Dzakula, 50, who testified at the beginning of presentation of evidence by the prosecution, described the first democratic elections in Croatia, problems encountered by local Serbs and their political organising, the establishment of the SDS and inter-party divisions, and the subsequent establishment of the Serb Democratic Forum (SDF).
Dzakula said that Croatian Serbs in the first elections voted for the League of Communists of Croatia/Social Democratic Party (SKH/SDP), which "turned a deaf ear on their problems", so they had to organise themselves on their own.
He went on to describe how in mid-1990 he became a member of the SDS and at the end of the same year the president of the party's regional committee for western Slavonia.
At prosecutor Alex Whiting's asking, the witness said that his political position was that problems should be solved through dialogue and political action, which was why he came into conflict with the SDS leadership in Knin, led by Milan Babic and the accused Martic.
"Babic and the others did not want negotiations with Zagreb, they wanted to sever all ties with them," the witness said. He described growing differences between the Serbs in Slavonia and those in the Lika and Dalmatia regions in 1990/91, saying that the first were more inclined to settling Croatian-Serb relations by political means, while the latter supported the war option.
The establishment of the SDF in June 1991 reflected a wish to avoid war and seek a peaceful solution in Croatia, he said. The SDF gathered Croatian Serb intellectuals who advocated democratic dialogue to avoid war, but were condemned by the SDS leadership in Knin, which banned their founding assembly in the so-called Serb Autonomous District (SAO) of Krajina, said Dzakula, one of the founders of the SDF.
He said that SDF representatives went to talks in Zagreb and Belgrade, however, neither side supported them but rather imposed a media blockade on them.
In 2002 Dzakula testified for the prosecution in the trial of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes in Croatia.
Martic is charged on the basis of individual and command responsibility with 19 counts of crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war, persecutions on political, racial and religious grounds, extermination, killings, imprisonment, torture and deportations of Croat civilians in the occupied areas of Croatia in the period from 1991 to 1995, as well as crimes against non-Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1994 and the shelling of the Croatian capital Zagreb in May 1995.