TOBILE CECIL GQOLODASHE
Thank you Chairperson.  What happened is since a Cupa boy had been shot dead by the police, arrangements were made for that funeral and they involved the Magistrate of Port Alfred as well as the Commissioner who was there at the time, Mr Griffiths, the Magistrate was Mr van der Merwe, in the sense that they were asked that since this funeral was going to be conducted, we were going to attempt to have as peaceful a funeral as possible and make it unnecessary for the police to be present.  Our request was that the Magistrate and Commissioner speak to the police and ask them not to make their presence obvious,  because when police, when people saw police, a police presence at funerals, it led to a volatile situation.  They promised to do that.
 What happened was that the funeral procession began, but just before that we noticed while we were digging the grave, you could see into town from the cemetery and we saw many police vans going towards town.  I actually took the initiative to leave the cemetery while the funeral was in progress and went to enquire and found all these police vans parked at the police station.  I came back, we continued to dig the grave and on the day of the funeral, we had dug the grave on the Thursday since the funeral was going to take place on the Saturday.  We asked everyone in the community, because this was the first incident where the police had killed someone, we asked everyone in the community not to report for work so that they could attend this funeral.  A stay-away in other words.  
 It then happened that there was a stay-away and we conducted this funeral and while we were on our way to the graveyard, there were so many people, I would say the entire location must have been there.  On our way there we did not see any police up until we reached the cemetery.  When we were on our way back, there were two main roads there, we split, because the people were singing.  We took the bottom road and the others took the top road, because we were in the, had taken the bottom road we passed the Methodist Church and we passed the police there.  They did not do anything to us.  When we approached the house where the deceased's relatives were, we heard gunshots.  It was apparent that they had, there were other police in the top street and they had shot at those people.  
 We hurried back to where these people were and encountered a lot of people running in all directions.  I then ran past this house to where these people were being shot.  When I got there, there was a T-junction which met with the main road.  When I got there I saw the police standing at the lower end and saw these people running and crossing the yards.  I came and stood between the police and these people and stopped these people from running.  These police stopped shooting.  Many people had already been struck by bullets.  Some of them had been scratched by the fences and I tried to stop them from running, because a lot of them were being injured simply by running away.  
 While I was still standing there facing the police they shot at me with birdshot and from my waist up they riddled me with these birdshot.  I was very angry, but in spite of that I did not run away.  They shot a canister of teargas near me and when they shot the teargas at me I ran away, because one could not stand, one cannot stand for that.