CHAIRPERSON
Mr Sipho, we as a Committee are a statutory body.  We are therefore confined to act within the parameters of the enabling statute, namely the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act, 34 of 1995.
	We as a Committee do not have a discretion to condone the failure to submit an application.  We just don't have that power or authority to do that.
	What I would suggest at the moment, because of this, that the two persons Messrs Tsotetsi and Gwala, we can cause further investigations perhaps to be done as to whether or not they have completed application forms, because we have got, from what you said, they said that they did complete and from what they told Ms Thabete, they said that they didn't complete.
	The fact is we don't have the application forms and there is, to say the least, a doubt that it has ever been received, because even on what you have told us, they may well not have been received by the Commission, even though they were completed, they might have got stuck in the prison.
	We can make further enquiries and if it is found that there are, in fact there were forms that did reach the Commission, which is unlikely, but if it did happen, and for some reason or other, those forms were not registered or numbered, etc, then a hearing can be held at a later stage in regard to those two persons.
	But without there being application forms before us, we  are just not able to hear them as applicants, as much as we would like to, it would be far more efficient if we could deal with them all together, it is after all the same incident.  The evidence of the various applicants, I can imagine will be pretty much the same.
	We cannot be dictated to by convenience in a matter of this nature, we are just bound, not to be able to hear them as applicants without the application form.