Human Rights Violation Hearings — Worcester — 1996-06-25

LIVING CONDITIONS: The living conditions were saved by the fact that people were not directly represented on the local Government.  These were manifested in a myriad of spiralling social problems. 
Inadequate housing resulting in overcrowding, in one section of Ashton known as A Straat.  You'd often  find ten people living in one small room.  Some having worked the day shift or the night shift at Ashton Canning trying to sleep through the  day.  You'd have retired old people living in the same facility and this one section of the town shared one toilet and one water tap.A significant number of residents have no electricity in their houses.  A survey of the  amount they spent on firewood and
gas,  paraffin and candles showed  that the electricity would 
be far more economical.
Inadequate sewerage leading to blockage and overflow onto the streets.  And this in turn creates health problems such as gastro - enteritis, TB and other bronchial problems.  High rentalThe rental  seemed to be evaluated without consideration to condition of the house, the basic living expenses of the occupants and the fact that for  seven months of the year many of the people  were unemployed as this was due to the seasonal nature of the employment in the area.
And so on the ground people experienced not only that 
period of the 80's but even before that, going way back into 
the century what  appeared to be a collusion between 
different forms of local authority, be they the  police, be they 
the health authorities, be they the people within the 
municipality.  As a black person you knew that if you 
reprimanded a clerk for serving a white person before you, 
even if that person came in behind you - that if you dared 
challenge that and you could do that in the hierarchy of 
apartheid somewhere along the line either yourself or 
your father working at the canning factory or somewhere 
along the line your cousin might end up in prison or in jail  
as a result of the consequence of your insolence - of your 
daring to stand up and so people sensing another experience 
at collusion refrained from obvious resistance.  
And so be they  the courts, municipality, the health care or the business, somehow  or other enclosed in that small white community and the awesome power they yielded were able to control and regulate black lives from the cradle to the grave. The background and then its conclusion to the Boland uprising of 1990 has found  in poverty and extreme social disadvantage of black Bolanders.
The history of neglect by local authorities along with the problems of unemployment, the over-crowding, the high rents  inadequate refuse removal mixed with hope denied made this region a bomb waiting to explode.
We found that in 1990 South Africa was at the crossroad, the Groote Schuur minutes and the eventual release of President Nelson Mandela raised the hopes of millions of South Africans for a peaceful transition from the Babylon of Apartheid South Africa to a non-racial democracy.
When black Bolanders came to realise that it was business as usual and that there were elements abroad in the region or in their towns who either did not wish to adapt or even accept the promise of a new day for all they had enough.
Late in June 1990 residents in Ashton, Zolani embarked on a series non violence action that set in motion and irreversible process of change.
Many months later they emerged from the bloodied brutalised but immensely proud that God had led them through own Exodus.  Reaching the other side of repression they knew for themselves that the days of baasskap were over and they  had helped to bury it. 
Now, just as those few months and it was a very  short period in one year in 1990, brought the nation's focus on a brave and an uneven struggle between the community of Ashton, of Bonnievale, of Robertson and the security forces,  and the results of that was editorialised -  was scrutinised by the media and even appeared on the front page in one occasion of the New York Times.
Very fleetingly the Boland emerged on the national agenda and on the national stage of the political arena. Very soon after that our reality out here faded again into oblivion.
I pray that the scrutiny of TRC will bring the story of the Ashton's, the many Montagu's,  but particularly the lives of the people on the surrounding farms into it's full perspective.  And seek to gain a living and an ongoing monument that will testify very loudly to the hidden lives lost over the forgotten years on  some obscure farm, the resettlements of Kananadorp from Sakkiesdorp to Khwezi township.
The drunk father coming from going back to the farm and being arrested, being brutalised and then being released again.
Young farm boys, young Afrikaners being initiated into manhood by the rape of our mothers behind some lonely koppie.
The young men who were arrested because for a moment they felt that they could fight and stand and justify all that had regulated their lives and being arrested and that's how my lawyer was Gary Janson and police officers would come into the jail and take statements saying that they are from Gary Janson and Associates.
  I don't what happened to them,  we don't know what happened to them. All those hidden lives somehow we should bring it and resurrect it so that we again can give meaning to what happened not only in the passing glory of a political action because that somehow bring its own reward and a very fleeting moment of I've lived.
But we are talking about what continues to happen, the further you go into the more and more areas of the region further away from the Breede River valley, further away from the river and it's affluence.  Those lives needs to be subjected to the full glare of  publicity and inquiry so that we again can also see particularly in those lives, also people who had lived, also people who had tried to be human and just make it through another day for their sake, for their children's sake and as South African's for God's sake.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much, Father.  We would like to try to see the history of the people will not be forgotten and yes, that they be in a way resurrected and we do hope that the work of this Commission will make some contribution to the healing of our people.  And we pray that God will bless us, so that we can make a new start all of us,  that each one of us can we regard a fellow human being as a brother or sister.
We thank God for the work that you have done such as for instance director of Project Vote in which you helped people and  assisted them during 1990 and 1994's elections.  You helped people in participating in that election.