SUSAN J VAN DER MERWE
This Mr X, I know some of the people's names today, but this Mr X who was the leader said they did not explain to him precisely where they had left his body, but that they said to him that they left his body where they had shot him. If you know that region or if you know anything about that region, then you will realise that if a person walks in those bushes, you could probably pass a corpse like that approximately two feet from there, because that is how dense that bush is. In spite of the police having looked in that region, they went to the farm Doringlaagte and they fine-combed the area but the people, the employees on the farm who were in the farm, said that that night, the Wednesday evening, it was late afternoon. He had left the farm after he had received the message of his mother's death and they heard his car from camp to camp as he would stop, they would hear the car stopping and starting up again and leaving. So he left the farm, but evidence which surfaced later, showed that he used the Rooibokkraal road and this is where he stopped for these people. It was something natural for him to do. If somebody had to ask him why he stopped, then I would be able to say that it was habit, it was habit for him. We were living in
KLERKSDORP HEARING TRC/GAUTENG
13 S J VAN DER MERWE
such a place that the place where we lived was far from Thabazimbi and he would have assumed that the people were on their way to Thabazimbi, and that is why he would have stopped for them, to grant them the opportunity, a lift, to get them a lift to Thabazimbi. That is what he would have done.