Special Hearings — Women's Hearings — 1997-07-28

MS MTINTSO: Thank you, Chairperson. I will start by greeting you fellow South Africans. It is indeed an honour for me to open this very important session of the work of the TRC.  And I think it is proper that I start by first congratulating the TRC, its Commissioners and staff members, for selflessly and very tirelessly taking South Africa through this painful, but necessary route towards the beginning of a new South Africa.
 It cannot be an easy road for all of us, particularly for the TRC itself.  But in many instances finds itself face with the wrath of those with limited view of the intricacies of this whole process.
 I think that reliving this trauma, in front of the TRC members and their staff, who have daily unflinchingly pried opened those wounds;  must surely have left their mark on these Commissioners and their staff Members.  
 I do hope, Chairperson, that there is a system, a mechanism, by which you yourselves will be given an opportunity to go in front of some TRC office of a sort, because I don't think that we want later on to have to come back and to look at you as victims of the TRC hearings.
 Chairperson, I also want to take this opportunity to salute the people that are going to be presenting here today.  Especially the women that are coming forward to speak for themselves; to speak as actors, as active participants and direct survivors of the violation of human rights.  Not as relatives, not as spouses, not as wives, but as themselves;  those that directly suffered.
 This is not to undermine the experiences of those who suffered because they were relatives.  But I think today we are getting an opportunity of hearing the women's experiences as actors.  They're being brought on to the centre stage.
 Chairperson, I as the chairperson on the Commission on Gender Equality, am particularly pleased that this hearing is taking place, because I think it is the beginning of giving the voiceless a chance to speak, giving the excluded a chance to be centred and giving the powerless an opportunity to empower themselves.
 If reconciliation is to take place, South Africa can no longer ignore the experiences of women, which we must say up front, is quite different from the experience of men, even those that went through the same torture that many of us went through.
 Chairperson, you have congratulated me for coming forward, but I must be honest with you that I am a coward.  This is why I want to congratulate the women who are here, because they dare stand up, they dare open those wounds.   The personal cost may be high.  They may have to go back home and deal with the pain that has opened today, but the overall profits are a lot, because as they are speakin here today, they speak for many of us, like myself, who are still cowardly to talk about the experiences we went through.
 When today they make their sobs, they must know that there's a flood of tears from those who did not even dare to come here today.  They must know that when they make their sighs when they remember, that many of us are groaning inwardly, because we are not yet ready to make those outward sighs of the pain.
 As they try to free themselves today of the burden, they must know that they are freeing some of us who are not yet ready, Chairperson.  I speak as one of those.  I speak, Chairperson, I could not sleep last night, because I sat with myself, I sat with my conscience.  I sat with the refusal to open those wounds.
 There was a logic, Chairperson, as a Chairperson of the Gender Commission, that told me that I have struggled.  I have actually approached some of you to then say:  why are the voices of women not heard?  I have fought that this voice must be heard.  I have said that until those voices are heard, we cannot as a nation sayL  never again.
 The logic, the politics, everything was very clear, Chairperson, but the emotion was not clear.  There was that conflict.  Even as I tried to draft the other day when your statement-taker came to me, I tried to fill those forms and I said:  can I face the consequences?  The consequences which I could not imagine had happened,  Chairperson, because they are known to me.  
 What I know, is that I have sat for years, I have build an armour around that pain.  I have nursed that pain, I have owned that pain.  I seem to refuse to move away from that pain.  I seem to gain strength from the fact that it is my pain.  
 The women today have gone beyond that stage that I'm still fighting to get beyond.
 Chairperson, many people wonder why we want to focus on women and heard their experiences.  International experience, some of which is recorded in documents like the 1995 Belgin Platform of Action, tells us that crime against women and children during war, take a very specific and different form to that of men.
 Firstly, the way the forces, the enemy forces want to show that the men of that particular country, the other enemy, is weak, they do that through sexual abuse of women.  Because women are supposed to be these people that are protected by these men.  So to attack a country and attack its collective masculinity, is done through raping women and children in those countries.
 Secondly, women - men rather, in anger, in frustration, in hatred, they use the bodies of women and children as their terrain of struggle, as their battle ground.
 Thirdly, the basic animal instinct of women at war is satisfied through the abuse of women and children.
 The evidence that comes from Yogoslavia, that comes from Burundi that comes from Ruanda, bears testimony to that.
 Special hearings for South Africa become necessary, because those experiences, Chairperson, are not in Yugoslavia, are not in Burundi, are not in Ruanda, they are here in South Africa.
 We have just gone through a war and our bodies have been used as a terrain of struggle by men.
 Secondly, Chairperson, I think in the overall, many a time when stories are being told about struggling, the stories of the women's struggles are forgotten.  They are hidden.  Even when they are told, they're told as a postscript;  incidentally there were women.  But the essence of this history, is a history of men.  It is not her story, as other people would say;  it is the story of the man.
 Women in the struggle in this country have, Chairperson, struggled.  This is particularly Black working class and poor women.  When we today talk about sisterhood, we need to take that pause, Chairperson.  We need to fight for the sisterhood.  We need to recognise that sisterhood, but we need to take a pause and say:  who are the sisters of 1997 and look at the sisters of the potato campaign, look at the sisters of those women who were removed, forcefully removed.  Look at those mothers who had to have their children in the streets.  Look at all those experiences and centre them so that as we build the sisterhood, we know where we come from.
 This is why we are here today, Chairperson, I am sure, to talk about these struggles.  To take pride in the struggles.  To cry about the struggles.  To laugh about the struggles, because it was not only tears, even during those tears, we still laughed.
 In this audience, Chairperson, there's a young woman who I met when she was 17.  I did not meet her, I heard her voice.  There were many of them, they were under Section 6 of the Terrorism Act, we're all at number four, you could hear us talking and laughing and sharing jokes and singing, as Mhlope was singing here.
 I remembered our songs; we laughed, they were 17.  They had spent a lot of time behind those bars.  They are not here today, Chairperson.  They're not ready, because since 1990, since the unbanning of the organisations, Chairperson, nobody has gone back to those children, to allow them to open up and today, we hope that they can come forward and sit in public and tell you how they were raped and tell you how they were tortured and tell you the pain and tell you their loss of childhood.
 It is very difficult, Chairperson.  It has to be done.  When you have packed your bags as a TRC, there is this work that's still to be done.  When the TRC opened its work, Chairperson, I attended its first sessions, in East Londen, because one of the first woman to speak there, was the wife of a person, Abed Amohably, whose cell I occupied immediately after his death;  whose experiences I was able to tell, because my own tortures showed me how Mabetla had died.
 I have had opportunity to meet her subsequently, Chairperson.  She is still hurting Chairperson, because the TRC's own mechanisms have not managed to help her through that pain.
 We're having these special hearings, particularly because women's experiences under apartheid were different from those of men.  This is particular so for women who are survivors or who were victims of the violations.  This is, because embedded in apartheid and racism, there was also sexism and patriarchy.
 Sexism and patriarchy rendered women in general the worst victims of apartheid, in many ways.  This is particularly so for Black women, Chairperson.  I am sure that the speakers here today will give a graphic picture of this difference.  
 I can only highlight the fact that particularly because of the intersection of patriarchy and apartheid, women's vulnerability at the hands of the security police, was worse than that of men.
 Physical and psychological torture were the order of the day, for both men and women who came into the hands of the security police.  But for women, lurking behind every encounter with the security police, there was the real possibility of rape or sexual abuse, which in many instances was translated, it materialised.
 The sexual abuse, Chairperson, need not have taken the form of rape alone.  It took many forms.  Because as such, Chairperson I am not ready to open up, I will generalise about these experiences, because women have talked about them, have documented them;  those that have been ready.  Some of us have not.  
 For instance, I am sure that women will confirm, that when you come into to the clutches of the security police, statements like, "you have joined these men, because you have failed as a woman, you have failed to find a husband, you have failed to look after your children, you are a failure"  This is why you have joined.  You are not a proper woman".
 Another favourite statement would be;  "you are with these men, because you are a whore, you are an unpaid prostitute, you have come to service these men".
 This consistency of drawing away from your own activism, from your own commitment as an actor, was perhaps worse than torture, was worse than the physical assault, because you could deal with that.  But when, even what you have stood for, is reduced to prostitution, unpaid prostitution. 
 That, Chairperson, I am sure, is worse than a man who we have seen in the last weeks.  The treatment that was displayed in Cape Town of the bag over your head and the strangling.  Women have gone through that, Chairperson.  Women have been made to sit on those imaginary chairs.  Women have been made to stand the whole day, whether they were menstruating or not.  As your blood flows down your legs, security police have gained strength from looking at your blood and asking you to drink your own blood.
 Men have suffered their torture, the physical one, but to stand in front of men for days on end with your menstruation drying up on your legs, is not a torture that has been experienced by men.  It is for that reason that the women who stand here today, are our heroines, Chairperson.
 I'm not taking away from the experiences of men.  I am saying it was important that these women tell their story.  It is a pity, Chairperson, that the nation has not had opportunity to prepare women to come forward, because the women that are here, are hardly a third of the women who suffered in this country.
 The patriarchal nature of our society must also be reflected in the extend which women were susceptible to trace of harm to their own children and family, if they failed co-operate.  If you were in the clutches of the security police and the hand of a child, the photo of a hand of a child, is shown to you and you are told that is your child, your comrades were running away from us and we killed your child.
END OF TAPE 1 - DAY 1 - SIDE A
 ... the responsibility, the role that had been given by society to protect your own children.
 As if that was not enough, Chairperson, when men were tortured and suffered in the hands of the police and they stood ground against the physical abuse, there was a sense of respect - where the tortures would even say "hy is 'n man".  There was that respect for that man.  But when a woman dared, when a woman dared refused to cow down, to be cowed down;  then that unleased the wrath of the torturers, because in their own discourse a woman, a black "meid" a "kaffermeid" had no right to have the strength to withstand their torture.
 They could understand a man, but not a "kaffermeid".  So the torture in that way began to be even more than it would have been had you been probably a White male or even a Black male.
 Chairperson, women under banning orders;  again if there was to be comparison of the pain, I would think that the women under banning orders and those that were banished, suffered even more than the men.  The security police stopped at nothing, because they had to peep and prey and check;  not because you were a political threat, but they had to prove a point;  you were a whore.  They had to find you at it in the middle of the night, wherever you dared to go.
 This once again is not unrelated to the expectation that the women were the whores, the women were the prostitutes.  They were not the revolutionaries, they were not committed; how could they?
 I think, Chairperson, the sexual harassment and torment can only be told by the women who are here, ready to come to you.  It cannot be told by me, because the stories that I carry, I as Christian say are still my cross, but I still want to carry, for some reason.  Perhaps I still want to torture myself.
 Perhaps I still think that they make me what I am.  Perhaps I think that when they are outside there, the tension in me will be removed.  Because that torture started when I was very young, Chairperson.  My activism started when I was 13 and I have been carrying this for all those years and perhaps the lack of readiness, I hope the South Africans will understand.  Because it may be that something from me will be removed;  something that makes me.
 Chairperson, again I think in relation to that, being a Black woman and being in the hands of very beefy White security police, our experience is that I am sure that the Black man or the White males or even the White women, would not be able to understand.  Because there was again that play of power roles here.  The power of the White and the power of the male.  And the lone helplessness of a Black woman, and sometimes I got very angry with thin Black woman.  Even the weight mattered, because it removed again some stereotype of what a Black bitch should look like.
 Again, Chairperson, socialisation into patriarchal  societies has given the women the role of being care-givers, of being healers, of being supporters;  ever ready to care of others.  As a result women turned not to focus on their own pain.  They need to be held and really have time to heal themselves.
 I hope, Chairperson, these special hearings today are giving women that opportunity to bear themselves so that our society can help them to heal.  I hope this is the day when we acknowledge the need to recognise the women's needs for their own space;  their own space to heal themselves.  If we did not offer women this opportunity, South Africans would have been the poorer, as these experiences of women would never have been recognised, respected, recorded and lessons learnt, so that they should never be repeated.
 Above all this nation could never seriously talk of reconciliation with such pain and grief locked away amongst it citizens.
 Chairperson, I have talked about the experiences at the hands of the security police, whether women were in solitary confinement or in the so-called Section 10 or in the so-called Section 22 or whether they were under banning orders. or whether they were abducted.  But there is a yet another body of experience which I am not so sure if it is going to come out today.
 There is still the experience of women in the national liberation struggle itself.  There is still the experience of those women in the camps, Chairperson.  I was in those camps, Chairperson, but that is an experience that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission will have to find.  It will have to be talked about, because it is yet another experience, different from that of the security police, but having its own dynamic of womanhood.
 I hope that today also Chairperson, we'll get answers as to whether women were never perpetrators.  I don't know if the women who are here today - I don't see the signs of women who I would have thought would have been here today.  Because there is this tendency to project women as this passive observers, helpless under these violations.  And witnessing these violations, but not being participants in these violations.  
 Today as other violators and perpetrators loudly refuse to come forward for one reason or another, there is a loud deafening silence on the part of those women who were perpetrators.  We know there were women perpetrators.  We know the sisterhood that we are here talking about today.
 Some of it is artificial.  As we go to the women's conferences and hug and kiss, we are kissing with some of the perpetrators.  It is okay that we kiss, but it is not okay that they do not come forward and talk about the role that they played.
 There were the boys at the border.  They received packages.  In the media there was space given to the boys at the border.  Their parents, their sisters, their parents were egging them on, onto Angola where we were, onto Namibia were the terrorists were, onto all the forward areas where we were.
 Today those women are not here.  The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has to find them, Chairperson.  We cannot build gender equality in this country when those women build on those falsehoods.
 Besides these women as supporters, as wives, as partners, they were active, Chairperson.  Those who went to jail, know that in number four were looked after by White warders. wardresses.  Those who were in Potchefstroom with me, those who were in Ungtungu with me, I was never looked after by Black wardresses, because I was this vicious terrorist.  I was looked after by White women;  some of them today say we are sisters.  Some of them today say, Chairperson of the Commission on Gender Equality, I have forgiven, Chairperson, but they must come forward.  Torture was not only done by men, Chairperson.  There were White women.  There were White women.  Not all the women were tortures, but there were White torturers.  Where are they, Chairperson?  Why is the Truth Commission silent about those women torturers?  I hope they're coming tomorrow, because I don't see them in the list today.
 It is only when they come forward and face these women here and hark in reality and tell their own story, as the perpetrators, that we can begin to say we are on the path to reconciliation.
 Patriarchy must not be allowed to shield these women, because they claim they did this for their partners, for their husbands, for their brothers.  We cannot allow patriarchy to be used when it suits other people.  Patriarchy has got to be eradicated in all its forms.
 Chairperson, as the TRC wraps its formal part of the work, as it publishes its report and as it breathes a sigh of relief for a job well done, we must know that the job continues.  The mammoth task that still lies ahead is the continuous and consistent struggle for justice and protection of human rights, especially gender justice and gender rights.
 The frightening statistics of violence against women and children which has reached in my own view, Chairperson, genocide levels, has to be addressed.  We cannot hope that there is going to be yet another TRC to address that, because in these sessions we're backward looking.  We've got to take the process forward;  we've got to look in the now and the future.
 We have just come out of this war.  Part of the violence against women and children, is because of that war, but part of that is operation of patriarchy itself, because when male control and authority is in any way challenged or threatened as it is getting challenged and threatened every day in our country, it turns itself to the most violent forms and with women and children, their bodies being used as, once again, the terrain of anger and struggle.
 Democracy, reconciliation and nation-building remained threatened so long as patriarchy in all its forms and all the forms of patriarchy, Chairperson, are violent forms of patriarchy.  They are actually a violation of human rights.  We cannot limit human rights to what is in the act.  Gender inequality and gender injustice is a violation of human rights.  It does not necessarily mean that we must have the hearings, but it means we must have the process of eradicating that. 
 As we today look back in our gruesome past, we must realise that our present and future remain in jeopardy, despite the good work of the TRC, if the violence against women and children is allowed to continue.
 The South African society needs to be mobilised in the same manner that it was mobilised against apartheid.  In the same manner that we won that war against apartheid.  Why are we not mobilising and engage in that war against violence against women and children?  Why is the nation continuing as if nothing is happening?  Why are these massacres allowed to happen?  Why is this genocide?  Why are we allowing it?  Why is it being made a role of women?
 It is not the role of Government alone.  It is the role of this society, because if we do not do that, one year, two years down the line, we will have to have that Truth and Reconciliation Commission once again for us to come back and retell the stories that we suffered under democracy, Chairperson.
 Within our own homes, the domestic violence in our own homes, the violence in our streets, the violence in the work place, the violence that's permeating all of our society.  Most of the time what is being highlighted, are the hijackings.  I am not undermining this.  I am not undermining the deaths.  Look at the wall down Wits.  That wall; look at the faces.  Ninety nine percent I went there and looked and registered, 99% are faces of men; where are the women who have been killed?  Where are the women who have been raped?  Where are the women who are getting battered in their own families?  They are not in that wall.  Why are they not in that wall?
 Is that your work, Chairperson, as we build reconciliation?  Because I get angry when I pass that wall.  I get angry that the women's own suffering is not being recognised by this country.  I get angry because the TRC is silent about that.  Because it is happening now.  It is not happening in the days of apartheid, it is happening now.
 Chairperson, I hope that these hearings, the first of their kind, will be conducted with sensitivity, respect and dignity;  not only from yourselves, good Commissioners, but from the members of the public and from the members of the Press, because I don't think that the women that are here today, are here for sensationalism.  They have dared take the risk of opening up.  And I think that the Press as the educator in this country, owes it to them to respect them and to report on them with that dignity.  After all that they have gone through, they deserve that from every member of this public.
 The whole purpose, Chairperson, will be lost if, as we centre these experiences of the excluded, we lose sight of the vulnerability and fall victim of that sensationalism.  I know, Chairperson, that the Truth Commission has got the programme of therapy, but I hope it can be sustained, because my own experience in the few months has been that some of the women whose wounds you opened, we did not pay enough time or give them enough opportunity to heal once they left these halls.
 I have been to Cape Town where there were hearings, Chairperson. I have been to Port Elizabeth. I have been to King William's Town.  There are wounds that have been left gaping there.  It may not be the duty of the TRC alone, it may be the duty of the public, of all of us, but those wounds, they need to be addressed, Chairperson.  You cannot open them in this hall and leave them gaping.  Somebody has got to take responsibility.
 There was a hearing that was held in Cape Town, a hearing after the TRC had been there.  I was then called to a post TRC hearing. It happened three months after the TRC had been there and it was called the post-TRC hearing, because the women were expressing their anger against the TRC. 
 On behalf of the Commission on Gender Equality, I would like once again to thank you for offering me this opportunity to open this hearing.  I would like to pledge our support as the Commission for the work of the TRC and to extend our solidarity and support to the South African women who are about to share their pain with us today.  You are opening the way for gender equality in this country and many of us salute you and pledge to follow your path.
 I do want to say that, Chairperson, even as I sit here and I narrate in broad and general terms, that pain has been opened.  If it happens like that to me, who has not even started to open her own pain, how much more to those who have taken the risk to come and open.
 I thank you.  
(Applause).