Special Hearings — Prison Hearings — 1997-07-21

ZAHRAH NARKEDIEN: I think I also just need to mention that I reported the abuse to the Inspector of detainees but nothing was done there and I reported it to the District Surgeon.   I wasn't able to walk for several weeks, I had to hold onto the wall and there was some Major ... who also walked in there and wanted to know whether I had any complaints when all these men were swearing and abusing me and I said yes I do have complaints.  I want to complain about the way I'm being treated but he just swore and said to hell with you, you're just a terrorist you deserve the treatment you're getting.
 So this person sort of misled me only to find that he just didn't care.  That was disturbing because I was explained that Section 29 was there to get you to speak without torturing you so it means that we had to go through the isolation with Section 29, no contact with family lawyers and so on and still be physically and psychologically tortured. To me that was really unfair.
 I was in solitary confinement under Section 29 at Seerswart Square for about say three and a half months and as I was the only female political prisoner I was put in the furtherest cell in that female section.  All those conditions didn't bother me, being locked up all the time and only being taken out for interrogation for half an hour a day, less than half an hour to go and see the Inspector of detainees once a week.  
 What really bothered me was the rats.  I know there's this chauvinist thing where men would say women are just afraid of mice and rats but these were not little mice, these were huge rats, the size of cats that were in the cells, in the passages all the time.  I would sit and eat my food and three of these rats would just sit and look at me.  I'd be in the yard praying, the rats would just be around me and I'd get up and chase them but they'd come back in.  I had to use my clothes eventually, we did get a change of clothes, I had to use my towels and clothes to block the access where they were coming in under the door and the rats just used to rip all that and eventually come in.  One particular evening one was crawling on me and I didn't quite mind until it got to my neck, I went totally berserk, I screamed the whole prison down.  The other prisoners wanted to know what was wrong and I told them it was a rat that was on my neck so they all got angry and the whole prison screamed.  The guards came running as they didn't know where this problem started.  When they eventually came they found me in the corner and I was actually eating my T-shirt.  That's how berserk I went.

MR DLAMINI: Mrs Narkedien at some stage you were transferred to Klerksdorp Prison, was it after the sentencing and why Klerksdorp Prison?  I'm sure you'll tell us of your experience there?

ZAHRAH NARKEDIEN: I think before I got to Klerksdorp if I can just say that when I was Pietermaritzburg Female Prison for two or three months when I was attending the trial at the Pietermaritzburg Supreme Court, I was charged with about eighteen different counts of terrorism, furthering the aims of the ANC, the Magoo bombing, the raid we did on the Edenvale hospital to rescue Gordon Webster.
 Every time I left the prison I would first have to get dressed and then as soon as the vehicles arrived, there was a whole convoy that used to escort me to the prison and back, as soon as they arrived I had to strip naked for about three or four prison wardresses.  I had to strip naked and they would go through everything, one would go through my files, my briefcase and the other one would take all my clothing and take all the seams to see what I was hiding there.  I had to stand fully naked and I used to say never, I'm not going to take my panties off for you, you do all the searching and when you're finished I'll pull it down quickly and I had to do that every single day for two and a half months,  when I returned it was the same process.  They'd follow me to my cell, I'd have to take off everything and stand there semi-naked as I wanted to, they would do everything and then the quick pull-down.
 I used to hate that but they told me that was prison regulations and I was one of the worst prisoners, I was dangerous terrorist that they had to check and I used to ask what they were looking for.  When I came back from the prison they would turn the entire cell upside down, all the mattress, my clothes, completely scatter everything as if I'd hidden something there and they were looking for it.  That was something that would really get to me but I was determined not to let them see that they were destroying me because for two and a half months, twice a day no woman wants to stand naked and when you're menstruating they still want you to pull your panty down.  On these occasions I used to say one of them can come into the little cubicle where there was a shower and only one was going to look because I mean no woman can stand in front of another group of women at that time of the month.  These were very aggressive women so I really had to stand up to hostile people.
 Then I was transferred to Klerksdorp Female Prison because I was then sentenced, I was fortunate that I had a very short sentence where most of it was actually suspended for a good few months and years otherwise I would have spend nine years in prison.  Of the eighteen counts I was eventually convicted on five.  I was transferred to Klerksdorp for that.  I was in isolation all the time from when I was arrested in July 1986.  I can't remember what month I went up there but it was a wonderful day to get to Klerksdorp Prison and I was there with three other comrades of mine.  It was a big celebration for us because I was ending my solitary confinement.
 I was with them for only about six months and then a fight broke out between two of the comrades from Kwazakela and they strategized amongst themselves that they should blame it on the Coloured woman.  Unfortunately they knew that the prison wardresses, especially the head of the section was a very racist woman and she believed that Coloured people were violent, they were gangsters and because of that, that racist and those stereo types, I was just taken one morning at about 5 o'clock when all the other prisoners were sleeping, out of my cubicle.  Everything even my mattresses were taken and I had to go down and live in the basement in isolation for seven months.
 That was very, very painful, I don't even want to describe psychologically what I had to do to survive down there.  I will write it one day but I could never tell you but it did teach me something and that is that no human being can live alone for more than I think even a month or even three months because there's nothing you can do to survive all by yourself every single day.  The basement was an entire wing of the prison.  It was like so much at the bottom with high walls, perhaps even higher than these but I felt as the months went by that I was going deeper and deeper into the ground, physically I wasn't but psychologically I was.  
 I had to live in this basement with long passages and all the other cells used to be locked and I was in this tiny cell which was the size of my parent's bathroom at home.  It's a two bedroom'd house so if you know the size of a bathroom in a two bedroom'd house you'll know the size.  If I got up from my bed I only had to take two steps or lets say four steps to get to my toilet.  I only had a bed and a desk in there and I became so psychologically damaged that I used to feel that all these cells are all like coffins and there were all dead people in there because they were not there, no-one was there, it was as if I was alive and all these people were dead.  I was so disturbed but I would never, never let the wardresses know.

MR DLAMINI: Take it easy Zahrah, take your time please don't rush yourself.