Human Rights Violation Hearings — Louis Trichardt — 1997-04-09

MS SEROKE: Could you, we have heard, you know, the whole explanation.  What I would like to do now is for you to concentrate on the three months period you were detained.  We would like to ask you, we have got the whole background to your story.  If you could now just concentrate on the last part of your statement where you were detained for three months.  Can you hear me?

MUZILWA PHULWANA: Yes, I can hear you.  On that three months, in arriving at Masise, it is there where I was detained.  I remained there in a certain jail which is about six metres square, if not ten.  Somewhere there.  I was sitting there, I was alone, I was given a blanket.  There were not mats.  There were two small blankets that they gave them to me.  I used to sleep on cement and it was very cold.  During the night they came and took me out.  Then I saw that they were white police and black police men.  If I can show you here on my leg, there is still marks here on my legs.  How I was injured, they inserted wires in which I was electrically shocked and all my body was burning.  They beat me and sent me back to that jail.  Again they came back for the second time.  They took me out to that place again, to the bush.  They were doing everything that they want.  They shocked me with electricity, with batteries there, with electric wires coming into my body.  While I was there, at Masise, I became ill and then they sent me to Trizine Hospital.  Somebody told me that if I eat the food that they give me, they are poisoned.  It is my cousin who told me that the food were poisoned and they will kill me and he had advised me not to eat those food.  I spent two weeks there without eating nor drinking water.  Then they realised that I was dying.  Then they sent me to Trizine Hospital.  Then I was Police guarded, day and night, till I spend three months in solitary confinement.  The building was high.  The windows were black and it was difficult for me to see my hands and there were so many mosquitoes there.  They were biting my legs.  So that to find warmth, I had to try to exercise, so that I can feel some warmth.  Then I left that jail and then by going to the Hospital.  In arriving at the Hospital, they found out I am suffering from an ulcer due to worry.  That was the doctor's statement.  They also said that I am suffering from hypertension and that my ear was not hearing very well.  I was hearing using one ear.  That is how I refused the incorporation to Venda.  I was the middle man telling the people that we are not going to be incorporated into Venda.

MS SEROKE: Thank you very much, Mr Phulwana, for sharing with this Commission the hardships that you went through in trying to resist incorporation.  I just ask you few questions.  Why was it so important to you to remain a South African citizen?

MUZILWA PHULWANA: It is because I find that people from the homelands were not allowed to attend schools and universities and in finding jobs.  It was difficult for those people going to find job.  They have to go on contract basis.  They know that we were born in that country, which was South Africa, the country of our forefathers.  Then a man came in and said, no, let us go there.  That is why I refused.

MS SEROKE: In your statement you say that you used to work before you were imprisoned.  You worked for the South African Railways.  You lost your job, because you were labelled a terrorist.  You also lost your unemployment benefits.  Have you since tried now that we are in this new Government to get your benefits from the South African Railways?

MUZILWA PHULWANA: Mozera, my son, was also detained.  Yes, the one was working to Railway.  We were detained together with my son and then it was a problem there.  Because I was detained with my son by that time.  The one would not receive his pension.  Yes, the one who wrote that statement.

MS SEROKE: Did your son also make a statement to the Truth Commission?

MUZILWA PHULWANA: I think it is that.  I never worked for a Railway.  But I found a letter and I thought it is mine.  And he also made a statement.

MS SEROKE: Thank you.  I will refer you now to my colleagues here, if there is any questions.  Tom?

THOMAS MANTHATA: Muzila, I just want to check on a few things.  Before you were taken, before you lived in Tshikota township, where were you?

MUZILWA PHULWANA: We were from Ohr location in Tshikota.

THOMAS MANTHATA: Ohr location?

MUZILWA PHULWANA: Yes.

THOMAS MANTHATA: And then ....

MUZILWA PHULWANA: It is in Louis Trichardt.

THOMAS MANTHATA: Okay.  And then from Tshikota you were taken to Vleifontein.

MUZILWA PHULWANA: Yes.

THOMAS MANTHATA: When you were in Vleifontein, do I understand you correctly to say you resisted through refusal to pay Venda tax?

MUZILWA PHULWANA: Yes.  Yes, I refused to pay the Venda tax, because we were forced.  There was nothing that we can do.

THOMAS MANTHATA: It is clear.  That is what I wanted.  But, otherwise the other people who were with you in Vleifontein, were paying the Venda tax?

MUZILWA PHULWANA: People were not actually paying, but we had a meeting in a certain hall and the people were told to pay.  Others were paying, but others were not paying.  There were others who were refusing and others were accepting.

THOMAS MANTHATA: Thanks.  For the time you had been treated like that, or as it, for the time you have been resisting this, what did you know the efforts of the Black Sash to be in supporting the people who were resisting to be incorporated into Vendaland?

THOMAS MANTHATA: We used to held a meeting with those people, saying that they can find lawyers for us so that we can refuse to be incorporated.

THOMAS MANTHATA: Did their lawyers ever come to your defence for the time you were in detention?

MUZILWA PHULWANA: The people from Vleifontein collected ten rands so that they can find lawyers.  But it was difficult that we were arrested.  We felt having lawyers.

THOMAS MANTHATA: What I wanted to find out is, for the time you were resisting and being detained, did you ever see anybody from the Black Sash in Vleifontein?

MUZILWA PHULWANA: Allen Morrisen is one we just had a meeting with there at Tshikota.

THOMAS MANTHATA: Okay.  When you were held in that Vendaland Robben Island, as you put it, were you ever, were the doctors ever brought to you to find out how you were like healthwise?

MUZILWA PHULWANA: No, no doctor came.

THOMAS MANTHATA: And when you were released, did, through the efforts of your wife who was there, did you make efforts to contact the doctors?

MUZILWA PHULWANA: Yes, I consulted the doctors here in town, Louis Trichardt.

THOMAS MANTHATA: And what was the outcome thereof?  Have they, did you, do you still have the papers that were issued by the doctors?

MUZILWA PHULWANA: Those papers is long.  It is over ten years.

THOMAS MANTHATA: Okay.  No further question.

MUZILWA PHULWANA: But what I would like to add, is that on the 12th August 1986, my wife, Valid Phulwana, made an application.  The answer was this.  In the act under which your husband, father has been held, there is no provision for similar application.  This was returned by Brigadier Rama Horana.  It was returned by Brigadier Rama Horana, who wrote in answering my wife.  He wrote to my wife.