Human Rights Violation Hearings — Klerksdorp — 1996-09-23

MADIBO SHADRACK SEAKGOA: I should say I am doing a very strenuous kind of a job.  I am employed at the constituency office in Wolmaransstad as a field worker.  I am the regional secretary of the ANC in Tswelelang region. I am the chairperson of the regional task team of the ANC Youth League in Tswelelang region. I am the chairperson of the steering committee of the RDP in Wolmaransstad.

PROF MEIRING: Thank you very much. I must say you do have many things on your plate, but thank you, Chairman, I am finished.

CHAIRPERSON: Order, please!  I think you should probably tell us what you don't do, I mean ...  (Laughter).     Yasmin?

YASMINE SOOKA: In your statement you say that you were tortured by three policemen.  Do you want to tell us what form the torture took?

MADIBO SHADRACK SEAKGOA: At one point I was asked as to whether, do I like books and then I said yes, and it is a fact that I am a number one supporter of books.  So a certain policeman whose name I don't know, just came forth and say come in the ring and be my guest and I will be Frank Bruno, and he started hitting me. I couldn't fight back because he had a
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gun in his possession. I was hit, punched, slapped, beaten with a sjambok and at one point threatened with a knife.

YASMINE SOOKA: You also mention in your statement that you have been hospitalised three times and that you suffer from nervous tension. You say that that emanates from your treatment. Now can you tell me why you were hospitalised on each occasion, and a little more about the nervous tension.

MADIBO SHADRACK SEAKGOA: The first time was when I was doing matric. To start with, after being released from detention, I developed the system where I would suffer from something like cramps.  The muscles here at the back of my neck, will start pulling down and my neck will be like this.  When I was doing matric in 1993 I just lost consciousness.  Something pulled my head backwards and I lost consciousness.  The following day I went to the doctor and I was given tablets, injection and whatever.  A month later whilst I was asleep, it was something between five o'clock and six o'clock in the morning, I just felt the tension here. I became warm and the muscle becomes tight and I lost consciousness for the second time.  Secondly, I was with something that I need to call people and the following day I was hospitalised for five days.  For the third time, it was another time, last year, when during the heydays, in the run-up to the elections we used to work around the clock and every time when I work under pressure, the muscles will start pulling down again. I say it is specifically because my head has been banged repeatedly on the wall. I started experiencing those symptoms and signs after my release from prison.

YASMINE SOOKA: How long were you in detention?

MADIBO SHADRACK SEAKGOA: I was detained for 29 days.

MADIBO SHADRACK SEAKGOA: In all your evidence, what clearly comes
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through is that you consider the activities that you took part in as being legitimate and part in fact, of supporting a just war.  Do you accept that if you saw it that way, that you would then become a target for the police and whatever security structure was in place at the time?

MADIBO SHADRACK SEAKGOA: Yes, I accept that, but being a target does not justify that you will have to be subjected to those inhuman treatment.

YASMINE SOOKA: Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Dr Randera?

DR RANDERA: Madibo, I just want to come back to what you said earlier on about vigilante groups being in existence in Tswelelang at the time.  You still maintain that that was there?

MADIBO SHADRACK SEAKGOA: Yes.

DR RANDERA: Puleng, who spoke earlier on, also talked about the police actually giving guns to the vigilante groupings.  Do you want to add anything to that?

MADIBO SHADRACK SEAKGOA: Yes, I can say in addition to that, all the councillors were armed to their teeth, for that matter, by the police.  They had bodyguards. At one point I had happened to have passed in front of the house of one councillor.  From the trees in front of the lawn, there jumped three people who were guarding that councillor and they were not members of the police service. They were ordinary residents in Tswelelang, but they were armed, and we know as a matter of fact, they do not work, they do not have the licence for the guns.  If they don't get them from the police where should they get them?

DR RANDERA: Were you present on the night that Kebogile was killed?
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MADIBO SHADRACK SEAKGOA: Yes, I was present.

DR RANDERA: Can you throw some more light on what happened?

MADIBO SHADRACK SEAKGOA: After the shop of Rev Lingwane was torched, as the leadership we planned to picket in front of the house of Mr Sotsake, whose wife was the principal.  Mr Sotsake had just been promoted to the inspector of schools. Our picket was to be peaceful, or more peaceful, if that is the proper word.  But before we could reach Mr Sotsake's house, Mr Sotsake's house is the second from the corner. When we turned the corner, something just ran.  When everyone started shooting, ran amok, and you could just think of your own safety.  Kebogile was shot and was killed and a certain young man by the surname of Mdoboke was also killed amidst of all that.  A number of comrades were injured in that.

DR RANDERA: So it was too dark to identify anybody. Is that what you are saying?

MADIBO SHADRACK SEAKGOA: I wouldn't say it was too hard, it depends on ... (intervention).

DR RANDERA: Sorry, too dark.

MADIBO SHADRACK SEAKGOA: Too dark?

DR RANDERA: Yes.  It was night-time when this happened.

MADIBO SHADRACK SEAKGOA: It was night-time but fortunately Tswelelang is blessed with a number of high-mast lamps and it is visible even during the night.  (Laughter).  So I won't say it was too dark to identify everybody.  If we were too frightened, yes, we wouldn't identify, we couldn't identify somebody, but it depends on our degrees of fright by then ... (END OF TAPE - SIDE A).
SIDE B

MADIBO SHADRACK SEAKGOA: ... or who involved in shooting.

DR RANDERA: No, who were involved in shooting and killing
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people.

MADIBO SHADRACK SEAKGOA: I wouldn't say that, because if someone shoots at you, you don't look at him, you run away.  (Laughter).

CHAIRPERSON: Order, please!  Yes, Yasmin Sooka?

YASMINE SOOKA: I have, I think two more questions.  The one is were you involved in the planning of the march on Rev Lingwane's shop?

MADIBO SHADRACK SEAKGOA: As a president of the Youth Congress by then, I had to be briefed about whatever activity that was to be carried out, and yes, I was involved.

YASMINE SOOKA: Did you know that the end result of that march was going to be the setting alight of the shop?

MADIBO SHADRACK SEAKGOA: Setting the shop alight was not part of the programme, and as disciplined members of the most glorious organisation in the continent, we were and are still disciplined and adhere to our codes of conduct.  Like I earlier mentioned, there were vigilanes and provocateurs who used to exploit the situation. I won't say any comrade took part in that.  Those people who were planted in our midst took part in the torching of that shop.

YASMINE SOOKA: You also mentioned earlier on that one of the councillors ordered the cutting off of the water supply to the township. Can you tell us a little bit more about that, please.