Holomisa reacts to ANC leadership booklet titled “The rise and fall of Bantu Holomisa”
ANC:”When journalists ask Holomisa whether his “new party” will be to the left or right of the ANC they are met with a blank stare.”
Holomisa: “This is not surprising, if one is engaged in a process of consultation. However, how can one know the left or right of a party with virtually no economic policy, no foreign policy, with a leadership who one day masquerades as hard-line socialists, and tomorrow pronounce capitalism as “a fundamental policy of our organisation”. Even Mr Raymond Mhlaba in his farewell speech in Port Elizabeth on 14 June 1997 had asked, “What is the character of this government”
This exposition is a just response to the booklet entitled “The Rise and Fall of Bantu Holomisa” being distributed nationally and internationally by the ANC’s Department of Publicity and Information in a desperate bid to cast aspersions on my integrity and eventually discredit me in the eyes of the public.
The National Working Committee (NWC) of the African National Congress (ANC) met a few months ago and conceded the fact that my expulsion from the ANC has led to sharp divisions within the organisation. They resolved to take measures for averting further schisms. As a result of this resolution an evaluation document was circulated which says, among other things, Winnie Mandela, Toni Yengeni and Peter Mokaba must be used to counteract my initiations of seeking to establish a political party. However, I have noted a statement of denial by the ANC spokesperson purported to be emanating from Mrs Mandela. One is not surprised since it is the culture of the ANC spokesperson to deny everything.
In one of the NWC meetings recently Mrs Winnie Mandela bluntly told the entire NWC leadership that she would not wittingly or unwittingly allow herself to be used against me. She went further and categorically stated that she had forewarned the ANC leadership of problems lying ahead, should they resolve to proceed with their harsh treatment of me. This was at the incipient stages of the Holomisa saga before my final expulsion from the organisation.
I have no doubt in my mind that Mrs Mandela was referring to a letter she addressed to Deputy President Mbeki, just before the ANC expelled me, which reads as follows: “It is critical for this organisation not to handle an issue of this nature in this manner, especially as it involved Sol Kerzner. Ultimately the organisation will not survive further bruising in this matter, and I think some people who took part in this decision will know what I am talking about.”
It is a pity that the rank and file members of the ANC were never told the truth that the officers (the top five officials), NWC and NEC, in line with the ANC Constitution, never took a decision that I should face the disciplinary committee or hearing, but it was the work of an individual who issued instructions to that effect. Be that as it may, I attended their hearings. I still maintain that the issue of my being disciplined was clumsily handled from the very beginning, for I was even informed thereof through the media. My immediate reaction was that I would not attend a “kangaroo court”. However, I later on attended the said hearings after Kader Asmal had informed me in writing.
The NWC in one of their recent meetings took a decision that the issue of my expulsion from the organisation is explained to the public. Instead of heeding the NWC decision, they have produced a booklet assassinating my character. This booklet has been furnished to email internationally, and is being distributed door to door in all languages here at home. This is a clear tactic of cowards who could not face their constituency but resort to pamphleteering.
The public would be well advised to read the booklet between the lines; the ANC leadership has suddenly awakened to the reality of problems they have created for themselves by expelling me. They are really panicking and feel threatened by spectre of an emergent political party with me as one of its founding members.
A party which is reportedly in the red to the tune of R41 million, and which is closing its regional offices because of dwindling membership and empty coffers, could ill-afford to waste its financial resources on printing this glossy booklet. Was it necessary to embark on this huge waste instead of paying salaries to their office staff, which they are retrenching? Is it also not ironical to incur such huge expense on someone whom they despise and refer to as a “construct of the South African Defence Force”?
Could it be possible that the ANC leaders are still in cahoots with their financially resourceful friend, Mr Sol Kerzner, who once donated R2 million to their election, coffers, in printing this booklet?
The ANC leaders’ attempts at demonising me will be counteracted by me in my small way. I have already informed President Mandela in writing that I will respond to my denunciation by the ANC leadership. The difference between us is that the limited funds of the National Consultative Forum (NCF) will not be used for that exercise.
I humbly appeal to all people who are fortunate to lay their hands on this “response” to share it with their neighbours and with as many people as possible. I thank the printers and friends who have volunteered to produce my response in substantial volumes. Attempts will also be made to put this on the email.
The booklet has confirmed my suspicions that the ANC leadership is on the road of establishing a one-party state dictatorship in the country. One of their tactics and strategies is to throw opposition parties into disarray through the employment of smear political campaigns, scurrilous denigration of individual leaders and vituperative propaganda. This booklet is an encapsulation of all these despicable political tactics and strategies. Everyone who disagrees with them is portrayed as a dissident, a populist, a “demagogy”, a villain, a demon, a fiend, a monster, a turncoat, a chameleon, and even treacherous serpent whose head must be smashed. They are the experts in promoting hatred in politics.
The ANC leadership has, of late, rudely awakened to the real possibility of a humiliating electoral defeat at the hands of a strong, combined opposition. They are cognisant of the fact that the pre-election euphoria of a liberation movement ascending to power has virtually subsidised and supplanted by appalling voter apathy and disillusionment.
Voters throughout the country seriously question the integrity of ANC leaders who only yesterday made election promises that reverberated throughout the length and breadth of South Africa. The luxurious trappings and cosy seats of power have diverted the attention of ANC leaders from pre-occupation with apartheid imbalances and backlogs to the amassing of personal power and wealth. They are endowing themselves in every conceivable way with the abundant riches so easily available to themselves to the utter disgust of the weak and poor who have suffered the loss of limb and life for the emancipation of the country. They flaunt their newly acquired power in the form of flashy, elegant and executive cars and mansions in the best leafy suburbs of our First World cities, while millions of our people bathe in seas of poverty and wallow in famine.
Are they better or worse off than homeland leaders and FW de Klerk? Crass incompetence, sleaze and corruption are the order of the day. Crime is rampant and dissuades investors from considering the country as a potential destination for scarce investment funds. Millions are retrenched to swell the ranks of the unemployed. All this, to the arrogant and complacent ANC leadership, is business as usual. They are not perturbed at all by the plight of the indigent masses. This is to be expected of a leadership whose wallets are ever burgeoning because of the constant annual salary rises they grant themselves.
In 1994 alone they granted themselves more than 100% salary increments. Is this done in the name of the liberation struggle and politics for the suffering masses of our people? Certainly not. The question to be asked is what is the effect of these huge salary increases for cabinet ministers on the national fiscus? Our cabinet ministers are among the best paid in the world! Their lifestyle is vastly superior and grand compared to their peers in the industrialised nations of the West.
If the South African electorate is deluded into voting the ANC to power again in 1999, the country would be put firmly and irrecoverably on the path to financial ruin and economic destruction. The warning signals are already there for everybody to see. The aborted voluntary severance package is a glaring example of the ANC leadership’s lack of vision and their wavering commitment to an efficient and effective civil service. The best civil servants have been bribed to quit the government service in a crazy bid to pave the way for the ANC unemployed loyalists and pals of the ministers. This is the trend at provincial and national levels of government.
The consequence of this ill-conceived move is the visible lack of delivery and baffling levels of incompetence. As a result the national and provincial governments spend billions on acquiring the services of consultants to perform duties which are supposed to be the domain of the civil service. This is the most extreme form of corruption – that is, the deliberate appointment of pals to key well-paying jobs in the government without any track record in administration and the necessary skills and experience.
The ANC, in an effort to divert attention from its failures and shortcomings, accuses me and many other former leaders of corruption. I shall deal with these charges when I delve in detail into their misrepresentations of myself in their booklet.
There are many contradictions within the ANC leadership. The vicious power struggles among some individuals seems to negate the much-vaunted unwavering commitment to the total socio-economic emancipation of the broad masses and the concomitant betterment of their living conditions. Personal grandeur and self-aggrandisement are the order of the day. They have been in power only since May 1994, but behold, some of them are already multi-millionaires and have bonds worth millions of Rands. The vexing question to serious observer of the country’s political scene is, where do these leaders derive these vast sources of income. Is it not possible that some of the funds from overseas donors earmarked for anti-apartheid activities and the ANC’s electioneering efforts have been siphoned off for private use by individual leaders of the organisation? Something is rotten in the state of ANC’s affairs. It was for this reason that I alerted Prof Kader Asmal in writing in 1995, as “Mr Clean” of the ANC regarding an allegation of a serious international financial irregularity that was attributed to a prominent ANC member. One wonders what happened to his investigations. Instead ANC’s “Mr Clean” was busy advising their “kangaroo court” to drive me out of their organisation for narrating the historical events of Transkei Bantustan in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission last year.
It is an open secret that since the 1994 the ANC Conference until my expulsion from the organisation no financial statement has ever been ready for tabling either at the 1994 Conference or at National Executive Committee (NEC) meetings. The truth of the matter is that millions of Rands could not be accounted for, and books could therefore not be balanced.
My advice to the delegates to the forthcoming ANC Conference in December 1997 is that they should demand fully audited financial statements of the ANC’s London account. If they fail to elicit a proper and satisfactory response in this regard, they should solicit the assistance of the Reserve Bank of South Africa who would be in a position to make informed findings and trace recipients of funds from the London account.
It is no small wonder that we read in daily newspapers and weekly papers of the boundless graft in the provincial- and national governments under ANC leadership. Billions of Rands have gone down the drain and they cannot be accounted for. The good example is the ±R2 billion spent on consultants, yet the administration situation continues to deteriorate every year. The question is, do the ANC leaders in government really engage consultants, or are there some bogus consultants to whom funds are paid and in turn channelled back to the coffers of the organisation or to themselves? Are bodies like Thebe, an ANC investment arm, getting government contracts and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) associated with the ANC also taking part in this looting spree?
The commissions of inquiry, like the Heath Commission, should not only concentrate on the corruption that took place under Matanzima, Holomisa and other leaders, but should immediately attend to the cesspool of corruption that has been taking place under the ANC government since 1994. The massive retrenchment of experienced civil servants has given rise to a fertile ground for the spreading of corrupt practices as MECs and National ministers appoint their Directors General (DGs) and staff, a duty which should be performed by an independent Public Service Commission. Currently Zola Skweyiya’s department does not know whether it moves backwards or forward. At times the apologists of this fiasco and national disgrace euphemistically allude to this as affirmative action when they try to disguise the appointment of their friends and relatives. As far as I know there are no set standards and policies guiding the implementation of the so-called affirmative action. Instead, we notice that the appointments of key personnel in senior positions are not on merit but are along ethnic lines i.e., an Indian minister would fill top posts with Indians and Xhosa or Zulu ministers would recruit Xhosas or Zulus respectively to fill the said posts.
Let me demonstrate how their incompetent appointees have led to the draining of state coffers. According to the audit report of the North West Province released on 29 May 1997 the following emerges:
· Premier Molefe’s office alone was unable to produce backup documentation for R3,5 million which had been spent;
· No indication that tender board approval was obtained for an R18 million RDP project;
· In one department, Transport and Civil Aviation, vouchers could not be produced for expenditure of R135 million, which made up 60% of its total spending;
· Unauthorised spending in the whole administration totalled R367,3 million, which included R11,7 million two-way radio equipment bought by the Department of Public Works and Roads;
· The audit had also shown that Members of the Provincial Legislature were in arrears with their housing rentals;
· At the Department of Health, vouchers for about R19 million could not be submitted for audit purposes;
· Payment of about R14 million had been made on photocopies of invoices. These included individual payments of R4,9 million, R2,9 million and R928 800.
The graft delineated above takes place even in national departments and other provinces, for example, the R14 million Sarafina Scandal. Your attention is also drawn to the Kleuver Auditor-General’s Report, which demonstrated the poor performance of the national departments. In the Eastern Cape, for instance, the tender was corruptly awarded to Balraz-Pensecure whose quotation was R164 million more than that of other tenders. This had to be overturned by a court of law. At what cost? How about the Feeding Scheme Scandal?
In the Mpumalanga Province, which is notorious for unbridled levels of graft, R185 million was awarded to Motheo Construction, an unregistered company headed by a pal of a national housing minister. The Northern Province under Ramatlhodi is not even worth writing about because of the daily exposure of corruption. The above breakdown is just the tip of the iceberg.
In the light of these nauseating exposés and financial scams the ANC leadership should bow their heads in shame and are the last to muster courage and point dirty fingers at others accusing them of corruption. It is high time that the nation becomes more vigilant regarding the role played by the spouses, immediate families and friends of the ANC elite and dubious consultants. One need not to be a genius to realise that the parties referred to above have a propensity of becoming either conduit pipes “economic Trojan Horses” for the benefit of the elite.
If this looting spree cannot be stopped in its incipient stages, I fear that by 1999 more billions or trillions of Rands would have gone down the drain. This is indeed a contradiction of what is contained in the 1994 ANC election manifesto. The question many are asking is: What is the difference between ANC leadership and National Party (NP) and its homeland leaders who were dubbed by the ANC as bunch of corrupt leaders? Remember the old German saying: “the troughs have changed, however the pigs have remained the same”.
Despite the problems of limited capacity of the then Transkei Military Government, and frustrations by the then NP Government that defended the perpetrators of corruption in the territory, we did manage to bring corrupt elements before the courts of law. Court records will confirm this. With the ANC government, reports of corruption only end in newspaper banner lines. Ministers and MECs in whose departments’ corruption has reared its ugly head are neither sacked nor reprimanded. Instead, they are showered with praise for being good.
I would now like to respond to the allegations contained in their booklet point by point.
ANC: Bantu Holomisa was nurtured by old Transkei Defence force, itself a proxy of the apartheid SADF
Holomisa: This is cheap stuff indeed. The question arises: Who is currently nurturing the ANC led government’s SANDF? Who provides round the clock security for the ANC President, even on board the Outeniqua? You are a Department of Information, yet you sadly lack information. In fact, in this area you are miserably bankrupt. A good number of members of the then TDF and myself are capable graduates of SA Army College. In acknowledgement of this fact, your Defence Minister and President Mandela have appointed TDF officers to high positions in the Army. Where are your military graduates of Eastern Europe? Have you forgotten that the Defence Force is still being commanded by the old white SADF Command element, without change to the doctrine?
The ANC leadership is worried about my rapid rise. In the same vein, can they tell the world what criterion did they use to promote people like “Lt. Gen.” Nyanda who in 1994 was unable to salute properly let alone wearing a barrette and uniform properly? Were they promoted or rewarded for failure to implement but to leak operation “Vula” just to earn fame or were they rewarded for claiming “successful” operations like Wimpy Stores and Wits Command bombings which turned out to be South African Defence Force (SADF) operations as reported in the media recently. In the meantime your “generals” have been decorated as “heroes”.
I find it strange that the ANC leadership takes me to task for having been taught counter-insurgency, as this is an international norm in the curriculum of all soldiers. It is the same course that helped the Transkei Military Council and the Transkei Defence Force (TDF) in general to counter Pretoria’s total onslaught on the people of Transkei and, in particular, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) and Azanian People’s Liberation Army (APLA) cadres who took refuge in Transkei long before 1990. Indeed, I have never applied the knowledge gained from the said subject against ANC or Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) cadres.
I am equally amazed now by the audacity of the ANC leadership to question the training I received from Pretoria as their own commanders of MK like “Lt. Gen.” Siphiwe Nyanda and others undergo the same training by the same instructors in the same institution following the same syllabus and doctrine as well as adhering to the language policy (Afrikaans) of instruction as determined by General George Meiring and his team. Would I be wrong to call them “construct of the SADF?” If you doubt the ability of the SADF personnel, why your Defence Force is still headed by General Meiring who is not a “construct of MK or ANC?”
This is basically the reason why the integration of the armed forces has turned out to be a fiasco because the revolutionary forces are being trained by their former foes. As you are aware, this aborted exercise of absorption has led to MK soldiers resort to mass action like the recent march to Parliament. One wonders whether the several millions collected abroad for the military training of MK were never used for that purpose or were they simply deposited in individual bank accounts in countries like Switzerland? It was for this reason that I, upon requested by ANC leadership I dispatched fifty Transkei Defence Force (TDF) instructors to train MK cadres in their camps in Uganda a few years ago. If the TDF was a “proxy” of the SADF, why allow it to train your liberation forces? (It was a strategy Bantu).
The TDF was established as a separate entity from the SADF from the very outset. It is mind-boggling to read insinuations by the ANC leaders that I am a “construct of the SADF”. Some TDF members have received their training from many military institutions all over the world. Even the promotions of the TDF members had had nothing to do with the SADF.
It was for these reasons that the ANC tasked me, together with MK commanders, to approach certain countries overseas for extending military training to MK in the early 1990s. It must now be a contradiction of the century that the very ANC leaders who reposed such unshakeable confidence in me find it easy to label me a product of the SADF. The most appropriate thing they could have done was to keep away from anybody with associations with apartheid institutions if they are so proud. However, people know that this sudden loss of confidence in me by ANC leadership is because of politics of greed (Sol Kerzner’s resources refers).
It is a contradiction in terms that they now speak of “my dubious military past” when the ANC leaders approached the TDF to release me for candidature in their nomination list as submitted by their regions. One can deduce the truth that they managed to sway me away from my chosen career of being a soldier to a politician, only to be dumped two years later under suspicious circumstances. One of the leadership’s henchmen said recently “From the start the ANC’s relationship with former Transkei leader Bantu Holomisa had been a tactical one, to use him attain liberation” said Mr Mhlahlo, MEC for Public Works, Eastern Cape Government on 16 May 1997 – the Daily Dispatch of 17 June 1997 refers. Obviously, this is an insult to the then Military Council and the people of Transkei. No wonder the Transkei region is so neglected. At the time of going to the printers to print this booklet, there was not a single house built in Transkei by the ANC government since 1994. Perhaps the voters of the Transkei region were a tactical strategy used to “attain liberation”. Hence in inter-alia roads have been neglected including the N2 route. Instead we hear promises as usual about building of a “corridor” along the coast which in any event will nearly take the entire budget of this country, let alone causing destruction to our environment.
Today, this greedy ANC leadership is celebrating for seeing me out of my job (army). There is no doubt that it is the culture of the ANC leadership to dump people as and when they deem it fit to do so. They have done so to the anti-apartheid activists abroad immediately they started to rub shoulders with the likes of Sol Kerzner. We know how they have used people like Father Trevor Huddleston whom they later dumped. This current leadership does not have time for persons who are not economically resourceful. They have also dumped MK members who put them where they are today. So if they could do so to their own front-line soldiers, who am I to complain? However, what I am challenging is the fact that this ANC leadership has a nerve to lie to the public by saying that I am drawing a monthly salary pension from their government. The fact of the matter is that President Mandela has flatly refused to approve my early retirement pension. On the contrary his government had decreed to give the so-called veterans a pension, people who have never contributed to the pension fund in the first instance. De Klerk, former homeland leaders including Stella Sigcau and old MPs are getting their monthly pensions, but not Holomisa.
I have nothing to say on this item because the ANC leaders themselves do not place any premium on the statement made by Eugene De Kock. I agree with them because the same De Kock alleged that the late Chris Hani and I witnessed the killing of Colonel Craig Duli. It was the same De Kock who cast aspersions on the integrity of “Lt. Gen.” Siphiwe Nyanda, the SANDF Chief of Staff, by insinuating that he was also their man. The only connection that has been proved beyond reasonable doubt is that of Craig Duli and the SADF’s Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) Vlakplaas operatives who supplied him with weapons to overthrow us for giving sanctuary to liberation movements in the Transkei.
The left hand in the ANC apparently does not know what the right hand does if the same organisation can question the origin of files that I have leaked from time to time. On a number of occasions I conferred with members of the ANC leadership, in particular President Mandela, on ways and means of dealing with the information contained in some of those files. These had no doubt assisted the ANC during negotiations with the National Party. President Mandela knows exactly the origin of those secret files and the person who brought them and for what good reason. Joe Ntlanhla was also briefed by the President about the files. That particular person deserves a medal for alerting us to the existence and activities of the Third Force. It was for these reasons that President Mandela asked me to keep the files and leak them periodically with the Editor of the New Nation, an ANC sympathetic newspaper. President Mandela would then use the leaked information in the New Nation to pressurise Mr De Klerk for more concessions and progress in negotiations.
Mr Mac Maharaj laid his hands on NIS’ top secret files on him and published the information contained therein in the New Nation of July 1994. I have not heard that his integrity and connections have been questioned. However, we note the selective treatment of individuals by the ANC leaders. I am however proud that the strategy used by President Mandela, the Editor of the New Nation, the undisclosed individual and myself paid dividends for the nation.
History, not the ANC leadership, will pass a harsh judgement on whether I have ever worked with any apartheid institution in order to derail the freedom of our people. The files were handed to us in 1992 and were selectively used since then. The ANC is out of order to question why the files have not been handed over to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) or the new National Intelligence Agency (NIA). Those structures were not in existence in 1992. However, when I handed over these files to the TRC, the ANC leadership instead expelled me. What a contradiction?
Whilst the ANC leaders concede that they have no tangible evidence linking me to apartheid intelligence network, President Mandela when addressing us in the NEC meetings often repeated that “some of you here were agents of the former government. I know this, now that I have access to the security files.”
Some of these ANC leaders may boast of their colourful credentials in exile, but the turmoil and contradictions within the leadership suggest that the ANC programme has been hijacked by forces within who have always been inimical to the objectives and goals of the movement. Was President Mandela perhaps correct in his assertion? The ANC leaders must come clean! This scenario is compounded by reports of the TRC, media and the likes of Joe Mamasela who adamantly claim that some NEC members and ANC cabinet ministers were spies for the former government.
No wonder that we read in the newspapers that Zuma and his ilk had been allocated intelligence source numbers by the PW Botha intelligence agents. I challenge the ANC leadership to appoint an independent auditor for evaluating how much was spent on these source numbers allocated to Zuma and others. Zuma’s feeble excuse that he was involved with PW Botha’s intelligence agents to negotiate on behalf of the ANC is somewhat puzzling. The question many are asking is: What precautionary measures did Zuma put in place during the so-called negotiations to make sure that exiles and many in this country would not be victimised as it happened in July 1990?
You will agree with me that many people were killed/massacred by FW de Klerk’s forces between 1990 and 1993, as compared to the entire period of the struggle. It should be noted that these are the same forces that Zuma is boastfully telling us that he was negotiating with. One becomes suspicious whether Zuma’s recommendations to his leadership after he had met the apartheid regime were not leading South Africans into a Trojan Horse or a Dingaan’s Kraal style. Obviously TRC would have failed in their mandate if they do not investigate the circumstances which led to ANC’s leadership putting too much trust in FW de Klerk’s war machinery to guarantee our safety in the period referred to above. Surely people like Zuma who have been given source numbers by PW Botha’s government owes people of this country an explanation.
Joe Mamasela’s evidence has been accepted in the highest courts of this country and has helped the TRC in unravelling the past. Many would like to know the present ANC cabinet ministers and NEC members who used to be flown by South African government helicopters from Lusaka to be briefed and to fetch money from Vlakplaas as alleged by Mamasela.
It is worth noting that De Klerk’s government tried in vain to break our backs, that is, Winnie Mandela, Holomisa, Harry Gwala and others, but the process even after our freedom seems to be gathering momentum under the Mandela leadership. What is going on?
I have noted the instruction purportedly given by the ANC echelon in government to South African Police Services to try and gather evidence incriminating me in the death of Craig Duli. What a waste of time! It would be appreciated if the same instruction were to be given for the prosecution of the ANC’s exile leadership for their brutal murder of ±100 ANC cadres who rose in rebellion against the organisation as claimed by Thabo Mbeki in the submission to the TRC. Today, the ANC government is sending the same policemen who ferried Duli and his team to Transkei, while they were still placed in the custody of the same policemen, to investigate us. It is like sending a jackal to a conference of jackals to represent sheep while the subject matter is the slaughtering of sheep! Whose interest are those policemen going to represent? It was for this reason that I told the newly “trusted” policeman who helped Duli and others, to go and jump in the lake, when he wanted a statement from me. However, I have offered myself to be the defence witness.
I have been calling for the TRC to investigate this matter but seemingly they are not interested. The public is also watching the discrimination which is being practiced by the present government against the black soldiers of the TDF as compared to General Malan and others as well as Colonel De Kock. In the latter case the state paid for their legal costs including the use of luxury jets and hotels, while TDF members who have been arrested for the so-called murder of Colonel Duli are not supported by the State. What a fuss and double standards!
The public will recall that the former President De Klerk’s forces raided and killed five innocent school-going children in Umtata in 1993. Instead of being charged for murder, as it is the case with the TDF members, President Mandela apologised on his behalf. Can the same apology be extended on behalf of the then Transkei Government forces who were on the defensive against the South African Government backed abortive coup of 1990 which claimed the lives of nine TDF soldiers? Is this “gesture” a classical example of reconciliation? What must we read from here?
I have noted the ANC leaders’ zeal to poke their noses in the affairs of Transkei in particular the failed coup by Duli and the coup against Miss Sigcau in an attempt to incriminate me and masquerade as champions of human rights, although they had executed hundreds in exile.
However, the ANC leadership must have felt bad when their trusted policemen, Capt. Neethling, told the media on 14 June 1997 that, “Holomisa is not a suspect. We can prove nothing against him. But the marathon investigation into the Duli murders suggested that Mr Holomisa did not order the shootings, nor did he have knowledge of the order prior to being told that Col. Duli was dead”. Capt. Neethling continues, “Despite their animosity, we have evidence that Holomisa sent his bodyguards to East London (where Duli was in self-imposed exile) to try to broker a reconciliation. And when he was told that Duli was dead, Holomisa was seen to shed tears”. This would contradict a report received by Military Intelligence operatives, as revealed by Vlakplaas Commander, Eugene de Kock, that Duli was shot dead by my bodyguards in the presence of Chris Hani and myself.
The public should also know that although the abortive coup took place in Transkei, Eastern Cape, the case is being handled by Gauteng Attorney General and that the case will be heard in Bloemfontein. However, the Duli family had never laid charges against the TDF members. So where are their instructions coming from? Is this perhaps another palace exercise? Is the justice system of this country vulnerable to political manipulation?
Now that the ANC leadership realises that they have failed to break my back, they are resorting to dirty trick campaigns costing them millions of Rands, money that could have been better used to pay their officers who are being retrenched in their regional offices.