Special Hearings — Health Sector Hearings — 1997-06-17

WENDY ORR: Sean thank you very much.  You have shared with us a story of multiple abuses, a young boy really being sent into a situation which he wasn't prepared for; being faced with the most horrendous pain, suffering, injuries; being forced to carry arms when in fact you were someone who wanted to heal and not to kill.  And finally the lack of acknowledgement of the pain and trauma that you went through.  And I know you have travelled a very, very long journey since 1983 to come here today, and I want to say thank you very much for sharing this with us.
 I hand you over to the Chair.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.  Pumla Gobodo.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: Thank you God and thank you Sean.  I think your experiences you've shared with us are a very painful example of the incredible suffering that young White men are carrying around themselves in this country.  Unfortunately it's very much an untold story.  No-one knows about the suffering you and people like yourselves have gone through because of the symbol of the South African Defence Force in those years.  Unfortunately the country looks at those people as people who were fighting on the side of apartheid without realising what you had to go through to put yourselves in a situation that you were forced to be in.
 I was listening to you as you were recounting the changes that you went through.   You went in, you wanted to prevent death and to protect life, and you were confronted with the reality of the situation where in fact you had to be faced with death and brutal death for that matter, and you had to switch off your emotions.  
 Now I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about this strategy of switching off?  I imagine that it was in the interests of the army officials that many of you switched-off, how did the army encourage this switching-off?

SEAN MARK CALLAGHAN: The military training which every White South African who was conscripted went through essentially was designed to break the individual and make them part of a whole, to break any individual spirit and to make you part of a unit, which in a sense is understandable in one point of view from a war perspective, but not acceptable from a human perspective.   I think the simple lack of acknowledgement, the simple lack of any support, any acknowledgement that seeing that first patient might have been traumatic for me, or seeing those kinds of patients every day might have been abnormal; the simple lack of any kind of focus groups or any kind of support groups or anything when we came home, any material, that in itself constituted a strategy which de-humanised us in a sense.
 I don't specifically remember saying to myself one day I've got to stop feeling about these things.  All I know is that as I look back I got to the point where I had to cope with the situation I was in and the only way to cope was to feel nothing.  The problem really became, once I was out of that situation I still felt nothing, I didn't know how to express any positive emotion.  I didn't know how to love or how to be happy, or how to experience joy or any of - the only, in fact even an emotion like anger I didn't know how to direct it other than through a violent reaction to it.  And that is really what took me 10 years, 15 years to undo, was that searing which took place in a sense.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: Sean I am going to ask you a little bit about what happened in Tembisa.  Thank you for that explanation.
 When you went into Tembisa Hospital as medics, what kind of official arrangements were there for you?  
 In other words was the superintendent aware that you were not doctors?  
 Was there a standing policy about medics, military medics coming to practice on patients?   Can you tell us a little bit about that.

SEAN MARK CALLAGHAN: It was a standing procedure I would guess that often Wednesday nights, Friday nights, Saturday nights, medics in training went to both Tembisa Hospital and the hospital at Attridgeville.  It was an accepted norm.  There was no, what are you doing here?  Why are you here?
 The doctors were very obviously briefed to train us, to help us, to help us understand how you inject a wound before you stitch, how you stitch these kinds of wounds, how you inject, where you inject, why you inject, those kind of things.  We learnt "on the job training" in a sense.  
 We worked together with civilian doctors, civilian nurses who worked in those institutions.  We were catered for at lunch times or at supper times in the canteen.  We were part of the establishment.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: Thank you Sean.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much.  I can only say that one is so very aware, listening to your testimony, to the high price that has had to be paid especially by our young people to get us where we have got to.  And I hope that we might be able to encourage the faith communities to take, as a particular part of their share of this healing, the sort-of credicur(?) that you were expressing in that people came back and did not have the facilities.  I hope that as people read about and hear testimony such as yours that it will urge, especially the faith communities, to take this up as a very serious task.
 But we must keep remembering that casualties were on all sides, and that the healing, if it is going to happen, is a healing that must embrace all of us in this traumatised, this deeply wounded people.  And sometimes they speak of the wounded healers, that those of you who have been through and come through the other side might also be able to assist your comrades and help them perhaps to come through to the point which you have reached.  
 But we want to thank you for your courage in coming forward and enabling us to tell as full a story as possible, be able to give as full, as complete a picture as possible of the human rights violations that have happened.  And that people walking the streets of our cities and our villages look whole and perhaps not very many of us are whole.  
 Thank you.
MANIPULATION OF FORENSIC EVIDENCE

WENDY ORR: We are now going to move on to Dr David Klatzow's evidence because two of our colleagues have had to leave for a meeting with the Department of Justice, so we will return to the witnesses whose evidence they will facilitate after lunch.  Dr Klatzow will you please come up to the table.  Advocate Denzil Potgieter is going to facilitate your evidence.

ADV POTGIETER: Thank you Wendy.

ADV VAN ZYL: Advocate Potgieter may I at this stage please intervene with your permission.  My name is Van Zyl, I appear on behalf of certain clients, including General Lothar Neethling.  As I understand the notice that had been given to him in terms of Section 30 of the Act his name, or he himself might be implicated during the evidence of Dr Klatzow.  If not so, if you indicate to the contrary then I will accept that, if not, then I am unfortunately then in a position that I have to then raise certain matters with you.  If he's not going to be implicated by this witness then of course this issue is settled.

ADV POTGIETER: Yes thank you Mr van Zyl.  I am told that Dr Klatzow won't be referring to any individuals in his testimony.

ADV VAN ZYL: Thank you.

ADV POTGIETER: Thank you.  Okay.

CHAIRPERSON: You have no objection!!  (General laughter)

ADV POTGIETER: Thank you.  Dr Klatzow I am going to ask you just to take the oath.  Your full names for the record.

DAVID JOSEPH KLATZOW: (sworn states)

ADV POTGIETER: Thank you.  Please be seated.   You will in your testimony give an account of your personal experience as a forensic scientist and you will also be referring to some cases which illustrate the way in which forensic science has failed in its professional duty to serve the community as you indicate.  I am going to ask you to please just proceed and present that testimony to us, Dr Klatzow.