case of a girl who actually told the security that she was involved
in the killing of Joe Xabi, but she is still alive.

She is alive simply because I then said to the security people,
please bring that girl to me. I want to check whether in fact what
she did, that is - you know what she says, and I started to
interrogate her on the things she said and I found out this girl is
an inveterate liar.

She can lie to the extent of actually putting herself into trouble.
There are some people who confessed that during the Shisheda period,
who confessed and when we sat down and we checked, we found that no,
but you know if we actually were to call the names of all the people
who had confessed and are back here, and were never in Quattro,
people would be surprised.

But you see ...

MS DWANE-ALPMAN: Sorry, may I interrupt. Were that done in the case
of the three people that you said were locked up like Stix, Godfrey
Mswewo and those people?

GEN MASONDO: Yes, you see Stix and Godfrey are still alive. Stix is
in the - is a Major in the Defence Force. Kenneth, when things went
deeper and deeper, it was found that he was a serious enemy agent,
because we then found out even that he tampered with our guns, he did
quite a number of other things, and when we add all these other
things, because after I had locked him up, for that, I would have
locked him up and released him after a time because all I wanted was
the fact that he was doing things that I didn't understand, but then
he was again found out to be part of that spy ring.

Page  28	

MR KHOISAN: But General, that is precisely the point. The issue is,
and I want to put it on the table, whether the security apparatus
actually patrolled the ideological terrain. The fact is that you have
a man here, who according to the African National Congress, Kenneth
Mahamba, Timothy K. Seremani, according to your view, is an enemy
agent, but the position that that man held, in Angola is one where he
would be in a position to patrol who, he would be in a position to
patrol the loyalties of people.

He would be in a position to report through the channels to you,
about whether somebody was clear or not, and that man was within the
structure, and I want to put it to you is it your view now, on
review, that the security apparatus of the African National Congress
might have been seriously defective and deficient and that their
actions could have resulted in erroneous actions at the end line?

GEN MASONDO: No, if you say the security apparatus, I say no. Because
it is that security apparatus that made us bring these people back.

But if you say that we might have made mistakes in the beginning,
adverting people and putting them into positions, I mean Mahamba was,
look, some of these people were well prepared, so that when they come
there, you find he's got, he is nice, he in the eyes of the
leadership, he is doing the correct things. He's got the abilities
and you put him there.

But I told you that I locked up Chief of Security, that Chief of
Security was in fact later also to be part of, found out to be part
of (indistinct) group, so it is not the security only. The ANC itself
was infiltrated, so some people managed to get into security, some
people managed to get into the National Executive Committee or some
people went into Treasury.

That is the normal thing, but you see, to just say that that security
was - there are times when obviously as human beings, some of them,
will make mistakes, but not because they are security. They would
have made mistakes even if they were in other places.

MR KHOISAN: But what control did you have over, I mean what
mechanisms did you as Commissar put in place to ensure that the
security apparatus of the African National Congress from the lowest
to the echelon where you were located, would not engage in excesses
which would result in abuses to the human rights of people?

GEN MASONDO: You know, you are dealing with a national liberation
movement, you are not even dealing with the government.

Sometimes people talk in terms of human rights within this, you went
there, you talked to the people. Every time, if you go to the young
people who were in Quattro, who were anywhere, of the security, I
used to talk to them that it is not necessary for

Page  29	

them to do things that are going to make them, you know, become
sadists.

If they did something wrong, you punish them, like you punished
anybody. But let me give you an example where in East Africa, young
chaps were interrogating somebody and they killed him, East Africa.

This is a case which then, because we were in East Africa, obviously
we had to report that the person was dead, and the chaps were
arrested.

CHAIRPERSON: You see General, I hear the answer and I think I even
read more to it than is actually said. I think part of the task now,
and we are talking 1998, and we are talking the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission, is that what was then a national
liberation movement, has since become government.

GEN MASONDO: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON: That is the first thing. The second thing is that even
as a national liberation movement, there was a level at which it
operated in world forums.

GEN MASONDO: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON: Which expels humanitarian principals and views, it
became signatories to the United Nations and all the conventions that
upheld a humanitarian culture. I think part of our enquiry is not so
much to say you shouldn't have done what you did, but to be able to
say what were the conditions that made it possible for third degree
methods to be used. Were third degree methods for instance the
exception rather than the rule or were they the rule, rather than the
exception?

Because as you understand, part of what the Commission is charged to
do at the end of the day is to make recommendations which would also
affect, hopefully, that they will never be in South Africa in any
event, a basis for another liberation movement to be about, but that
we should be able to say even in very trying circumstances and
conditions, some of the things that took place, should never have
taken place.

So that is why I think there is a sense for instance, in which on the
Seremani issue, when time permits, I will be putting very specific
questions, because we have allegations of how he was tortured, that
he was tortured in some instances to a position that he was so
disfigured, that those who knew him, could not recognise him.

I say this against the background of what you said about him, having
been a torturer.

GEN MASONDO: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON: You know, as a person who in fact indulged in third
degree methods, but I think what we are trying to say is to say yes,
it was trying times, yes, it was the national liberation movement,
rather than the government, but it was a national liberation movement
of a special type which even as it embarked on armed struggle, it was
against the backdrop of a freedom

Page  30	

charter, which by itself could have laid the basis for a
humanitarian, if not a human rights culture, document.

GEN MASONDO: Yes. The documents of the ANC, the documents of MK, say
what the policy was. I myself went and said to people, don't get used
to third degree. When you say that, are you saying you were saying to
them, look I can understand that you can use third degree, in fact it
is a permissible method of interrogation, but don't get addicted to
it.

Or are you saying you said to them, look, don't use third degree
methods, because they are not in keeping with the ethos and the
policy and the outlook of the African National Congress?

GEN MASONDO: You remember I said we were at war. I get to Pango, I
find that seven people have been executed summarily.

If I find that, I have to investigate. There might be times that I
will use third degree, in spite of the fact that it is not policy.

During the second world war, the Americans went to Hiroshima and
Nagasaki and threw an A-bomb onto people. Now, sometimes some of
these things, I said to the people, yes, the policy says this, but I
knew that under certain circumstances they were going to use, you
see, and that is why when I tried to convince them, I said even for
investigation sometimes, using third degree won't give you what you
want.

But in some cases, it is a question of choosing between what is nice
to have, and the life of the people you lead.

CHAIRPERSON: Now, for instance on that General, I am just thinking
about what you said about that one woman who because she was such an
inveterate liar, maybe she wanted to become a hero in your eyes, she
implicates herself in the murder of Joe Xabi.

Quite an irresponsible act, because I mean if she had been taken on
her own confession, she could have been executed because of who Xabi
was.

GEN MASONDO: Correct.

CHAIRPERSON: Now, when you look back, maybe at the time, how were you
satisfied that the evidence that became produced, was evidence of a
nature that could be used to determine whether a person should or
should not live.

Let me give an example at the present time and I am sure you have
taken judicial notice of this. We have an Assistant Commissioner of
Police, goes into Mozambique, comes back and says, even before he has
reported to his Minister, I have seen evidence of a nature where I
think McBride you know, has committed gun running offences.

GEN MASONDO: Correct.

CHAIRPERSON: I mean, then you say to yourself, in other words, but I
am sure before that could be taken into account, there will have to
be a lot of investigations and a lot of testing.

Page 31	

What Suiker Britz says for instance in the context of this particular
example I am giving.

Now, in those times, in those trying times, and given also that you
have said yourself there were people who just lied themselves for no
apparent reason, how were you able to test the quality of your
evidence?

GEN MASONDO: You remember that we had the tribunal, we had the Review
Committee. I mean nobody, at least whilst I was still involved with
the west, was executed and the Review Committee did not sit and you
know the evidence is again the Review Committee looked at it, and
they say on this evidence, we think that the person must go.

MS SOOKA: General, I wonder if I could interrupt, because I think the
problem that in a sense we are trying to understand is, there is a
perception and it comes through the reports of all the different
Commissions, that here you have this liberation movement, and it is
an extraordinary liberation movement by all accounts, it was really a
government in exile, and the perception of the world out there was
they were in fact even though they had not signed all the normal
conventions, they operated within those conventions in a sense.

The one blot though on their copy book, is what actually happened in
the camps. Would you concede that this is the general perception out
there?

GEN MASONDO: You see, it is a perception that was created.

That we made mistakes, is not a problem, but anybody who can produce
for me a truthful statement that the African National Congress went
out of its way even in the camps, to make life difficult, then it
would be funny.

MS SOOKA: General, sorry, I am not actually saying that. I think that
what we want to explore is I think what you said now, that the ANC
made mistakes.

You see one thread which runs consistently through all the
Commissions' reports, is that things went wrong, one. Two, there was
an extraordinary abuse of power by different people and I am not
going to say it was Security alone. I will say there was an
extraordinary abuse of power, and that often these executions
particularly took place without any legitimate process of fact
finding, and I think in a sense from what you said this morning, I am
beginning to understand what was happening in the camps.

For one, the one thing I've got from your evidence is that you
considered yourself at war. The moment you say that, then you have
almost a military kind of atmosphere prevailing in the camp, the you
have the psychosis of enemy infiltration at just about every
different level.

And once you have that, you in a sense begin to create the climate
for things not to be properly done at some stage. I think we asked
you this question of would it be descent that could possibly land
people up, and I think you came back and you said

Page  32	

if somebody created divisions within a particular camp, you would
consider in a sense that that person was somebody who needed to be
dealt with.

Now, I think that is the kind of area that we want to explore with
you.

GEN MASONDO: Yes, let me - look, you see it is one thing to say, in
fact let me deal with the thread you are talking about.

For instance, the Commission, the one that I was involved on, the
Stuart Commission, what is interesting about it, it was that it
wasn't a Commission that went and you know, asked everybody who was
in the camp. It was a Commission that was trying to find out why
these people who had actually taken over a region, had actually
killed some people.

In other words, it is a Commission of people who had done something
wrong. They were also giving a view point. I think if they had, if
the Commission had actually written out what I said when they asked
me, I said that. They - you get to the Yongwani Commission, again you
had the Yongwani's, this thing, they were the people who were giving
that information.

The question I am saying is, when you say you are at war, obviously
even militaries have rules. That is why we said nobody should rape
women. That is why we said nobody should point even an unloaded gun
to somebody.

At the base of this thing was to preserve the life of our people.
Now, if we started from that premise and then suddenly we went into
doing certain things, then we say what was the reason.

The question of infiltrators was not an academic question. MR
KHOISAN: It was very real General.

GEN MASONDO: Yes.

MR KHOISAN: But when we deal with the issue that was raised by the
Stuart Commission, the Stuart Commission I don't and maybe I am
reading it incorrectly, but the Stuart Commission, the way I read
their findings, they come and they put some very serious issues on
the table with regard to the Security Department.

On point 13, grievances against the Security Department, there is a
lot that is written here, and at one point, they make the point that
there is a suggestion that here is the Commissar and he has this
people, and this red ants as they put it, in the Security Department.

GEN MASONDO: Yes, I remember that.

MR KHOISAN: And also the Commission made findings, this was not a
Commission of enemy agents, it was a Commission of your Organisation,
the African National Congress, and in that respect, they made certain
findings and one of the findings they made in point 1(a) of their
findings, was that you were aware of growing discontent among the
comrades, and due to punishment excesses, but you failed to adopt
corrective measures, and that

Page 33	

you always defended the administration or shall I say the Security
apparatus on many issues, and their views without going into proper
investigation in this.

In point (e) it found that for instance the person that you have
dealt with in this case and put on the table as an enemy agent, they
point out here that you received and accepted many of his reports, in
respect of other people being enemy agents.

How do you square that?

GEN MASONDO: How do they square, in the first place they say - you
see, I am a leader. You come to me and say this person is an enemy
agent, so I act.

Another one says this one is this, and I act. I must investigate. I
must find out. You see it is interesting that at one point, they will
say that I did not care, at another point they said I used the
Security, but go to the Security people, how do I then even go and
lock up a Security person?

You see, what I want to say, there is yes, if you deal with
individuals who made mistakes, I think, that I think is something you
will find, but what I cannot accept is a situation that there was a
(indistinct) about enemy agent or not, because if that was the case,
the number of people we would have executed, would have - for
instance, when we were in Angola, right, we transported these people
and send them to Uganda.

We could have shot them, so that we don't have the problem of having
to carry them in Uganda. We actually took time of young people to
guard them, to do that, I mean if you checked with some liberation
movements, they just dealt with these people.

Now, you see when I say we did make mistakes, I accept that some
times we could have put a person there, not because we knew that
there was something wrong with him. The information that we had said
that he was okay, he turns out to be somebody else.

Then you don't go around saying it is the Security. You say yes,
there were times when individuals used their position. Like for
instance if somebody for some reason didn't agree with somebody,
maybe there could be that, but when it comes to questions of
executing people, now that one I can say the President made
provision.

You know the people he put there, I mean I was the most junior, Moses
Mabida, the Treasurer General, Nsabi who was also senior to me,
accept that I mean maybe in terms of position then, I might have been
above him.

Now, if this question has to be accepted, then you can only put the
blame on the four of us because here documents came, we looked at
them, we took out some people, we endorsed some of these things and
even in a state where you have everything, there has been cases where
the highest court has actually gone wrong.
Page 34	

MR KHOISAN: But General, we are not talking about an isolated matter,
we are talking about a situation that obtained over a period of
years, and according to the Stuart Commission, the position that was
put on the table was that the Security Department used violence as a
rule, rather than as an exception.

And also let met point you to a document in the ANC, and you have it
in front of you there, too, the document that deals specifically with
Quattro, it is an appendix to the ANC's policy statement to the TRC,
page 44 of that.

GEN MASONDO: Yes?

MR KHOISAN: You see, there were regulations accordingly camp
regulations issued by the Regional Command stressed that inmates were
to be handled humanely.

GEN MASONDO: Yes.

MR KHOISAN: And the view is that and the way I understand it, and
that has been put on the table by a Commissioner, by the panel here
today, is that the ANC was a government in waiting.

GEN MASONDO: Yes.

MR KHOISAN: Albeit a liberation movement, it subscribed to
international instruments, for instance the Geneva Protocol, the
Geneva Conventions, and I believe in some circumstances, it may even
be a signatory to some of those documents.

GEN MASONDO: Correct.

MR KHOISAN: In respect of handling people humanely. Now, when this
happens on one or two or three occasions, and comes up for review,
that is one other thing, but when it happens over a period of time,
wasn't there something that you detected which was horribly wrong,
and which needed to be addressed before the Stuart Commission?

GEN MASONDO: You know, one of the interesting things about the Stuart
Commission, the Stuart Commission came around when I was no longer
for most of the time in the west, that is when Chris had become the
Army Commissar, and you see I went there.

The first time for instance, they didn't have - I checked, I found
they didn't have uniforms, I made sure that they had them.

That sometimes people did beat people, that one is not something that
you can say never happened, but at least when I was still there, you
go to people who were in Quattro, you ask them, what was my attitude
towards people who do things that are wrong, they will tell you, I
don't have to tell you.

The very people who are in Quattro, the people who were members of
the Security, they will tell you, but you see, sometimes - the other
time, you see, Mzwandile Piliso and myself, spent most of the time
there.

Some people hear things by hearsay, but I am not going to say that
after I left, I don't know, maybe there might have been violations,
but what I am saying, it could never have been the policy of the
movement that that should happen.

Page 35	

I can't even imagine that Chris who took over from me, would have
gone there. I mean he was even sometimes more sensitive about you
know, the Security people. What I - there are people who were in
Quattro who we meet daily and I am not talking about those who are
now members of the IFP or what, there are people who were in Quattro
who we meet and we discuss.

The other aspect, at one time I saw what people wrote about questions
of food. We gave those people food, but you must also understand that
our ability to get food, was not at its best. But, we made sure that
they were fed.

Now, what I am trying to, I am trying to remove the - you see, one,
the idea that people could have been executed without proper you
know, thing, because that would come to the review.

You don't execute a person, and that doesn't come to review.

That was the rule. The other question is like the Zondi question. You
could have a thing like the Zondi problem, which in fact is what
happened in Tanzania, where these chaps interrogated and they did go
beyond, but when you check, that is why when they were arrested, we
gave them to the Tanzanians, and they were sentenced.

But one of them, had just heard that at home, they had destroyed his
whole family. Now, a thing like that could happen, you can't condone
it, but it could happen.

But you can't say because that type of thing happened, then the
system was out of order. That is what I am saying. And you see, what
I will not, you know there is a tendency sometimes to want to use a
young person as a scapegoat when in fact that young person, at a
particular time, even did wrong. In the ANC we used, there are many
people we've punished irrespective of at what (indistinct) they are.

But you see if you come and write something and say this person was
doing this, and you check this thing, the person was never called.
You know, I for instance at one time there is this allegation that I
used to misuse girls. I should have been called just once, and you
can go to the whole records of this thing, you won't find that I was
called for that.

The only time that these people said I had impregnated a girl, when I
was in Mazimbo, they checked, they found that there was no substance
whatsoever, but you see, also there is the other aspect of the IFF,
you know the IFF. I mean I read about it, the International Freedom
Forum.

When I was in Angola, I enjoyed reading what they said about me. I
enjoyed it, and in most cases, I never even replied.

If you notice, even inside this country, when people write about me,
I don't reply.

I will reply when I think there is an element of substance, so that I
can put things right.

CHAIRPERSON: Like in the Truth Commission?

Page 36	

GEN MASONDO: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON: Shall we take lunch now, and when we come back, I would
rather we possibly deal with the mutiny and then the Commissions.

GEN MASONDO: Okay.

COMMISSION ADJOURNS ON RESUMPTION:

CHAIRPERSON: It is now a little bit after quarter past two and we
will resume.

GENERAL MASONDO: (still under oath) 

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Khoisan?

MR KHOISAN: Thank you Mr Chairman. Now General, at the recess we were
discussing a number of issues.

What I find is that we discussed one of the Commissions.

This Commission, the Stuart Commission, specifically was put into
place and it was established to investigate the causes of an uprising
of sorts, or shall I say a mutiny?

GEN MASONDO: Correct.

MR KHOISAN: Which took place in Angola? 

GEN MASONDO: Yes.

MR KHOISAN: But it also dealt with a number of issues which impacted
upon that mutiny and also what occurred subsequent to the mutiny?

GEN MASONDO: Yes.

MR KHOISAN: Okay, now from your perspective, can you discuss with us
that mutiny and also the issues which in your view, are gamine to the
Stuart Commission in so far as it dealt with the mutiny, its
antecedents and what happened as a result?

GEN MASONDO: You see, at the time I was in Lusaka for most of the
time, and Chris was then the Army Commissar.

Now, and it was during the time when we were fighting Unita. As I
indicated, they developed a - just before that, the question of the
armed strujzjzle was discussed. I remember (indistinct) and Chris
went vto discuss with the soldiers, the questions of the armed
struggle.

But at the same time, because there was a question 1 for instance,
that the cadres were dissatisfied with things like some of the people
who went to the front, and came back, in other words, they were
asking how is this election done that some people who really were not
fit to be in the front, came back, I mean went to the front?

There were also if you remember well, that it was after 1981, if I am
not making a mistake in my head, now, the fact that Mozambique, one
of our greatest allies that sold us out, was a very, very serious
matter because that was a corridor.

So there were genuine things that were being discussed and nobody in
the leadership of the ANC, thought that that meeting was a mutiny,
but then because of what I said, that Unita began to use mine
warfare, that did create a problem for our people.

Page 37	

But not only that, somehow or other during that time, as I also
indicated, the enemy also activated its own people. People started
now shooting in the air.

Ultimately they came back to Luanda. When they got to Luanda, they
literally took over the region. Chris had to resort to asking the
Angolans to assist because the whole situation was out of hand.

The Angolans then restored the situation. Now, what was even more
serious is that that Committee of ten, we then began to get
information that the Committee of ten came as a result of meetings
that were being held at the VIP house, where Radio Freedom was.

That for instance, Maliza, the (indistinct) chap was actually the
person who was the running point, what they called the wise old man.
What was also interesting was that the Regional Commander of, I mean
the District Commander of Luanda, Sidwell, also got involved in this.

The Commissar of Amandla, who was in there, also got involved in
this. What was, if it had been confined to the chaps who were in the
bush, actually fighting, then you know, you could, but now it became
actually a mutiny, a takeover of the region.

All right, after the Angolans had put that, then Commander and I were
called from Lusaka, to come and assist Chris. We discussed with the
people, we said to them, those who are not ANC once side, those who
are not ANC one side.

By then, that time some of them were arrested, were locked up. We
went and talked to them. Then I left with the other major group. I
left Chris and the Commander in Luanda, I took this group to Pango,
that was the first group.

No, I went with them, I left one group in Camp 13, Kibashi and then
took the others to Pango. I discussed this matter with them. And I
told them on the spot, I said gentlemen, this is counter-revolution
because even if you had whatever grievances, the methods you used,
are not revolutionary methods.

Okay, there was no problem, I left them there. Then Chris came and we
went to Kibashi. We got there, Chris was addressing them, and they
were saying Chris had sold them out. I said to them no, what did you
expect Chris to do when you had taken over.

All right, we thought that the whole thing was, you know, we
discussed it, we thought it was okay. By then, when we reached the
National Executive, it was felt that let us actually look at the
whole situation and let's call for a Commission.

And the Stuart Commission was called. They went, they gave the report
which they gave, they asked me, I gave my own reaction to the report.

Then the - after a time we thought everything was okay, people were
still going to get things ready, then the second thing

Page 38	

happened. In Pango, the (indistinct) chaps executed seven comrades.
Now, again when this was heard, I was in Lusaka, and Chris was in
Lusaka.

We were told to go to Angola, both of us. We first went to see MPLA.
Now the question was what should be done, should we involve MPLA in
this thing?

Chris and I decided to say to the MPLA people, no, we don't want you
to get involved in it. In the first place, these people had taken
over this region, and you were called in. If we call you in again,
then it would mean we do not have the support of the MK chaps.

So we said, we were going to handle this thing with the MK chaps. So
Chris and I went to Kibashi. We got to Kibashi, we found that General
Ngwenya was already there, (indistinct), mobilising the loyal forces.

And the loyal forces were mobilised, and that was the most painful
thing for me because a battle ensued. The other interesting thing was
that these people had already, they had contact with people outside,
they also had contact with the Commissar of Kibashi who was
contacting them and we ultimately got to know that he was sympathetic
to Unita, so we battled.

And because they were in the minority, they lost. They started
running away. Some of them, we brought them back.

Then I left for Lusaka, I left Chris. Then Chris and I think Sis
Gerty, went to go and look at the whole situation again.

And some of them were tried and executed. The others were brought in
and they managed to survive, others ran away.

MS DWANE-ALPMAN: Sorry, who was part of the panel when these people
were being tried?

MR KHOISAN: Who was part of the tribunal, maybe - is that your ...

GEN MASONDO: What I know is that it was Chaired by Chris and I think
Sis Gerty Shoppe was part of it.

MS DWANE-ALPMAN: And were there any people representing the accused?

GEN MASONDO: Well, I think the accused should have been represented
by the Commissar himself.

MR KHOISAN: Which would have been who? 

GEN MASONDO: Chris.

MR KHOISAN: Chris?

GEN MASONDO: Yes, that time.

MR KHOISAN: So he was sitting on the tribunal and at the same time he
was taking the role of ...

GEN MASONDO: There was a tribunal and he was part of that tribunal.

MR KHOISAN: Okay, and in the tribunal he also had the role of
defending the interest of the accused?

Page 39	

GEN MASONDO: Yes, because as a Commissar he had to see to it that the
case went on properly.

MR KHOISAN: Okay. Before we get into that, I just want to clear one
point, and then we can go further.

The Stuart Commission, at the end of the Commission, made a
recommendation that you in your position as National Commissar should
be redeployed. What was your view on that?

GEN MASONDO: Actually, the interesting thing is that I didn't
actually know that they made that recommendation.

I didn't know that. Because when in 1985, when I was when I ceased to
be National Commissar, when this question was being discussed of the
Commissar, and it was said that the National Commissariat should be
terminated, I sat in that meeting and Thabo was Chairing that
meeting, I said in that meeting I don't agree with the idea that the
National Commissariat should be done away with because that is a
very, very important structure in terms of looking after the cadre.

I said to them if you want, if you are dissatisfied with the National
Commissar in Rumasondo, remove him, but don't destroy the structure.

What I was told in that meeting was that it was not in Rumasondo,
that was not being removed. That the structure of National Commissar
was too militaristic, so we are going to only keep the Army
Commissar.

MR KHOISAN: When we look at the Stuart Commission report, it is a
very candid report.

GEN MASONDO: It is an opinion.

MR KHOISAN: Well, at least it seems to deal, maybe it is a reflection
of the ability of the liberation movement to be introspective to take
its actions under review.

And as such, you know, it forms part of a record, a historical record
which to a large degree, reflects some form of honesty, intellectual
honesty, and it is also a painful process to take anything under
review, and there are not many liberation movements who are willing
to do that, to look at themselves.

We have seen situations in Cambodia, places where things just go
haywire and nobody wants to review it, and when they want to look at
it, we have a Cameroon situation developing.

But now in the situation of this, the section that deals with
administration, those are very stark terms to describe relations
between the administration and the rank and file cadres in the camp
where they say "relations between the administration and the rank and
file is described as being of 'master and servant'.

They say firmly elitism has developed. The administration's housing,
cooking, eating and other facilities are practically cut off and this
has increased the separation."

I want to put it to you and I want to see if you could respond. How
much of the administrative component in the camps, what was the
percentage if you can give me a sense,

Page 40	

which was composed of people who were either in the line of
accountability to the Security Department or directly vatted members
of the Security Department?

GEN MASONDO: In the structure of the ANC and MK, the Commander is the
supreme.

Then you have the Commissar, who is his Deputy. Then you have the
team of staff, then you have the Security people in the camp. The
Chief of Security, that was the hierarchy.

MR KHOISAN: And the structure in Camp 32 and maybe I am wrong, that a
Camp Commander, a Camp Commissar who is second in command, a Chief of
Staff, a Chief of Ordinance, Chief of Logistics, recording officer
and guards, that was the structure, correct?

GEN MASONDO: Yes.

MR KHOISAN: Now, if that situation obtained, the Camp Commander as I
understand it, who would he be accountable to directly?

GEN MASONDO: The - you see Camp 32 was a different camp. It was not
an ordinary ANC camp.

MR KHOISAN: It was the detention facility?

GEN MASONDO: Yes, it was the detention facility, so the situation was
the administration there was Security. 

MR KHOISAN: Now, in Pango and in Camp 13 ... 

GEN MASONDO: 13, Kibashi.

MR KHOISAN: Kibashi, did you have basically the same command structure 
in those camps?

GEN MASONDO: I am saying the command structure ...

MR KHOISAN: What I am trying to get at General, I am trying to ...

GEN MASONDO: The Commanders were not under Security, they were under
the Regional Commander so there is a difference between the line of
command. So the Commander was responsible to the next high Commander.

MR KHOISAN: Okay, then that is what I am trying to do. I am trying to
establish here how a liberation movement whose founding principles
are predicated on prosecuting a struggle, which exists within a
certain framework, an ideological framework, would allow or can
allow, a skew power relation because what the Stuart Commission leans
heavily on, is saying that most of the problems that they detect, or
which they assume are in the camps, are assigned to the Security
Department, and I am trying to establish how the Security Department
or members of the Security Department, or shall I say the
Intelligence and Security structure, if you put it together, but the
Security structure, how they were able to develop to such a degree or
could it be that they developed to a degree where they became
unaccountable to the ordinary military command and the political
command, within the liberation movement?

Page 41	

GEN MASONDO: No. I wouldn't have been able to lock up a Regional
Security Chief - you see, I said the Stuart Commission interrogate, I
mean asked questions of people who most of them, people who got in,
became (indistinct), had some problems with Security problems, so
obviously they tended to concentrate more on the Security, but in a
camp the Camp Commander is - but if Security could come, if there are
things, Security people collected information, and even when they
were going to interrogate people, they told the Commander, then they
got the people interrogated because that was their task.

But that doesn't mean that in some cases you never found that some
Security chaps may have been more influential than the Commanders, it
does happen.

MR KHOISAN: General, then how do you account for the fact that not
only in Angola, but also in at the Cowboy Conference, and also in
Mazimbo and various other places, where the ANC had a significant
presence, there was this terminology of (indistinct), which was being
tossed around and it was sort of an element of a chilling effect
within the liberation movement, because I mean we've heard not only
testimony and the Commissions didn't only hear testimony from people
who were perceived to be people who had an axe to grind, they also
spoke to other people, other people who will in fact be testifying
before this Commission.

And I am putting it to you that for this, I mean for a liberation
movement for a terminology like a grinding stone, to start becoming a
part of the popular lexicon, wouldn't that indicate a problem?

GEN MASONDO: You know, when people give themselves nicknames, the
word (indistinct) was in fact a nickname of the Security. It did not,
it was there even when the Security didn't have problems.

So, you must understand the whole context of the Security in this
way. There is the time when I talked of the Shisheda.

You remember I talked of Shisheda.

MR KHOISAN: Yes.

GEN MASONDO: Now, at that time obviously the Security was the one
that went collecting people from all these things. During that time,
that is when people began to fear, because of that act.

Because that time, the Security was collecting people.

MR KHOISAN: But its methods, I mean we talk about, I am back on the
issue of the methods, when we are talking of the methods that were in
fact being used, and this is not something of the Commission, this is
actually what we found, and this has been handed to us, this comes as
part of the ANC's own submissions to us.

When we look at the kind of discipline that was handed down, in
respect of the Security Department, under the Section, Section 9, on
page 44 of the Section entitled Quattro, abuses,

Page 42	

lengthy isolation, solitary confinement, regular beatings under the
feet, etc, napalm, that is being rubbed with hairy beans, pampa,
blowing up one's cheeks, etc, etc, red ants introduced into clothes,
slaughter, chopping wood for hours on end, starvation, and what we
talked about earlier, which was third degree interrogation.

When we look at a Department that has that kind of capability and it
is according to these Commissions of Enquiry where they say it was
not an exception, it was not an occurrence that occurred once in a
blue moon, but something that occurred routinely, we find that they
refer to in grievances against Security Department they say they
found practical evidence of floggings, scars on the whole back of one
comrade in our training camp, okay, when you find this, and you put
it all together, it seems to have an indicting effect on the Security
establishment of the liberation movement, and I want to put it to you
that do you think that this particular structure developed to a stage
where it became a law onto itself, unaccountable to the political and
military instruments which gave it life?

GEN MASONDO: When I was still there, it didn't, and it couldn't.
Because I wouldn't allow it to.

You see, we talked about it does happen that people will do certain
things. I want to challenge anybody who says that was the rule. I
want them, I challenge that. That certain things happened, because if
it was, we wouldn't have been able actually to handle the situation.

The infiltration that we had, we couldn't have handled it.

But that some people might have used their power, but that the
Security had already taken over, the President would not have allowed
it either.

MR KHOISAN: Well, in the case of Palo Jordan, the view was that he
will, that when Palo Jordan was detained, and that is also a matter
of record, that when Palo Jordan was detained, that he will stay over
there, I think he was detained for six weeks, and that he will only
be released when Security is finished with him.

That to me, I mean you are not talking about some (indistinct)
dredged up and tossed into the fold of the liberation movement, you
are talking about somebody who impacts the political ideological life
of an organisation, who is central to its discharge of its mandate,
its functions, to liberate the country.

When he, a person of that rank, is - when they are able to take him,
put him in detention for six weeks, and only release him when they
are good and done, doesn't that indicate, and that is much later,
that is not in - I believe that is in 1985, so doesn't that indicate
to you General, that the Security Department had had powers beyond
what it was envisaged they would have?

GEN MASONDO: No. You see when people talk of - supposing I was an
enemy agent, and they found out that there was things that was not
going right, and they said I must come and account,

Page 43	

with that because I am the National Commissar, I should not account.
I find it problematic.

CHAIRPERSON: I think what is being said here is that there is a
difference between asking somebody to go and account and the manner
in which you do it.

If we accept for a little while that when you talk Palo, even in the
context of that period, you are talking a very bright person, a
person with a pedigree, it may well be that both his parents were
ex-unity movement people and therefore were of the (indistinct) band
of politics, but he was in the ANC and he was committed and let's
assume that there was something far more cogent, let's assume in the
phraseology of what we are saying, that his you know, view, his male
view as a (indistinct), was of a nature that was causing some
disturbance in the camps.

Now, to detain a person for six weeks and to call him even if it is
in that period, on a day to day basis and say comrade, we need to get
to the bottom of who you are, what you are, what is causing us
concern, I think what we are trying to say is there seems to us, we
may be looking at it now from the wide end of the telescope of time,
where we are able to say but why couldn't they have called him, but
it is a question that we must put.

Why was this Security, why was the (indistinct) so very keen to
detain people at Quattro or wherever else, when it appears that in
some instances routine questioning even if it was on a daily basis,
without detention was what could have been done?

GEN MASONDO: You see, I am worried about the fact that maybe they
might have done that to Palo, it might have been a mistake, but does
not mean that people, other people, were just being locked up.

You see for instance, Matiwani who was a very, very top chap,
(indistinct), who wrote a 50 page document to the Special Branch
about this organisation, I think one of the problems he got away with
it, was that he was in a high position.

Now, for me, I - you know, I remember at some point people were
worried about the fact that maybe as they go around, the Security
people are looking after them, and I told people, what is the problem
because if you don't have a problem, part of the Security is to see
to it that you don't get hurt.

But I think the extrapolation that because they locked Palo for six
weeks, then all the detentions were of that nature. It is something I
find difficult, because also what is being said, it is as if you
know, (indistinct) used to just take a person and they go and lock
him up.

Somebody senior, must have known that this person is being locked up,
and if we reach that stage, which I don't think we did, then it is
not Security's problem, it is us as a leadership.

CHAIRPERSON: In fact, just to follow on that, part of the allegation
is that if they could do that to a senior person like

Page 44	

Palo, can you imagine what it was like to people of less importance
in terms of the ranking within the ...

GEN MASONDO: That is what I infer.

CHAIRPERSON: That is what is ...

GEN MASONDO: And I am saying it doesn't follow. I am saying it
doesn't follow because you see, because Palo was kept, if I remember
well, he was kept even not in Quattro, he was kept in Lusaka.

MR KHOISAN: That is correct.

GEN MASONDO: You see. You see, there are people, you see there are
people, many of them, who were involved in with Security problems,
who were never, who never went into Quattro.

Some of them were kept in the camp in 13, just like all other people.

And this, anybody who knows the west, will tell you that.

Now, my question is people take a testimony of a particular group of
people, and make that as the testimony. They don't balance it with
the fact that there were quite a number of people who had Security
problems and were not locked up in Quattro.

MR KHOISAN: With all due respect General, the Commission which was
duly constituted and one must concede that the kind of people that
were put on that Commission, including comrades Mgalo, Aziz Bahaad,
(indistinct) etc, these were people that by and large were not just a
faction within the ANC, the way I understand them politically is that
they span a broad region?

GEN MASONDO: Yes, correct.

MR KHOISAN: You know, ideologically also, they span a broad region,
even today within the movement.

GEN MASONDO: Correct.

MR KHOISAN: And so with all due respect to what you are saying, they
didn't just go and interview the people who allegedly were subjected
to these excesses and abuses, or their confederates, but they did
speak to people like yourself, you indicated that you provided them
with information.

They also spoke to people who were actually, physically involved in
the Security establishment in those camps.

GEN MASONDO: In the report to you, do you see what I said? In the
report itself.

MR KHOISAN: In the Stuart Commission report? 

GEN MASONDO: Yes.

MR KHOISAN: Is that your statement? 

GEN MASONDO: Yes, what I said.

MR KHOISAN: You see, I don't see your statement.

GEN MASONDO: Right, okay, let me not - I don't want to, and the other
thing that even if the - I don't doubt the integrity, but I also
don't give them a blank cheque that they are incapable of not seeing
the thing in its depth because they were a Commission that was
established during a time when there was a problem.

Page 45	

MR KHOISAN: Okay, so to put it in the record, maybe just to get some
clarity, is it your view that this Commission and given that we now
have the hindsight where - you know, hindsight is 20-20 vision, we
are ten years behind time now, 15 years, a decade and a half.

GEN MASONDO: Yes.

MR KHOISAN: Are you saying that they may not have been as fair as
they could have been on assessment of the situation?

GEN MASONDO: I don't want to say that they may not have been as fair
because then I would impute, you know, a motive. They may not have
been as accurate in their (indistinct), because if I say fair, it
means they were biased, and I don't want to say that.

MR KHOISAN: And I wouldn't want you to say that either, General, but
how do you - you constantly in this hearing have informed us that
when you were there, excesses did not occur.

But one of the things that I see running as a thread throughout the
Commissions, when this period is taken on review, an important point
is raised, and I want to see if you could respond to it, in terms of
one of the grievances of the cadres, the soldiers if you were, on the
ground, and that is that the leadership was unavailable, they were
not there. That the leadership was not around, that the decisions
were being taken by people who were there on the spot and that -
because they don't exclude you from this, and I would assume that you
would constitute part of that leadership component and that they
would put you with leadership.

GEN MASONDO: Correct.

MR KHOISAN: And when the Commission makes its assessment of the
situation, and they add that into their report, that one of the
problems was that the leadership was absent for long periods of time
and as such, there is a suggestion that you were out of touch with
what was really happening, how do you respond to that?

GEN MASONDO: You know, that one I wouldn't even respond to it myself.

You see, if you met a young chap who was in Angola, and asked him who
were the people who were most of the time in that place, he will say
to you Mzwai Piliso and Andrew Masondo.

Any person, I have been the most available leader of the African
National Congress, together with Mzwai to the chaps in the camps,
until the time when I left, I went to Mazimbo.

And even there, if you went to the people there and asked them who is
the person you can at any time, when you have a problem, you can go
to him, they will tell you Andrew Masondo, as they do it even now.

MR KHOISAN: Okay, so when, now let's go quickly back to go onto
Quattro, established in 1979.

GEN MASONDO: Yes.

Page 46	

MR KHOISAN: There are rudimentary facilities here. This doesn't
really constitute a detention centre, but it is sort of a makeshift
centre so that the ANC can accommodate its own people, that it needs
to accommodate, so that the Angolan government doesn't have to deal
directly with this problem, as they had asked you.

You facilitated them in this way, but now, how often did you visit
Quattro, how often did you review the situation to see maybe if
things are going wrong? I understand that a very young man, some
young guys were in charge of that, at that point, 19 years old or
something like that.

GEN MASONDO: You know, unless I wasn't around Africa, a month never
passed without me, my being in Quattro. Some times I went to Quattro
twice in a month.

MR KHOISAN: So you had occasion to have a first hand view of the
excesses that were being allegedly visited upon these people, is that
correct?

GEN MASONDO: I had a first view of visiting those people and
discussing whatever problems they had.

MR KHOISAN: And did you ascertain the conditions of the prisoners
which were under their charge and for whom they had to ...

GEN MASONDO: I told you I said they must give them uniforms to wear.
I am the one that used to go there, and some of them, I would say can
you please bring me so and so, I want to discuss with him, and they
would come and discuss.

They would, if they had a problem, they said it. And I would, in
cases where there was a problem, I would discuss it.

You see, my difficulty, I don't know what happened after I left. I am
talking about the time when I was there, I went to visit that place
very often.

MR KHOISAN: Could it be that the chaps in whose charge the prisoners
were kept, may have been remiss in informing you of excesses they may
have visited upon the people in their charge?

GEN MASONDO: It is possible, but some did talk to me and if they did,
I talked to the people.

MR KHOISAN: Okay, now let's look at the issue of this person that you
characterised as a South African agent, one Kenneth Mahamba,
Seremani, Timothy K. Seremani.

The allegation is that when he was detained, and you have indicated
that you were personally involved in his detention.

GEN MASONDO: Yes.

MR KHOISAN: The allegation is that between the time that he was
detained, and the time that he had passed through the judicial
process and was eliminated, liquidated by the tribunal, that he was
severely tortured, and that he was beaten beyond recognition.

There is an allegation that this situation obtained with this
particular person. Now, I am asking you this for two reasons.

Page 47	

One, the ANC at that time subscribed to certain international
protocols regarding treatment of prisoners of war, or whatever.

Two, because of the fact that I want to ascertain what your personal
involvement was from the time this person was detained, to the time
this person was executed. Can you share with us some of your views on
that, General?

GEN MASONDO: Remember what I told you that I locked him up, not
because I said at the time he was an enemy agent, so that was not the
reason why I locked him up.

I locked him up because he had violated human rights. He had broken a
number of our vehicles even when I told him not to.

So from that point of view, I didn't lock him up because he was an
enemy agent.

The enemy agent aspect comes after, when the Shisheda came and people
were being interrogated, some of the people he worked with, indicated
that he was an enemy agent.

I do remember sitting with him, when the Shisheda thing came.

I sat with him, and I think I was with Shiswe and some other people.
He had said - he, himself had said he was recruited by, no he said he
came out with Faro.

The way he said he came out with Faro, he said I - Faro came and then
I decided I will go out with him. I asked him a question, I said by
the way your brother was in Robben Island, were you ever interested
in politics?

He said no, he wasn't. I asked that earlier, then when he told me
that he just went with Faro outside, I said how do you does that
tally with the fact that you are saying that your brother was in
Robben Island, you didn't worry yourself at the time, with this
thing, that should have made you political, what then made you just
to go with somebody who said let's go outside.

And he was in a fix. And then I said because this person, whom you
are now talking about, you didn't know him for a long time and that
day he was in a fix, he couldn't come out, and I said could it be
that maybe you and him were connected somehow?

Ultimately he said yes. Then I left. As far as I am concerned, and
this I can swear, no person was ever beaten up in my presence, none.

MR KHOISAN: But the view is that between the time this particular
person, Mr Seremani was detained and the time that he was executed,
some physical abuses had been visited onto him, he had suffered
serious physical abuse, to the point where he was almost
unidentifiable and Ms Dwane will pursue this point in a minute, but I
want to ask you, what was the condition that this person was in, the
last time you saw him?

GEN MASONDO: I will tell you, the last time I saw him, he was in no
serious, he was normal, that is when I spoke to him.

Page 48	

MR KHOISAN: How did you extract the information from him, General,
that he was - how did you extract the information from him?

GEN MASONDO: No, I talked to him.

MR KHOISAN: Just a chat, he gave it to you? 

GEN MASONDO: Yes. Yes.

MR KHOISAN: Okay, and then, what were your instructions to the
guards? Did you instruct anybody to guard this man that his case is
going to be put under review by the tribunal and that he should not
be harmed? What were your instructions to the guards?

Did you issue any instructions in this respect?

GEN MASONDO: What instruction would I have given, unless I suspected
that they were going to do something to him?

MR KHOISAN: No, but did you inform anybody that he was a suspected
enemy agent whose case must now be taken under review, possibly to
the tribunal?

GEN MASONDO: All the people in Quattro were interrogated, their cases
were prepared, they were taken to the tribunal. I only met their
cases ultimately.

I mean if their cases went in the review.

MR KHOISAN: What was the discussion, when the tribunal was held in
terms of this particular person?

GEN MASONDO: I wasn't at the tribunal. I am never at the tribunal, I
am at the review.

MR KHOISAN: What can you share with us in respect of, because we are
dealing with two things and the most important allegation before us,
is an allegation that is made, and I think maybe I should leave Ms
Dwane to deal with it, but I want to finish up with this, the
allegation is that from this person's detention, until the time that
this person was physically executed, or removed, or liquidated, this
person was tortured to such an extent that they were unrecognisable,
and I am putting it to you did you know about it, and if so, what can
you share with us and you say no.

GEN MASONDO: I didn't.

MR KHOISAN: So that was the last time, according to you, that you saw
this person alive?

GEN MASONDO: Yes. The time when I, yes, I talked to him, and when we
reviewed his case, and I never really got in touch with him again
until he was executed.

MR KHOISAN: Was a statement taken from this person?

GEN MASONDO: Yes.

MR KHOISAN: Besides the verbal confirmation that he gave you, was a
statement taken?

GEN MASONDO: Statements were taken from him, like all other people. I
mean, by the time the thing comes to review, the tribunal has already
taken a decision, we review the decision of the tribunal.

Page 49	

MR KHOISAN: So who sat, who were the people who were directly
connected to the tribunal, that was concerned with the case of
Timothy K. Seremani and the conditions under which it took place?

GEN MASONDO: I can't remember exactly who was doing that tribunal.

MR KHOISAN: Do you remember the case when it came under review, what
was the position? What did you have physically in front of you in
terms of this person?

GEN MASONDO: Yes, we had the facts that he was part of a group that
was a spy ring. We also, on top, the other things that now I had also
locked him up for, then came into context.

So we ...

MS DWANE-ALPMAN: Were other members of the spy ring also executed?

GEN MASONDO: Of the ...

MS DWANE-ALPMAN: Were other members of the spy ring ... 

GEN MASONDO: Yes, some of them were executed, yes.

MS DWANE-ALPMAN: could you provide us with their names?

GEN MASONDO: Balile is one of them.

MS DWANE-ALPMAN: Now in the case of (indistinct) Gordon Mswewo, were
any attempts made to visit him and see what his condition was like
after you had arrested him?

GEN MASONDO: That is the brother to Godfrey, I mean, he was there, I
went there, I saw him.

After that it was a question of verifying, people verifying what he
did and they came up with the conclusion that he had sold out during
a battle. That according to the MK code, is very clear.

MS DWANE-ALPMAN: During the visit, did he ever inform you that he was
tortured and beaten?

GEN MASONDO: No, he didn't at that time.

MS SOOKA: General, could you tell me, you know, once the information
was placed before the tribunal, in regard to the agent allegations in
respect of Kenneth Mahamba, what was actually done by the tribunal or
the organisation, to establish whether that in fact was so?

GEN MASONDO: Let me, you see Mahamba became part of the Shisheda
group.

There are many of them. Those people were interrogated, even by
people who were not actually members of Quattro. Then the Quattro
people, then the statement, then he went before the tribunal, then
the tribunal gave the sentence.

That is what happened. You see for instance, maybe to indicate what,
(indistinct) of people thinking that we, there is a chap here called
Drake, now he was in Fazenda. There was a National Executive meeting
which was in Morogoro, I was attending with Mzwai Piliso.

Page 50	

We got information that there is a mutiny in Fazenda. The National
Executive said Mzwai Piliso and I must go immediately to Angola to go
and look at that.

Now, Fazenda is not very far from Camp 13. We first went to Camp 13.
We were told that those chaps are armed to the teeth. I then said to
comrade Mzwai Piliso, I am going to Fazenda. You prepare a unit, but
I am going to Fazenda, I want to go and diffuse that situation so
that we do not get into that place and start fighting.

So I went. Normally I went into the Camp with a pistol on me, that
day I left the pistol. I got into Fazenda and when I got in, I found
them (indistinct), they were having their pandola, they were having
hand grenades.

So I said to them, we are going to have a meeting. So they said - so
I said to begin with, I don't discuss with people who are pointing
guns at me. We are going to talk as members of the African National
Congress, and you are going to tell me what the problem is.

And I said to Mzwai Piliso, before I - word is sent that something
has happened to me, don't bring in the force and I talked to those
people, there were three people who came up. I spent time asking
people, one after the other, what was the problem, what was the
problem.

Until we isolated, in the discussion, we isolated three people. And
later Mzwai came and we didn't have a fight, because in our minds, we
didn't just want to get there and create a situation where we are
going to kill people.

MS SOOKA: General, if I can just ask a question. Generally when
people appear before the tribunal, it is quite clear from what you
say, that people were interrogated, statements were taken from them,
and they then appeared before the tribunal.

GEN MASONDO: Yes.

MS SOOKA: Now when that happened, was there anybody else who was
appointed, perhaps another comrade, who was asked to assist that
person with the evidence before the tribunal? Were they given any
form of legal assistance because ...

GEN MASONDO: You remember I said here that the likelihood is that
there would be a Commissar who would sit there and check whether you
know, the proceedings went right, and also where he thought that the
person had a point, he would say so.

But maybe that was not enough. That is why later, when the
(indistinct) got into the picture, then they introduced that the
people should be represented by somebody legally.

CHAIRPERSON: If I could follow up the process there. I am keen to
know especially in cases where the tribunal had imposed the ultimate
sentence, now, was that sentence implemented before the matter came
for review, or was it only implemented after it had come before you
for review given that it was the death sentence and even if for
instance, for argument sake you could

Page 51	

have found that something else, other than the death sentence should
have been imposed, it was important that the process should ...

GEN MASONDO: You remember Chair, I said that if there were people who
were executed and they were executed wrongfully, then the four of us
leaders would have had to be people who went through the tribunal,
their cases came to us, and we endorsed the death sentence.

So the question of people being executed, without us having endorsed
the death sentence, I am talking about when I was still, or that it
can't be, it can't be.

Even, there were cases for instance, of people who the tribunal gave
them, sometimes the tribunal itself came with situations where they
said certain people, they pleaded that certain people should be taken
out, and they brought them to us, Malaza, the Umkonto chap, was one
of those people who we took out.

It is an interesting case, he had problems, he used to be part of the
VIP, very good, but he had a problem of just the way he handled
things.

I remember at one time they removed him, he used to be the top chap
in communication, they removed him, and then he got to Angola. Later
I heard people saying that it was Joe Modise that caused him to be
killed.

Malaza came to Angola, whilst he was in Angola, Joe found out that he
knows the area of (indistinct) area very well. Then Joe came to me
and said, Commissar, I want to use this chap.

And I said to him, but I think his problem is not so much of being an
enemy agent, his problem is just of just being just a problem.

So he said do you think I should use him, and I said yes.

But as I had known when we were still kids, when I was at St Peter's,
he was at this place, (indistinct), he then took him to Swaziland.
When he got to Swaziland, he again got into trouble.

He was messing around with the women there, and unfortunately he
didn't know that he was messing around with Swazi Security. He was
then arrested.

Whilst he was arrested, he came out, we found out that he came out,
he didn't want to make contact with us, so in our view, it means that
he had agreed to work with these people. We kidnapped him from
Swaziland and got him to Quattro.

So he stayed there. Later the people, the Quattro people and the
tribunal said, no man, this chap is not a problem. The tribunal
actually released him. That is when then, during the mutiny, he was
now the wise old man.

And then he was arrested again.

MS SOOKA: Could you tell me how many, to your recollection during the
time that you were the Commissar, how many such

Page 52	

reviews did the Review Committee do of execution decisions, handed
down by the tribunal?

GEN MASONDO: Let me see, I think we did either two or three, because 
you see, what happened people were kept there, they were interrogated 
and then after a time, when the tribunal had finished, then they 
would come and they would review.

MS SOOKA: Do you remember the case of Patrick Marx?

GEN MASONDO: Patrick Marx, who was his name?

MS SOOKA: Jimmy Poole, I think.

GEN MASONDO: Jimmy Poole? Jimmy Poole? The name strikes me, yes, but
I - the facts might not, maybe if I am told.

MS SOOKA: Can't remember? Yes, General, one of the things that has
really struck us about, in the course of our work within the
Commission, is that in terms of a number of the executions, many of
the people concerned, are members of families which have been very
committed to the cause of the ANC.

GEN MASONDO: Yes.

MS SOOKA: Now, once these executions have taken place, what sort of
feedback was given to families and I think particularly of two
families, the Seremani family and of course the Ngwenya family as
well, you know who came to the Commission to in fact complain about
the fact that they never got any answers.

Did the ANC give any consideration at the time, to that kind of
issue?

GEN MASONDO: Well, the Ngwenya family, that is (indistinct), well
(indistinct) was not executed.

MS SOOKA: He may not have been executed per se, but even that remains
for the family still an unanswered question.

GEN MASONDO: Well, unfortunately he was a top gun, he was the Chief
of Staff at one time of Katenga. And I had thought that once he died,
his people would have been told because I told you here that, I
actually went and told Godfrey Mswewo that we had executed his
brother.

But you see for instance in the case of (indistinct), I remember it
happened after our people, when he got picked up, it was after our
people, after Nkomati and our people were moving back to, moved back
to - you know even in Mozambique, they pushed us.

They got to Tanzania, so I was debriefing them, that time I was in
Tanzania, to come and try and arrange for them, with the Tanzanians,
because there were too many.

Whilst I was debriefing them, the late (indistinct) Molokwani says to
me, Commissar I think (indistinct) and Ralph, we have problems with
them.

I say why do you say you have problems? He says to me, you know,
these two chaps parked a car in front of a restaurant and this car
had weapons in it. They went into the restaurant,

Page 53	

they came out, the Swazi's them searched them and found that they had
guns.

The Swazi's then arrested them. They were then released, but when we
were kicked out, they still remained, so it still worries us.

Okay, I said all right, but Ralph, I had also heard other reports
about him, so I say to comrade Mabida, please tell the leadership to
take out of Swaziland, Ralph and (indistinct) because if anything
happens, the cadres are going to say they told us that there was
something wrong there.

So he informed, when I asked him later, he said no, he informed
Ronnie. Ronnie said no, no, he is aware what was happening, so I left
that thing there. Then later then the other things happened.

But I was worried that with this background, and at the time I wasn't
saying, except for Ralph, I had my doubts about Ralph, but
(indistinct) didn't have any problem, but I was afraid that once, and
it wasn't because after Bani Molekwani told me, I then started asking
the others, and I found that was the general feeling that they are
remaining there because they work with the other side.

I wanted them to be saved, because if those people had that thing and
something maybe even just by mistake happened, then there will be
quite a number of people who will say, yes, this was the situation,
that was the situation, and that would ...

Also I said if it was - my other thinking was if it is true, maybe
they are trapped, you could extricate them out of that situation,
bring them into the rear and save them before they get involved in
more serious matters.

MS DWANE-ALPMAN: I am sorry, this will be a point of departure. I see
you mentioned Bani Molekwani's name, would you happen to know any of
his other code names as a matter of interest, that he used during
that time?

GEN MASONDO: Well, Bani, I used to call him Jaqwa sometimes, because
he happened to have been a very, very close person to me.

MS DWANE-ALPMAN: Did he ever use the name Richard or Basil or
whatever?

GEN MASONDO: I am not sure about that one, because you see the
problem about our Sotho names, there are Sotho names that if you used
under certain circumstances, which might connect and Bani was
somebody who went in and out, so if he used a Sotho name like that,
he wouldn't even tell me because I wouldn't even allow him to tell
me.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Khoisan?

MR KHOISAN: Thank you General, I just had to take a moment

CHAIRPERSON: We are looking at taking just 15 minutes break, because
we want to be finished by half past four at the

Page 54	

latest, so if we could take a break now until say about ten to four,
and then we come back, and by half past four we wrap up.

GEN MASONDO: Okay.

COMMISSION ADJOURNS ON RESUMPTION

GENERAL MASONDO: (still under oath)

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you everybody. Mr Khoisan?

MR KHOISAN: Okay, General Masondo, thank you. Thank you Mr Chairman.
Just on the question of, before we proceed, on the question of Dr
Palo Jordan, I want to refer you of course to page 23 of the
(indistinct) Commission report which you have with you, the second
paragraph, where they refer to - and to correct the record - the
detention of Dr Palo Jordan in 1983, where he was held for a period
of six weeks without trial, during that period he was only questioned
on one occasion.

That occurred on the day of his release when it emerged from the
questions put to him, that the reason for his detention was that he
had criticised the Security Department for conducting itself like a
repressive Police Force. In your view, would that be, I know it is
the point of view of an individual, but now, with the passage of time
and a lot more evidence before you, is it your view that Dr Jordan
was putting forward a gross exaggeration or do you think that this
critic put by him to the movement, in respect of the Security
Department, could have been correct?

GEN MASONDO: Well, I don't know where he, from what facts he deduces
that. I mean, that might have been his opinion. But you see, I, you
know, general statements, I have got a problem about. At the present
moment people say the heists are MK people. I am an MK member, I am
not involved in heists, so when a person, you know sometimes we need
to differentiate between somebody says something from maybe facts of
seeing certain people, maybe they at that particular time, they did
behave like that, but here we are not talking of situations where
somebody did this, we are talking about the whole Security.

We are talking about the whole Security, so I, my experience is that
yes, sometimes that is why I said, a Chief of Security was involved
in beating up a chap together with the Commissar, I locked them up,
but I don't say the Security at that time, had taken the law into its
hands.

MR KHOISAN: Yes, but you see the issue here, particularly on the
issue of Mr Seremani, who as you knew him, Kenneth Mahamba, now you
had let pass a few things already, because you have accepted quite a
few of his reports before he was actually detained by yourself, and
subsequently executed.

GEN MASONDO: No, no, wait, wait, I don't think you are being logical.

Look, you, what did I, I got information about him. I did not accept
it just like that. If I did, I would have long arrested him.

Page 55	

MR KHOISAN: No, the position I am putting to you quite simply
General, is how many other Kenneth Mahamba's in your view, existed
within the Security establishment? Would it not be a perfect
structure for fifth columns, or confederates of your declared enemy
to exist in so as to deflect from their own negativity, their own
position?

GEN MASONDO: There will be those, why do you choose Security only?
There could be some in the National Executive, there could be some in
other areas.

You see, my problem is I have, I mean in the case of Stix, there was
a typical case of an agent who was Chief of Security, so that is all
right, but that doesn't mean that I go around and say all the
Security people, are Stix, I must find each one of them, who is like
that, and when I talk statistics, I must be able to say 30 percent of
them, or 50 percent of them are like this, and have that because here
we are indicting an organisation which in fact, saved this
organisation, the African National Congress.

MR KHOISAN: We, and that is one of the things that all the reports
refer to, they refer to the fact that in terms of the African
National Congress, and in terms of the prevailing time and the
theatre within which those conflicts existed, the Security Department
was critical in terms of not only defending the movement from attack,
but also in terms of protecting the movement and its integrity, that
is clear. That is not something that is in dispute here.

GEN MASONDO: Then what are we talking about?

MR KHOISAN: And that would be, but no, no, the position is here, you
have somebody like Stix, who you say was a Chief of Security, we have
the Kenneth Mahamba's and there have been countless allegations of
people who ended up in Vlakplaas, who have been connected with the
Security Department of who have been somehow fallen into the hands of
the enemy, and I am putting it to you, let me put it another way, in
your view, after you knew that Mahamba according to you, had been,
the decision had been reviewed, and you felt comfortable that yes, an
agent was executed, did it occur to you to take some of the
information brought to you earlier by himself, on review and maybe to
apologise for those who were still living as a result of his reports?

GEN MASONDO: I have not acted on Mahamba's information so I cannot
apologise for something I have not used.

MR KHOISAN: You see General, why I am staying with the Stuart
Commission report, and because you have informed us that that is the
Commission that you actually had something to do with?

GEN MASONDO: Yes.

MR KHOISAN: Okay, now, when they come to the section that deals with
yourself, the section that the Commission found that

Page 56	

amongst the cadres there is general criticism of comrade Masondo,
they believe that he has failed as National Commissar.

GEN MASONDO: Yes.

MR KHOISAN: (a), he was aware of the growing discontent of the
comrades due to deteriorating conditions in the camp, and excesses of
punishment, etc, but failed to adopt corrective measures, (b) he
always defended the administration in many cases, without proper
investigation, and therefore they assumed that the national
leadership was not made aware of the true situation, (c) he must take
the responsibility for the low level of political consciousness, etc.

There is one particular part that deals specifically with you
dealing, taking the side, okay, (e) he accepts everything the
administration reports, okay, and they refer to Mahamba giving you
false reports, which may have caused serious problems.

Now, how do you deal with that, I mean the fact is that before
Mahamba was detained, he held a position, a position which could
influence your thinking, he didn't report to a wall, he reported to
people, and you were one of the people who down the line, received
his reports.

I am saying if this person, as it now turns out, was an agent, and if
those reports were erroneous, is it your view, that the decisions
that may have been taken on the basis of those reports, must be
brought under review, and if so, is it your view, that you personally
will review them?

GEN MASONDO: If Thambo was here, who got reports from all of us, will
you be saying to him that he should, you see, when you are a leader,
you act, if you have acted without any prejudice, you were acting on
the basis of what you believed was correct, then you can't be held
responsible for it.

But I do not see the line of, I am sure there are many people who
might have told me lies.

MR KHOISAN: No, the position is that in the Stuart Commission they
say, that the Fazenda group, directly reported to you, brought it
under your attention, that this man was not kosher, that there were
problems here.

GEN MASONDO: To begin with ...

MR KHOISAN: And they reported this to you, to yourself, and to
comrade Mzwai and for this, they were victimised, and I am saying to
you, is there a problem there, that needs to be looked at?

GEN MASONDO: No, there is no problem, because point one, Mahamba was
never in Fazenda. Mahamba was in 13, he was Commander in 13.

MR KHOISAN: Did anybody bring it under your attention before you
actually detained this man, that this man had problems, that there
were problems with this man?

GEN MASONDO: But I told you ...

CHAIRPERSON: I think in fairness to him, he said ... 

Page 57	

GEN MASONDO: Amongst those people, was my son, who was a Commissar
there, and therefore I said to you, we removed him and decided to
check and that is why I ultimately took an ambulance, with a driver,
because I didn't want tomorrow people must come and say, I just heard
things, and then I locked up a man.

Basically that is in fact the way I dealt with the Mahamba case,
should not in fact be something I am criticised for, in fact that is
the way you deal with a person.

MR KHOISAN: And about the other people now. 

GEN MASONDO: Which people?

MR KHOISAN: The other five people that are on the list, Boy Thlomo,
Lebalon, do you know about this fellow? Do you know anything, is
there anything you can tell us in respect of ...

GEN MASONDO: If they told me who his Sotho name was, I will tell you
maybe if I know something.

MR KHOISAN: And you spoke about, you don't know any of this other
people, Edward Malope, Philip Mongena?

GEN MASONDO: I am saying that you may find that I know some of these
people.

MR KHOISAN: Okay, it is Maikeso Vusi. GEN MASONDO: Vusi Maikeso, yes.

MR KHOISAN: Okay, what can you tell us in respect of Vusi Maikeso and
the conditions under which he was executed by the tribunal?

GEN MASONDO: Well, Vusi was arrested and his case went the same way
as the others went, and I met it at the Review Committee.

MR KHOISAN: What was he arrested for, what were the allegations against 
him?

GEN MASONDO: The allegations were that he was part of the spy ring.

MR KHOISAN: And the same with Mashianini, Joseph Mashianini?

GEN MASONDO: Who is Joseph Mashianini? 

MR KHOISAN: That is Edward Malope.

GEN MASONDO: No that one I am straight, I can't remember.

MR KHOISAN: What about a fellow called Balila Mpila, Mpila Balila?

GEN MASONDO: But Balila, I told you is the man who worked in Treasury
and was destroying the cars of the African National Congress, drove a
car without oil and I, when Shisheda came, he was also among those
who were the spy ring, indicated as part of their ring.

And therefore he was interrogated and ultimately found that he was
part of the ring, and executed.

MR KHOISAN: Okay, and you have told us about Rodgers and the
situation in which he, because you personally informed his brother of
his demise?

Page 58	

GEN MASONDO: Yes, I told you and I locked him up, too. He was a
Commissar who violated human rights.

MR KHOISAN: Okay, I think that we have covered a wide range of ground
here, General, and I personally wouldn't want to keep you, but you
know, the sense that I get here, of course you have held a very
critical position at the time which was very volatile, when things
were very fluid and when the enemy was making tremendous inroads.

In your view, was there anything that could have been done
differently in respect of Quattro and in respect of some of the
excesses visited on people and if so, is it your view that you would
concur with the findings of the recommendations of the (indistinct)
Commission that you know, essentially some kind of restitution be
made and I think at the end of the day, the Motsanyani Commission
actually calls upon for some kind of an apology to the people who
were wronged in the process.

Is it your view that you could concur with those recommendations on
positions?

GEN MASONDO: People who it was found that they were enemy agents, we
executed them, I wouldn't make an apology.

We were at war.

MR KHOISAN: And those who were executed wrongly or ...

GEN MASONDO: Even if it can be proved that they were executed
wrongly, I would be stupid not to say I apologise. But once people
were threatening, the people who killed some of our comrades, I have,
I can't be apologetic that they were executed, then I would be doing
justice to those comrades who dies.

MS SOOKA: General, can I ask you two questions. In fact the one issue
that we would want to raise, is something you raised yourself.

Running through these reports are allegations and you said that
yourself, that you had misused some of the women cadres.

GEN MASONDO: No, I didn't say so.

MS SOOKA: Well, these were the allegations there.

GEN MASONDO: Yes, allegations, I said it is said that I had misused
some of the women cadres, and the strangest thing, I must have been a
very, very terrible person, where I have been misusing women cadres,
the National Executive doesn't even call me once to say, Masondo, you
have been doing one, two, three.

You see, I mean you see, this is the one I told you, I told you about
the case where in Mazimbo, it was alleged that I had actually
impregnated a girl, a girl who had only gone into my house once with
other girls.

Now, that one was made public that time, and it was investigated, and
ultimately they did not find any truth in that.

What was interesting was that after people didn't find that there was
no truth in it, they didn't go around and call the people again, and
say now we found out that Masondo ... Now look, let me tell you, some
of these types of things, were said by people

Page 59	

who for some reason or other, had a fear that I had too much power, I
had too much influence.

Some people actually I think said them to try and discredit me, so
that they can do things easily. You know, for instance, people say
these things, sometimes they appeared even in the papers here, and I
didn't even bother to answer them. I just treated them with the
contempt they deserved because if the African National Congress had
reached a stage where they said I am doing that, they would have
called me.

I mean, I can't believe that the President, Thambo, could fear me.

MS SOOKA: General, could I ask you was there a mechanism within the
camp structure, for women cadres to make complaints if such
situations did take place?

GEN MASONDO: Yes. They could, you know, the President himself used to
come and visit. They, if they didn't tell me, comrade Mzwai was a
senior person in terms of age, to me and they could tell him.

The Womens' League time and again, came into the camps. They could
have told them. You see, so those are the aspects that, so if
somebody said I, and for that matter, if I actually misused, there is
a policy that we could also have been raped.

MS SOOKA: General, one more question. I did ask you if during the
course of these tribunals, initially people were assisted and your
response was that at that point, the Commissar was supposed to assist
the person concerned, later of course, you have Mr (indistinct)
himself, being some kind of justice official.

GEN MASONDO: Yes.

MS SOOKA: But would you concede now, with hindsight, that the
possibility exists in that sort of situation, for people not to be
treated in a fair process, and I understand that you were at war at
the time.

But do you concede that in a situation where perhaps the sentence
that you can receive, is the death sentence, that where you don't
have recourse to perhaps proper legal assistance, independent of the
tribunal being set up, that the possibility for abuse exists and that
there may have been mistakes, even though there was a Review
Committee that sat and looked at these sentences before they were
confirmed?

GEN MASONDO: Well, you know probability is something you cannot say
is not there.

We, it happens that a person who has not done anything by a technical
point, in a normal law court, is found guilty because his own lawyer
could not defend him properly, and if the Review or the Appellate
Division is just looking at points of law, they may find that no
points of law have been violated, and the person is executed.

MS SOOKA: No, but I think, I hear that and I think that we understand
that those sorts of anomalies in fact did happen, and

Page 60	

in fact the judicial system, has quite a record in terms of that kind
of decision, but I think the question that I am throwing back at you
is, do you concede that perhaps people who may have been innocent,
got executed in the process?

GEN MASONDO: No, if you say to me do I concede whether the
possibility of the mistake would have been there, I will say yes,
that is why I am talking of, that is why I gave you this particular
example.

I am not talking of a biased court, I am talking of a normal court
where a person for technical reasons can be found guilty, without any
bridge of procedures, and when it goes on appeal, you still find that
there is nothing that says differently.

But what I want to say very categorically, is that at no time, did
the Review Committee look at a case and say, maybe this person, we
looked at the facts and if the facts that we had said, that the thing
was properly done, then we endorsed it.

MS SOOKA: One last question, was there ever a situation when the
Review Committee disagreed with a decision made by the tribunal?

GEN MASONDO: Yes.

MS SOOKA: To execute?

GEN MASONDO: Yes.

MS SOOKA: How many of those?

GEN MASONDO: I don't remember the number, but there are cases where
we said no, this one, don't execute him, maybe give him ten years. We
have said so.

MS SOOKA: Do you remember any of them?

GEN MASONDO: Let me just look, try and remember. I want to remember
their names, you see, that is my problem.

CHAIRPERSON: Maybe you will recall about them, and if you do, maybe
you should then indicate, because it would be a very important thing
for our findings process to be able to say it is not as though there
were no processes, even with its own deficiencies, there was an
endeavour.

GEN MASONDO: You see for instance, when I, the others which I recall
very clearly because the people I know, in terms of, it is the ones
that we actually said no, this one, take him out. After they said
there was a problem, we said no, this one should come out of Quattro.

MS SOOKA: I think the point though General is, if you do remember, it
would assist us.

GEN MASONDO: Yes, I will try and if i discuss with some of the people
like Sizwe, maybe if they remind me all the cases that we, I might be
able to remember. I think there is a case, one or two that we didn't
agree that the chap should be executed.

CHAIRPERSON: Can we then put it on the basis that you will try and
find the case or cases and then communicate those to us?

GEN MASONDO: Yes, I will try and find out.

Page 61	

CHAIRPERSON: Now, there are just one or two reports that have been
made to us, relevant to violations in exile. It may not have been in
your period, nor even in Angola per se, and if you know anything
about it, then you can indicate to us.

There is a case of Lindanala, Albert Mogohle, who has been indicated
in the ANC's first submission as having died of natural causes in
Zambia in 1986, or 1987. Now, we have received a statement that
Lindanala otherwise known as Albert Mogohle, was beaten severely and
died in Lusaka possibly in 1984 as a result of his injuries. I just
wanted to know from you if you, if the name rings a bell?

GEN MASONDO: No, it doesn't because I think around that time, I
wasn't so much in Lusaka.

CHAIRPERSON: Okay, and there are also allegations around what is
called Sakdo House killings, that three people were killed at Sakdo
House in Lusaka, around 1979. Unfortunately, the names of the people
who died, are not given, but the people who are associated or
implicated in those killings, is Joe Modise, Dr Randari and Peter
Mosimola.

Would you know anything about that?

GEN MASONDO: No, no. If the Commander himself was involved, I would
have had to probably have to know that there was a person like that,
the circumstances, but I don't want to say that, to say anything
because I just don't remember, particular when they say Dr Randari
was involved, because Dr Randari was some, was a person who was more
in the civilian side of things.

He was a Doctor, that is why I really don't know about that one.

CHAIRPERSON: Finally, what do you know of the circumstances
surrounding Jama Mbeki's disappearance?

GEN MASONDO: All I know is that Jama disappeared in Botswana and we
were looking for him, from the ANC we were worried where he is, that
is all.

I only heard people throwing allegations that his brother was
involved in his killing and I dismissed it because fortunately, I
mean, the Mbeki family, I mean I was very close to the (indistinct),
and when that, when Jama disappeared, Thabo kept on asking me,
Commissar, what do you know, could you, do you know anything, so I
just dismissed it.

But I mean I have no facts to prove either way or that way, but I
know that we were worried within the ANC itself that Jama had
disappeared.

CHAIRPERSON: I am glad that you raised this thing, because
allegations were that exactly as you say, that he was part of those
who were executed in Angola and it was at the instance of his own
brother?

GEN MASONDO: No. While you talk of Angola, Jama has never set his
foot in Angola, never at any time.

Page 62	

CHAIRPERSON: It is your evidence that in any event, as far as you are
concerned, there is no substance to allegations that Thabo was party
to the execution of his own brother?

GEN MASONDO: No, that one I can, I am definite about it. 

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Khoisan?

MR KHOISAN: It is just, I think that I have, we have been received a
lot of information from you here General.

Just on the question of these camps in Angola, I am sure it is a
chapter that needs to be reviewed a lot, and I just wanted to point
out to you that of course inside the Stuart Commission report, both
where they refer to special privileges under the section
Administration, and also under the issues of problems with Security,
they refer to the problems, the special problems faced by women, and
in my view, that is something that needs to be looked at, because
apparently one fellow committed suicide, because his girlfriend had
been taken away from him, and there were also allegations that now
and then, a chap would be redeployed, sent to the front, etc, etc,
when people wanted to obtain you know, who engaged, or interacted
with the person that they were intimate with.

Just for the record, to be clear, is it your view, that some of the
chaps in Security, may have been on a wrong footing when it comes to
the woman question, and that they should be criticised for that?

GEN MASONDO: Why Security?

MR KHOISAN: No, I am not, you see, no there is a reason why we are
talking, you see when we are talking, if we were for instance talking
about the Department of Foreign Affairs, if we were dealing with
people who were dealing with the foreign affairs question, we would
be putting that to the correct person.

The reason I put a question relating to security in your domain,
because that was your domain until such time that you got redeployed
to the Department of Manpower, you were the National Commissar and as
such, and broadly to a large degree, Security and the problems
relating to Security, fell within your domain, and that is why we are
putting the question.

We are not saying specifically there was a problem with Security, I
am sure that the problem is country wide, nation wide, movement wide,
I mean I am sure that the world needs to take this problem under
review because that problem has not yet been resolved but talking in
that time, and that space, and in reference to this Commission, they
make reference to that Department in those two sections.

I am saying what are your comments about that?

GEN MASONDO: No, I was not in charge of Security, I was in charge of
the African National Congress. In Angola, there are at one time 22
women in a group of more than 1 000 people.

I am sure you would have a competition amongst people, there was a
time in fact, there was an allegation, not that

Page 63	

Security, but Commanders, were misusing women. Now, I do not want to
come out and say Security, because if you said to me Security, then I
must say on such and such a day, so and so did this, but that there
is a possibility that within the African National Congress, that type
of thing would have happened, considering the ratio of the women to
the men, it would be strange in fact, even if I didn't know about it,
it would have been strange that they, the women themselves would
probably in some cases, use the fact that they are few, to get
certain advantages, and other people who would want to have them,
would possibly do something to try and cut a favour.

But that type of thing I must also put into context, that such
incidents would have been there, but to give the impression that
women in the camps were having a terrible time, I can assure you that
for instance, the men in the camps used to make a lot of sacrifices
so that for instance women should be treated better.

But that other thing is the normal thing, that even in society
sometimes, but the law of supply and demand, must have created some
problems.

MR KHOISAN: Yes, well, that is all from me, thank you General.

CHAIRPERSON: Well, General Masondo, it only remains for me to say
again it gives us in the Commission pleasure that you have been able
to come, even in the circumstances such as those under which we
called you, at short notice, and you were prepared to come in the
form and manner in which you came.

I don't degrade any people who bring lawyers, but a person who
consciously takes the decision that he wants to assist the process as
much as he or she can, and that he or she will walk into the
Commission and say his or her piece, is something of a novelty to
this Commission.

I don't recall any incident where it has happened before and I
therefore should commend you. You tried in my view, to answer
questions as frankly as you could. We have not made a finding, we are
going to take quite some time to come and make a finding, but I think
for now, I need to thank you.

I also think it was an opportunity which you deserved. As you say so
many things have been said about you, especially around the area of
abuses in exile in the African National Congress, and the one missing
link in everything that we have heard through articles, through
testimonies, through Stuart Commission reports and other reports, has
been your own voice, in which you with your own words, are saying,
confirming, denying or putting into perspective things that are being
said about you.

Many of us have also read about your trials and tribulations from
1964 in Robben Island. There are horrific accounts of the sort of
torture that you were subjected to, not only once but on a protracted
period. I recall a PAC person, Mr (indistinct) who
told me about you, long before I knew about you, in the context of a
person who had been the subject of constant vilification by the
so-called Kleynhans brothers, that you took that in your stride and
all he could say was that that man has got a heart.

That is a free translation of how he expressed it in Xhosa.

Now, what has therefore for me personally been a strange and a very
difficult thing to comprehend, was how a person who had gone through
that sort of process in Robben Island, who knows what human suffering
is, would then have been the author of similar or worse ways of
inflicting human suffering, and I therefore yearn for a day when you
yourself would come before us and say I did it, I did not do it.

And therefore, even from that point of view, your having been willing
to come, and give testimony in the manner in which you have, is
something that speaking for myself, I will take into account, but I
think which is going to cause us to search as much as we can, in the
myriad of evidence that we have to find answers.

So I thank you sir.

GEN MASONDO: Thank you.

COMMISSION ADJOURNS

----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------

SECTION 29 HEARING	TRC/GAUTENG