Human Rights Violation Hearings — Umtata — 1996-06-20

MR SIGWELA: Oh yes.  In the course of time there was assault, but I would like to start with the food.  I am
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coming there.  Now, at that time nobody has been assaulted yet.  The torture that we received was, the last time when we received it was when we were still in detention when we were tortured by electric shocks and so on.  That was the end of the first day, but it was so obvious that we have come now to a very different place.  
 After the guards have been left, after they have checked all the doors if they have locked.  When the next shift we use to, when the new guards would come in we use to ask each other if they could see what was going on, but we thought, ag, this is just an initiation.  We all, we thought that this was going to be over, but I am telling you the coming day and another day and another day and it became now week after week it was the same thing.  We ate the same food.  After a while we complained.  When the officers arrived we started now to complain that we are hungry.  We are starving in this place, but nothing was done.  Nothing was done.  It was the same thing, but we were just locked up the whole day.  We did not even know what was going on and this kept on.  It became a trend and we were never given any information.  Then later, now there was this pain that you use to have, this pang.  We use to have pangs of starvation which was continuous, day after day.  If you were lucky you would fall asleep and then during your sleep you would not be able to feel it, but in the morning when you wake up the first thing that greets you is this starvation.  This went on until the end of April.  Each time we complained.  No, but during this time, let me make an example.  
 Matanjane was complaining.  When he came back Warrant Officer Potgieter who was a, he was in charge and Potgieter is central to this whole thing that I am talking about here. UMTATA HEARING EASTERN CAPE PROVINCE
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He is Warrant Officer Potgieter.  He was promoted quite a lot and he is now in the high rankings now.  He was in charge of this.  He came back and he bit one of my inmates.  Potgieter burnt donkey pins on his head.  This torture that I am talking about now is, starts with the starvation because you can only live with food, but it is true that you can live with other things, but please Reverend I will come to these things.  These pangs of starvation went on and on and we realised that now this is not going to end.  The first officer to notice that there is something wrong and is dangerously wrong was the Lieutenant who was in charge, Lieutenant  I Stores, G I Store.  He use to be the one who distributes toilet paper.  He use to come weekly.  Every week he would still see that there were still toilet papers from the previous weeks because we were not these toilet papers.  There was nothing to go to the toilet for because we were starved.  We stayed, some of us, 20 days without going to the toilet because there is nothing, there is no urge for us to go to the toilet.  
 Now around May the others and myself, I started out to feel and see hazily.  I could only see only not far from me because now I started to feel hazy.  I also started to feel dizzy.  This started gradually and you would feel that now you are sleepy and you started now to feel like you are dreaming and by June, I do not know whether I was dreaming a lot or whether I was now dreaming more about food.  This use to come more often.  When I spoke to some of the psychiatrists they use to say to me, you were beginning with hallucinations, this dreaming period.  I was not the only one who use to have these hallucinations, it was also the others, some of my inmates.
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 You could not sit as I am sitting now on this chair now around June because of how weak we were.  You were supposed to lie on your back and you could not even stretch, you had to collect yourself and coil up yourself because those pangs, those starvation pangs use to really hurt us.  That is how we use to relieve the pain, by coiling ourselves while lying down.  If you tried to talk about what you are feeling to the other inmates you would find that even the others are experiencing the same thing.

MS GOBODO: Could you please elaborate on your hallucinations?  Was it during the day or was it during the night?  Could you please tell us what kind of experiences these were, what was happening?

MR SIGWELA: You would just, while you are sitting during the night, you would feel very weak and these hallucinations would start now gradually.  I would even dream about water running in the fields and I would even see war and I would more and more often, I dreamt about food.

MS GOBODO: I just wanted to find out more.  Were these dreams or were these hallucinations, things that the other people could not see.

MR SIGWELA: No, but at that stage, I do not think that those were things that I could see really, but it came on quite constantly and during the day most of the time.  I know that even Lingisie also experienced the same thing.  We all had these hallucinations.  Sometimes you would even dream about eating pork, but I do not know the whole process, but it was very unusual when you take a nap and then you dream.  We use to have these naps all the time, but it was because of our weakness, we were so weak.  What I am trying to tell you now is that by June, now I started to
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experiment because there was no other way.  We knew that we are not going to get anymore food here.  
 Now by June, now before I come to this point.  In the course of complaining one of the inmates was isolated.  He was put alone in his cell and this man ...  It was just them only.  They said they must bring knopkirries to beat him up. We could hear the sounds, the sounds of him, he was being beaten up.  We did not even know whether they were banging his head against the wall or what.

MR SIGWELA: What was this man's name?