Human Rights Violation Hearings — Johannesburg — 1996-04-30

DR BORAINE: Mr Chairperson the next witness is Mrs Lizzie Thandi Sefolo and I will ask her to come to the witness stand please.  Mrs Sefolo we welcome you this afternoon and we are grateful to you for coming to talk to us and tell us your story to the Commission and to the country.  You are one of three families that are going to be heard one after the other today.  Not only Sefolo but also Maake and Makope because all three disappeared at more-or-less the same time, and you never, ever heard anything more to this very day as to what happened.  In a moment you are going to have an opportunity to tell your story.
 We are very mindful of the pain and the distress you must be undergoing and we hope that you will feel comfortable in telling your story and in trying to assist you I am going to call upon my colleague Russel Ally to do that.  But before I do that I must ask you please if you will stand to take the oath.

LIZZIE THANDI SEFOLO: (sworn states)

DR BORAINE: Please be seated.  Mr Ally.

RUSSELL ALLY: Mrs Sefolo thanks for coming.  Your husband along with his partner in an undertaking business, who we'll be hearing about later, both disappeared in 1987.  You did not hear anything until much later through a press report in 1991 that they had possibly been murdered in activities
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allegedly carried out by a Vlakplaas Unit.  If you could please just account for us these events.

LIZZIE THANDI SEFOLO: I have come here to find out the truth about my husband who was taken from Witbank at the supermarket in 1987.  I tried to look for him with the police and the mortuaries, all over, I could not find him.  At the Witbank they came to Pretoria to find out if he had been found.  They also found that I had not found him.  And at Mamelodi I also used to go there to find out where his whereabouts but they said they were also still looking for him.  Up until today.
 I heard through the City Press on the 28th of January 1996 all these past eight years I have been looking for him and I have not been able to find him and nobody gave me assistance to find him.  I have been struggling to bring up my children.  I had nobody to assist me bringing up my children but I have tried in every respect to look for him.  I have even been to Human Rights.  I am grateful that Human Rights enabled me to come to the Truth Commission to hear about what happened with my husband.
 I also want to thank God because I've been praying because I was realising that I was no longer able to look after my children.  I just said you God, you know everything, you also know where my husband is.  I have also been requesting God to assist me find out where my husband is.  God gave me the strength and I have been praying up until today.
 I  would like to hear from the Truth Commission - I would like to tell the Truth Commission that there is a man who arrived called Mamasela.  I have also read that in the 28th January newspaper.  Mamasela said he took him at 
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Witbank.  They took him to some place which I can't remember because I don't have the paper with me and he said they tortured him and cut off his hands.  They shot him and blew him up.  I felt a great pain because I read all of this in the newspaper.  Nobody told us anything before we read this news in the newspaper.  Nobody came to tell us about this.  So we started feeling the pain afresh again when we read this in the newspaper.  Even the children when he disappeared they were only as young as six years old.  Even today the children cannot recognise their father because they never knew him, they were still very young.
 My husband left me with loans, but through God's strength I was able to fulfil all those financial obligations, take my children to school, but the older children I couldn't help because I was still trying to help the younger ones.  And the elder ones are still at home they don't work and they can't progress because I am still educating the younger children.  So the pain  that I felt I really would like to ask God to give me strength so that I can hear from this man why he killed my husband, killed him in such a cruel manner in cutting off his hands.  Because they cut off his hands while he was still alive.  All these things are things I read from the newspapers and I had to experience this pain afresh.  
 I really do not know why they did this to my husband to deserve such cruelty.  He was a man who was looking after his family.  He did everything that was expected of him.  I can never forget him.  We can never forget him in our family.

RUSSELL ALLY: If you would like to take a break for a few minutes.
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LIZZIE THANDI SEFOLO: I now feel sorry for my children because even to this day they are asking where is our father, and I have to tell them that your father will never come back, he is killed.  I don't know where was he thrown because we were never even showed the place where he was thrown at.  I am asking can we be given an idea, an indication where was he killed and where is he today.  Because our tradition you will only forgive after having realised what happened.  Even his hands, I have to identify his hands.  According to information I got from the newspapers I couldn't just believe it.
 From the Truth Commission I am expecting the fullest truth so that I can be relieved and have a strong belief that he really died the way it was explained.  I am still saying thank you to the Truth Commission, thank you to the Human Rights, because it brought me to this area, in this place.  We have been in the dark for the past.  I have been searching because I knew it wasn't a cow that has been lost, it was a human being.  You know we lost a lot of money because we have been searching up and down until the day of January 1996 when we heard the information.

RUSSELL ALLY: Thank you Mrs Sefolo.  I know this must be very painful for you but I'd just like to ask a few questions which may help the Commission.  First could you just tell us how many children you have, how old they are?

LIZZIE THANDI SEFOLO: I have six children.

RUSSELL ALLY: Could you tell us their ages?

LIZZIE THANDI SEFOLO: The first one was born in '63.  The second one was born in 1965, the third one was born in '68, the fourth one '69.  The fifth one 1977 and then the sixth one it's 1978, the last one.
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RUSSELL ALLY: In your statement you say that you never discovered the bodies, there were no burials and no death certificates and no court cases.

LIZZIE THANDI SEFOLO: Yes we never received anything, I didn't bury him even to this day there is nothing that belonged to him that I received.

RUSSELL ALLY: And after those reports appeared in the newspaper did anybody come and speak to you, anybody from the police?

LIZZIE THANDI SEFOLO: Nobody came to me.  I went to the Human Rights because at first I went there to ask for help but at home nobody really came to talk to me about this incident.

RUSSELL ALLY: Joe Mamasela the person implicated in this apparently in his evidence claimed that the reason that your husband and his partner were taken was because they suspected that they were hiding arms for the ANC, do you have any knowledge of any of these political activities which they ....

LIZZIE THANDI SEFOLO: Can you please repeat the question?

RUSSELL ALLY: I said in the article in the newspaper the reason that your husband and his partner were apparently taken was because it was said that they were hiding arms for the ANC, do you have any knowledge of these activities, is there any truth to any of this do you think?

LIZZIE THANDI SEFOLO: I knew that he was there and I knew that it was a dangerous thing that he was hiding, he also didn't want me to know anything about that.

RUSSELL ALLY: Thank you Mrs Sefolo.