MR RHAMAPHOSA
[indistinct] ... no knowledge whatsoever that any of the people participating in the march could have been armed.  I saw no arms, I saw no firearm, I saw no stick, I saw nothing that amounted to an arm or a weapon.  Your question, was there any intention by the soldiers to warn us - the answer to that has to be no.   There was no signal, no attempt to even begin to signal to us that they will open fire.  There was no loud hailer as I said.  There was no fire opened into the air, nothing whatsoever.  We were just, we were still standing right against the razor wire, with the Peace Secretariat on the other side, and they had a number of vehicles in between them and I was one of those leaders who was standing right up against the wire and a little bit further on we could see soldiers standing and some of them lying flat on the ground and if they had warned us in any way, I think we would immediately have noticed it and we would possibly have responded to it. Just as we were talking, they opened fire.  The Peace Secretariat people were also taken by total surprise.
 Why did they open fire, I think their opening fire had a lot to do with their intention to prevent the democratic processes that were underway in the country - to prevent it even by force of arms.  Oupa Gqozo himself on a number of occasions had said that he would never agree that the Ciskei should be incorporated into South Africa.  That we would have a free and independent liberated South Africa but the Ciskei would remain an independent island and we would have to deal with them as though it's a foreign power.  I think it had a lot to do with that.
 Is there anything different that we would have done had we known, now in hindsight, that they would have opened fire?  Had we known that they would have opened fire, yes I think we would have dealt with things differently.  Our discussions, negotiations with them could have been different but we just did not know.