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

ADV POTGIETER: We would like to say thank you very much to you, Mrs Van der Merwe. We appreciate you having come to share your story with us. I would like to put one or two questions to you.

SUSAN J VAN DER MERWE: Certainly.

ADV POTGIETER: It seems as if the actual pain in your experience was the fact that you never really got the remains of your husband, in order for you to bury him.

SUSAN J VAN DER MERWE: That is correct. That left such an immense, indescribable feeling of a vacuum and you cannot explain it to anybody else. One's one life, your whole life is incomplete.

ADV POTGIETER: It is now approximately 18 years after his disappearance, have you accepted now at this stage, that your husband is indeed dead as it became apparent from the investigation of the police as submitted to the Supreme Court?

SUSAN J VAN DER MERWE: Yes, that is correct. The evidence which came to light was sufficient to convince us that he had lost his life and that he was gone.
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ADV POTGIETER: Have you reconciled with that and do you accep[t today that he is dead?

SUSAN J VAN DER MERWE: Yes, I have accepted it, but I would love to receive any of his remains, just to be able to say I have buried him.

ADV POTGIETER: What was the statement made by the police with regards to the fact that they could not find his remains in the area where the MK cadre had shown them where they had shot this person?

SUSAN J VAN DER MERWE: This Mr X, I know some of the people's names today, but this Mr X who was the leader said they did not explain to him precisely where they had left his body, but that they said to him that they left his body where they had shot him. If you know that region or if you know anything about that region, then you will realise that if a person walks in those bushes, you could probably pass a corpse like that approximately two feet from there, because that is how dense that bush is. In spite of the police having looked in that region, they went to the farm Doringlaagte and they fine-combed the area but the people, the employees on the farm who were in the farm, said that that night, the Wednesday evening, it was late afternoon. He had left the farm after he had received the message of his mother's death and they heard his car from camp to camp as he would stop, they would hear the car stopping and starting up again and leaving. So he left the farm, but evidence which surfaced later, showed that he used the Rooibokkraal road and this is where he stopped for these people. It was something natural for him to do. If somebody had to ask him why he stopped, then I would be able to say that it was habit, it was habit for him. We were living in
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such a place that the place where we lived was far from Thabazimbi and he would have assumed that the people were on their way to Thabazimbi, and that is why he would have stopped for them, to grant them the opportunity, a lift, to get them a lift to Thabazimbi. That is what he would have done.

ADV POTGIETER: You spoke about what things were like there. What about wild animals with regards to his remains.

SUSAN J VAN DER MERWE: Could you please repeat the question?

ADV POTGIETER: What is the situation with regard to wild animals in that region?

SUSAN J VAN DER MERWE: There are many wild animals.

ADV POTGIETER: And what would happen to the remains that get left in the veld?

SUSAN J VAN DER MERWE: It is improbable that a corpse like that would remain there, so that there is quite a good chance that the wild animals would then eat the remains, yes.

ADV POTGIETER: How old was your husband when he disappeared?

SUSAN J VAN DER MERWE: He was 57 years old.

ADV POTGIETER: And was he politically active or militarily inclined?

SUSAN J VAN DER MERWE: No, not at all. One of the things that surfaced in the matter was that he did not take part in politics at all. We lived in Botswana for years and even when we came back to the Republic he did not participate in any political activity. He was merely a farmer.

ADV POTGIETER: And just one last question. What happened to the ... (END OF TAPE - SIDE A).
SIDE B

SUSAN J VAN DER MERWE: He was a vegetable farmer here and he
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was not happy with it, because livestock farming was part of his life. He grew up with livestock farming and he wanted to go back to Botswana to go and do livestock farming once again, and that is why he sold the farm. He always spoke about specifically about the farm which we had in Botswana. He used to speak about God's own country, because this land was so unscathed and he was somebody that loved the open veld, and that he would always say that for him it is the most wonderful thing to farm with livestock, because that is God's own country.

ADV POTGIETER: And the fact of the whole matter is that the disappearance of your husband left you in financial difficulty? It left you financially stranded, even though were earning a salary as a teacher.

SUSAN J VAN DER MERWE: Yes, my salary at that stage - I taught merely to earn extra income, because we could not maintain our family on that, so it was merely to help.

ADV POTGIETER: Just lastly, psychologically speaking, what is the position with your children, were there any psychological scars that have been left in their lives or have they reconciled with the fact that your husband has disappeared in the probable circumstances as you have sketched here?

SUSAN J VAN DER MERWE: I would say that some of my children reconciled well with the fact but others were not able to work through this whole thing. A lot of them are independent people, as I said, some of them were extremely affected, deeply disturbed by the whole thing. So much so that some of them could not even complete their studies, some of them could. As I said, although today you can still that there are emotional scars with some of them, but some
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of them have managed the whole thing a bit better.

ADV POTGIETER: Thank you, ma'am, I have no further questions.

CHAIRPERSON: We have listened to everything you have said, thank you very much. Are there any questions? Dr Randera?

DR RANDERA: Mrs Van der Merwe, I would like to from myself, commend you in the way you have come forward today in an honest and open way and without any malice whatsoever. Shall I repeat what I said?

SUSAN J VAN DER MERWE: I do understand Afrikaans, but I can't hear it all the time.

DR RANDERA: Shall I repeat what I said?

SUSAN J VAN DER MERWE: Please put it in English.

DR RANDERA: Afrikaans is on one.

SUSAN J VAN DER MERWE: I do understand English, it did not come through very clearly.

DR RANDERA: Did you hear me, ma'am?

SUSAN J VAN DER MERWE: Yes.

DR RANDERA: Mrs Van der Merwe, I just want to come to my question which is that it seems that this issue of the MK soldiers involved or allegedly involved, hinges around the testimony of a Mr X, who happened to be an ANC person himself at the time. Could you please tell us the name of the security policeman who was involved in investigating this issue, the death of your husband?

SUSAN J VAN DER MERWE: The security policeman who took the statement was Jan Karel Coetzee.

CHAIRPERSON: Yasmin Sooka?

YASMINE SOOKA: I would just like to ask you, you talk about the information that you were given, being given to you at court. Ma'am, the facts which were given to you, at court,
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did you get all the facts at court?