Special Hearings — Children's Hearings — 1997-06-12

MR MOLEKANE: Thank you very much for this opportunity.  I am going to be very, very brief seeing that we do not have much time left.
 I wanted firstly to put into a little bit of context youth activities and children activities from the 1970's to the early 1990's.  I am speaking first as a person that was involved in some of the activities as a member of a number of youth organisations.
 Firstly as a member of COSAS, the Congress of South African Students, also as a member of the Soweto Youth Congress which later developed together with other youth organisations throughout the country to establish what was called the South African Youth Congress and later as a member of the ANC Youth League, so I have moved from the time in 1976 when I was only 15 years, when the events happened on that dark Wednesday, when the students moved from school to school and asking students to join them, to demonstrate against the use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction.
 Already at that time, I was in standard 5 and we were doing a number of subject in Afrikaans.  I did standard 5 mathematics was called "wiskunde", we were writing that paper in 1976 when the uprising started.
 Some of the people that I know firsthand who were tortured, detained and suffered under the regime at that time, I would like to refer to in the 1970's where the former Mayor of Soweto, who is now late Sophie Masete, who was detained and tortured here at John Vorster Square.
 We also had Joyce Depale who I happen to know quite well, was also tortured and lost a child in John Vorster Square in 1977 and her brother also was killed in John Vorster Square later.
 The forms of torture that the police meted out in the main particularly the Security Branch of the police, if you were arrested would be for males, young kids to be squeezed.  To squeeze their testicles, asking them to speak the truth.  I know of a person called Chief Twala, he is presently working for the Foreign Affairs Department, his nails were removed, his toe nails were removed with pliers.
 They would also use electric shocks, suffocation was also one of the methods that they liked, either with a tyre tube or with a plastic bag.  And they would also deny people sleep.  I think that was one of the worst forms of torture they would suffer.
 I personally suffered that type of thing when I was detained for the first time in 1983.  I was taken from home, early hours of the morning and taken to Protea police station, almost naked.  I was not given a chance to get dressed and I was taken there.  When I arrived there the police that I know, I don't know if I should mention them here, but it is police that  I know, who I still remember very well, tortured me, closed my face with a plastic bag and started punching me all over my body.
 At that time what they wanted to know, because already by that time, COSAS was in existence, Soweto Youth Congress was also in existence.  The police and their mentality was that students or children do not think for themselves, there are people behind who are pushing them to do things that were happening within our communities.
 And therefore they wanted to know if I was a member of the ANC, if I was trained and if the things that I was doing, there were any other people that were pushing me from behind.  At the time, one could not admit that already he had contact with the African National Congress and also belonged to the underground of the ANC.
 One could not do that because structures like the PAC, which started off in Soweto as detainee aid movement, already existed and brought to out attention a pamphlet which they used to call, "You, Detention and the Law" which was a very helpful document which managed to assist us not to incriminate ourselves and let it be easy for the police to take us into prisons.
 I think one of the most important things that happened especially after COSAS was established, after COSAS existed, was that for the first time from 1976 onwards, you had a mouthpiece of students that was able to organise activities nationally at one time.  The struggles that COSAS was  wedging, mainly against Bantu education, was firstly to fight for the accusation or rather for the establishment of democratic SRC's in schools.
 The police and the State at that time, in stead of giving in to that simple demand that students should have SRC's in the high schools, they refused them to give them SRC's and in stead what happened is that F.W. de Klerk introduced in the schools a Bill that limited the age of students of people that should go to high schools, I think it was called age restriction law and in universities they introduced the quota law, that particular number of Black students can go into the formally White universities.
 That also made students and generally children or rather young people very angry, because now they were denied a right to education because we were all saying that that was a right.  If I may jump quickly and go to 1985, which was a very special year for children.  It was the international year of the youth as declared by the United Nations.
 That even when the world had declared that there was an international year of the youth, apartheid did not spare young kids, did not spare children, did not spare youth.  The celebrations that were supposed to happen amongst organised young people, were disrupted.  I remember very well in Tembisa we had organised a very huge rally there - it was dispersed by police.  
 People were sjamboked, people were arrested and had to go to Diepkloof hall and in Diepkloof hall, when we arrived, they had to pour teargas powder all over the hall and if you walk around that teargas powder, then it would affect you and your clothes for quite a very long time.
 During that time, repression in South Africa and also general harassment by the police, was at its peak especially in those years, in 1985 and children became a subject of discussion in Harare at a conference organised by the United Nations to look at children in South Africa, repression and the law.
 This is what Vlok had to say at that time about that conference that was taking place in Harare.  I would like to quote just one paragraph from a statement that I just retrieved from the newspaper.  This is what he said, in fact he was saying that all that people are going to say in Harare because the conference had a delegation including Sophie Masete, the late Mayor of Soweto, representing young people there and Vlok was saying that it is all lies.
 There is nothing that was happening, there is no torture, there was no detention, no children in prison and so on and so forth.  He said "much of the false and slandered allegation and information originates from radical individuals and organisations from within South Africa and also from the Detainees Parents Support Committee.  Mr Vlok said it was because of this he had felt it necessary to release, he said young detainees received excellent medical care, were visited regularly by Judges, District Surgeons and their parents.
 I would like to make an example in contrast to this.  I was in detention during the state of emergency from the beginning to the end, I think it was about eight months if I am not mistaken.  We received at that period, I think about close to about 5 000 kids, at different periods because what they used to do, they would go to a school and arrest the whole school, bring it to prison and they would stay there for 14 days.
 After 14 days they are all released and another batch of school children will come in there and so on and so forth.  And the torture that I indicated earlier was the order of the day in most of the children that were detained during the state of emergency.  So what Vlok was saying here, is very untrue because I stayed there for that whole period of time, without seeing any District Surgeon, without receiving visit from anybody.
 In fact at that time I was even tortured myself because my arm was broken when I was still in Protea police station and therefore what the police did, was to circulate me around a number of police stations.
 First Mondeor, John Vorster, Sandton police station and when I was healed, they then took me to Johannesburg prison, but for that whole period of time, one did not receive any visit from anybody.  There were also women who were very young, who were also detained during that time and tortured.
 I remember for an example Bessie Fehla was also one of those people that were detained, Busie Maglowo was also detained and kept at various prisons.  Patience was also detained at that time and she was poisoned I think on her leg and up to now, she still has problems with her leg.
 So what Vlok was saying here, is really untrue.  I also want to make another quote in closing Chairperson, to show and do away with the myth that young people got involved in the struggle because they were pushed by others and it was not  a conscious decision that they wanted to get involved in the struggle.  It was not because - it was because of the conditions that people and young people as well, lived under that made them to become involved in the struggle and to fight against the atrocities.
 Here I want to quote from another newspaper.  Here it is Mr Roelf Meyer speaking - at that time he was the Deputy Minister of Law and Order.  He says "children, they have become the instruments, best used by the callous, revolutionaries and radicals in their ill-founded bid to overthrow Christian, democratic rule in South Africa and replace it with a Marxist rule."
 This is what Mr Roelf Meyer had to say at that time, I think it was in 1987, referring to children who they were putting in prisons and saying that they are not thinking for themselves.  That the State is actually trying to defend what he called here "Christian, democratic rule", which the world had declared a crime against humanity.  Thank you.