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

PIET MASWANGANYI: What I had thought was to help the people with their grievances and their complaints so that they would be settled.  If there was any grievance or complaint we would help them so that they would not suffer.  Like the aim that we do have now at the moment, even that I am still working on at the moment.  Even though that board has expired, these people custom is still come to me when they have got problems so that I can assist.  That was my aim and the intention to help people at that stage.  We did not want to see people suffering.  We did not want to see people complaining and not having any assistance, because God's Word says, love your neighbour as you love yourself.

THOMAS MANTHATA: Yes.  My question rests on this fact.  Already you allowed yourself to be divided, to serve the Tsonga speaking people only, which meant that you did not have a word for the destruction of the property of people of other language groups, that is Venda and Northern Sotho people.  Now which means, right now, we are confining ourselves specifically to some destroyed property on ethnic level.

PIET MASWANGANYI: That is the truth.  That is the idea behind that we want to help people although we did not want to just look at them who are suffering in front of us.  We also want them to have a better life like other people.

THOMAS MANTHATA: No further question Mr Mswanganyi.

CHAIRPERSON: Any questions?

DR RANDERA: Mr Maswanganyi, can you just tell us what were the conditions and circumstances that you found yourselves in when you moved to Waterval?  Were there proper houses built, were there clinics, was there running water, was there school?

PIET MASWANGANYI: What was there was a school.  The school was the only thing there.  There was no clinic at all.  Facilities that were promised to us were never built.  We just found the school amongst all the facilities that were promised.

DR RANDERA: Were there houses, I mean houses .....

PIET MASWANGANYI: There were very small houses, two-roomed houses that I have already told you about.  There were little houses there.

DR RANDERA: And what had you left to go to Waterval?  What were the conditions there?

PIET MASWANGANYI: The conditions of where we left, we were accustomed to living in these four rooms that we had.  The conditions there were slightly better, but it was not much better, but things got very bad when they started threatening us with this removal and they ordered us to move.  So we were always on our edge, because they were forcing us to move.

DR RANDERA: And as far as you know, in that move that took place, from Tshikota to Waterval, were any people arrested, injured or killed?

PIET MASWANGANYI: They did not arrest any person except the Xhosa child who accidently died when this truck hit him, an accident as they were forcefully removing us.  The trucks that they have used to remove us, were in a very bad condition.  It were trucks from the farms that had a lot of cow dung and all sorts of things from the farms.

DR RANDERA: Thank you very much.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Maswanganyi, you say that at Tshikota there were Basothos, Tsongas and Vendas, were you living together amicably or were you separated into different ethnic groups from that area?

PIET MASWANGANYI: We lived together with the Basotho, the Tsonga and the Venda people.  We were living together and people inter-married and now other Venda people are with us at Waterval and other were Tsongas which meant that we were living in unity, we were inter-marrying into all this different ethnic communities.  Only the Boers were separated from us.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much for coming forward and we are sorry about the heavy losses.  I am sure many people from that area would also have similar stories to say about compensation and that kind of thing.  Mr Manthata here, who is in charge of the Reparation and Rehabilitation, will tell us at the end of the session about this new policy that this Committee is going to submit to our Government.  But we as the TRC do not have any powers to compensate on our own.  But Mr Manthata will explain later on.
 Thank you very much for coming to share you story with us.

PIET MASWANGANYI: Thank you.
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