May 8, 1996 — Sapa

TRUTH COMMISSION HEARS OF MURDER SQUAD CONSPIRACY

Armed murder squads, including a group known as the A-Team, assisted the security forces in terrorising and eliminating United Democratic Front members, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission heard on Wednesday.

Testifying on the second day of the commission's KwaZulu-Natal hearings in Durban, former UDF supporter David Nhlapo and members of the Phungula family added their tales of political violence to the growing list of human rights violations before the commission.

Nhlapo said the A-Team had been a well known force in Parys in the the Free State during the mid-1980s.

The A-Team had abducted him in November 1985 and beaten him with spears, axes and sticks, whereafter he had been taken to the police, the commission heard.

"The A-Team were people against the UDF. When the police were together with the A-Team they put them in front so that the A-Team did the killing."

While in police custody, he had been subjected to electric shock torture that caused permanent physical and mental damage.

"Now if I get too much light, I get dizzy and fall... even if I sleep I shake," Nhlapo said.

Giving evidence later in the day, Annacletta Pungula said Inkatha supporting warriors had killed her husband and son at their KwaMashu home outside Durban in May 1986.

Police had raided their house in search of weapons the night before the attack. "Police came to search for weapons because he (her son Dumisane Pungula) was a leader of the UDF. They did not find anything."

She said Inkatha "amabutha" had attacked their house the following night. The attackers had broken into their house and hacked her husband to death.

"They chopped him in his face with an axe and then opened up his chest with an axe."

They also abducted and murdered her son Sibongosene Pungula. "We found his body on the streets opposite our house. He had been shot. I don't know if they cut off his private parts for muti, I did not have the courage to look," she told the commisison.


© South African Press Association, 1996
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