Human Rights Violation Hearings — Johannesburg — 1996-04-29

DR BORAINE: Mr Chairperson the final witness this afternoon is Mr Johan Smit and I will ask him please to come forward.
 Good evening Mr Smit.  I really have to apologise to you.  It's been a very, very long day and you have had to wait to the very end, and it's bad enough having the anguish and the pain that you are carrying to have to sit and wait for such a long time.  Please forgive us.  It's beyond our control.
 Mr Smit we do welcome you and we do express our very deep appreciation to you for your readiness and willingness to come to this Commission.  We always obviously give people the opportunity to speak in whichever language they would like and if you would like to give your testimony in Afrikaans obviously that's up to you.  If you would like to use the earphones that's also up to you, but I shouldn't think that would be necessary. 
 I would like to ask you to please take the oath.

JOHAN SMIT: (sworn states)

DR BORAINE: Thank you very much indeed.  Please be seated.  Mr Smit the story you will tell is a very wrenching one and goes back more than ten years but it must for you be like yesterday, I am quite sure.  Without any further ado I am going to ask Mrs Joyce Seroke to help you and guide you as
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you tell your story, but as I have said to so many others, it's your story and you tell it the way you want to.  Thank you again very much indeed for coming.  Mrs Seroke.

MS SEROKE: Hennie and Annamarie Smit you live in Pretoria and you are the parents of Cornio Smit who at the age of eight years in 1985 was killed in a bomb blast in Amanzimtoti.  At the time he had gone to Natal with his grandparents for a holiday and whilst they were shopping, two days before Christmas at the Sanlam Shopping Centre in Amanzimtoti this bomb blast occurred.  Can you tell us how did you get the news and what happened?

JOHAN SMIT: I got a phone call from my uncle who stayed in Malvern in Durban and he told me that my son was in an accident and I had to come down and see him.  I thought that it might be a car accident because he didn't explain what type of accident it was.  My wife was doing shopping and I had to find her.  I phoned a couple of shops and eventually one of the shops found her and told her that she had to return immediately.  In the meantime my uncle phoned me again and said it was quite serious, we've got to come down.
 By this time it was already late in the afternoon because I couldn't find my wife.   I thought he thought that I wasn't interested in coming down to Durban.  But when Annamarie arrived we immediately went down to Durban.  But by then we still didn't know there was a bomb blast.  We only found out that it was a bomb blast when we arrived in Durban in the hospital.  I can't remember the name of the hospital. They told us that my son's not there but they know of a little boy who was in the mortuary.  By that time, it was very late, the mortuary was already closed and I went to my uncle's house.  It might be that I only found out then 
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that it was a bomb blast.  I can't really remember.
 We went to see him the following morning but I didn't want to believe that it was my son that was lying there.  I asked them to take him out of the glass case so that I could see his chin.  Under his chin he had a small little cut which he got when I accidentally dropped him when he was a child.  I still really didn't want to believe it and my wife and my father had to convince me it was my child.
 Then after that we came up to Pretoria.  We buried him in Pretoria.  I told newspapers that I thought my son was a hero because he died for freedom for people that - I would prefer to speak Afrikaans.  He died in the cause of the oppressed people.  A lot of people criticised me for this.  They thought that I was a traitor and they condemned me, but I still feel that way today.  I feel that few White people in this country would ever have  ...(tape ends) they really struggle, they'd buy small amounts of paraffin and really didn't have much money.  I would never have come to this awareness otherwise.

MS SEROKE: You had the opportunity to meet the parents of the boy who planted the bomb.

JOHAN SMIT: That's true.

MS SEROKE: How did you and Annamarie feel during this meeting with his parents?

JOHAN SMIT: I've got no grudge against them.  I mean it was actually a rebellion, it was war, in war things happen that the generals don't plan, nobody plans it, it just happens.  You don't always - it may happen that the troops become a little bit over-zealous and start making their own terms and do things that they weren't given orders to do, but in a war you just obey orders, you don't question and ask why you
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should do certain things.  So I accept that it was an order that was given which this person or persons executed by planting the bomb.

MS SEROKE: ....and these parents, mother and father of this boy.

JOHAN SMIT: Just repeat the question please.

MS SEROKE: How did you feel receiving these parents of this boy in your own house and what took place there?

JOHAN SMIT: It was a great relief seeing them and expressing my feelings towards them that I felt glad that I could tell them that I felt no hatred for them.  I bore them no grudge.  And there was no hatred in my heart.

MS SEROKE: At the end of our hearings we are going to recommend to the government a policy of reparation what would you, in your position, want to see in that policy?

JOHAN SMIT: Joyce can you just repeat the question please.

MS SEROKE: I say that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission at the end of this brief is going to make recommendations to the government on a policy, I mean regarding a policy on reparation for all the victims.  What would you and your family like to suggest for this policy?

JOHAN SMIT: I haven't thought of it.  This is really something that I haven't thought about.  I don't quite know which policy you are referring to, I am not really following Joyce at the moment.

MR MALAN: I think what Mrs Seroke is asking Sir is that one of the tasks of this Commission is where victims have suffered and had setbacks that we can perhaps formulate a policy, make recommendations to the government to accommodate these victims and help in the restitution of the human dignity and to make some kind of reparation.  I think
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perhaps this is a dual question.  Can you perhaps think of anything that you specifically need, but also do you have any other contribution to make, but don't feel pressed to answer?

JOHAN SMIT: No I don't think I can make a contribution at the moment.  The people who are suffering as a result of the war, and there are people suffering on both sides I think these people can be helped.  It depends on the circumstances.  But I don't think one can quantify the value of a life, and put monetary value on a life.  I wouldn't like to see financial compensation being paid for a life.  If perhaps the circumstances were such that it was the breadwinner, yes, maybe then it's a different matter.  It all depends on the circumstances.

MS SEROKE: When your son was bomb-blasted you said in the midst of acute grief that you wished that these killings would stop and that the Nationalist Government could negotiate with the ANC for peace, that was a very profound statement Hennie, what did your family think when you said that?

JOHAN SMIT: Like I said they couldn't understand it, some of them still don't understand it.  They can't see my point of view, they are not as liberal as I am.  They really don't understand it.  Like my mum was in the same bomb blast and she doesn't feel the same way that I feel.  So there are different viewpoints on the subject.