Special Hearings — Prison Hearings — 1997-07-21

MR I NAIDOO: I'll take the opportunity of starting.  You see five of us here and as Hugh Lewin said it's not only the five of us but in fact our parents and our grandparents, our whole family has actually been involved in the struggle for well over a century.
 My grandfather already at the latter part of the last century was involved in the struggle.  He was the founding member of the Transvaal Union Congress in fact, the first President of the Transvaal Union Congress.  
 He was a very close colleague and collaborator with Mahatma Ghandi and the two of them organised a number of campaigns in the latter part of last century and the early part of this century.  My grandfather has got a proud record of going to prison fourteen times.  In fact on the fourteenth time they threatened to expel him, kick him out of South Africa but in spite of that he went back to prison. My grandmother who has also been to prison on a number of occasions, gave birth while in prison to her last child.  
 My father, at a very young age went over to Mahatma Ghandi to India and studied under Mahatma Ghandi and -   After fourteen years, fifteen years in fact, he returned to South Africa to continue the struggle in South Africa.  
 My father has been to prison in 1936 during the historical defiance passive resistance.  He went to jail again in 1946 during the passive resistance and he went to jail again in 1952 during the defiance campaign.  During the defiance campaign he was chief volunteer officer for the defiance campaign whilst Nelson Mandela was commander of the defiance campaign.  
 My father passed away in 1952 but he also won Posthumous World Peace Award which was given to him by the World Peace Council.  
 My mum on the other hand has been a stalwart all her life, she has been to prison in '46, she has been to prison again in 1952 and right up to her death in 1993, she was an active member of the movement.  One of her hopes was to see a free South Africa but unfortunately she died just six months before the democratic election.
 Our home in Doornfontein was quite a central part of our struggle, it was raided constantly by the security branch from the time of the passive resistance right down to the defiance campaign, right down to MPA activities, our home was raided constantly by the security branch.  Valuable documents, photographs, letters were confiscated from the house.  The police used to come to our home at all hours of the morning, 2 o'clock, 3 o'clock virtually breaking our doors down to search our house and this is how some of our family members had gone through the struggle.
 I must point out to you very clearly that my family had always believed in  a peaceful resolution to our struggle in this country and as I said to you, my grandfather won a peace award but you'd find that in 1961 I and my brothers and sisters all decided to take up arms against the regime.  We joined MK and as a result took up arms.  I believed at that time and I still do believe that it was necessary for us to take up arms against the regime, it was our form of struggle to bring about peace in this country, it was our peaceful contribution to the country.
 I'd like to point out to you that one of the first instructions that were given by MK commanders was that we must avoid taking lives at all costs.   Ours were acts of sabotage and that we must avoid at all costs to take lives.  In fact one of the first lives to be taken was an MK member who died putting a bomb just outside, somewhere in Soweto by the name of Molefe.
 I was arrested in 1963, on the morning of the 17th of April 1963.  Myself and my comrades Reggie Vandia and Sherish Nanabai were arrested red-handed by the that time, Lieutenant Swanepoel and twenty to thirty heavily armed security warders.  Swanepoel shouted immediately that we should stop and put up our hands which we all three did but Swanepoel shot, he shot me on my left shoulder and the bullet came out between my spine.  The first remark Swanepoel made was, the Coollie is very lucky, I aimed for his heart, and immediately thereafter all the policemen that were there got stuck into me with the butts of the rifles and they started hitting me.  
 Reggie Vandia who was my commander protested against me being beaten and they said oh Coollie you are a ... and that was the end of him.  They brought him down and they beat him on the spot.   
 We were then taken to Pretoria police station where I was rushed to Coronation Hospital, I was thrown into the back of the van, literally thrown in like a bag of potatoes.  When we got to Coronation Hospital the doctor examined me and he saw the bullet was sticking out between my spine, all he did was to take a tweezer and pull it out.  He then said he'd like to detain me in hospital for the next two or three days for observation but the police refused and I was brought back.
 Subsequently two of my other comrades were also arrested Abdullay Jassat and Lalu Chiba.  They were picked up in their homes and we were taken to the Johannesburg Park station, police headquarters.  The first person to be taken in for interrogation was Abdullay Jassat also known as Charlie Jassat.  I could just hear him screaming please leave me, please leave me, I've had enough, I've got nothing to say.  I don't know for how long but thereafter Abdullay Jassat appeared and when he appeared I didn't know whether I should laugh or whether I should cry, he walked in like a zombie, his face was swollen, he could hardly move and there he walked in.  
 After him Lalu Chiba was taken and I was the fourth person to be taken in. There must have been about fifteen or so heavily armed policemen and among them was Swanepoel and van der Berg. The first thing they did to me was they played rugby with me, they kicked me, punched me and dived at me from one policeman to another.  How long this went on for I didn't know.  
 What they wanted to know from me was who was giving us instructions and where the headquarters of MK were.  Thereafter I was thrown onto the chair and the policemen put electric wires on my fingers and on my toes and they attached it to a dry cell battery.  The shock went through me, I didn't know how long it lasted because to you at that moment it seems endless.  They did this to me two and three times.  
 Thereafter I went back to my other comrades and I assumed that I walked back in the same way as the others walked before me.  Nevertheless we were then sentenced to ten years the three of us.   Reggie Vandia,  Sherish Nanabai and I were sentenced to ten years imprisonment.
 One of the first most awful things I remember about prison and this happened at Leeuwkop Prison, it was a very cold day in May and it was raining, we were stripped stark naked and we were made to put our hands against the wall and as I tried to turn around to see what was happening to me, a warder would hit me with a baton and said, Coollie look in front of you it's dark behind you ... going on.  Then I heard other prisoners screaming and shouting and I heard the warder shouting, shit him out, shit him out ... what he was talking about.  All of a sudden I found someone pushing their finger right up my rectum.  This was one of the most humiliating things that ever happened to me and I heard the warder saying, oh he's still a virgin and then I realised what they were doing.
 They then locked all three of us up in separate cells in the isolated section of Leeuwkop Prison and they gave us exercises twice a day for half an hour.  They gave you exercises in such a fashion that you hated exercises.  They made you run at full strength, full speed, barefoot, short pants, short sleeved shirt, they made you run along a corridor with a concrete floor and you ran from one end to the other.  On the one end was a warder by the name of Magalies whose real name is Liebenberg, another warder by the name of Kumalo would stand on the other side and as we run past them they would hit us on the knees and our ankles.  Each time we ran past them they would say faster, faster.  As a result we dreaded this form of exercise.
 We were kept there for a couple of months and this continued.  Subsequently we were moved to Robben Island.  It was the most awful journey I've had in my life, it was a journey that took two whole days.  We stopped for a short while at Bloemfontein prison, we were all handcuffed and chained on our feet.  At Bloemfontein we stopped to have lunch but from there we went right through without stopping until De Doorns.  I was handcuffed to my comrade Henry Maghothi and you could hardly move in the van.  We appealed to the warders to stop so that we could relieve ourselves, they would not listen to us.  We became absolutely desperate, some of us would then move to the back, over bodies and try to get to the back of the van.  When it was going uphill we tried to use a hole between the doors to urinate but unfortunately all of a sudden the van would go downhill which would mean the urine would shoot back into our van.  This was our journey.
 I must tell you that when we at De Doorns for the first time I saw a warder who was human, he actually asked us chaps would you like some tea?  We thought he was playing the fool with us as up to this time no warder called us chaps, we were Coollies, we were Kaffirs, we were Boesman, we were terrorists to mention a few.  Here a commanding officer called us chaps and offered us tea and he did give us hot tea and hot bread to eat.
 We were then transferred to Robben Island.  My story is a very, very long one, I'll have to cut down a lot on my story so I will just illustrate some of the atrocities that took place on Robben Island.  I was amongst very few prisoners who were given lashes on Robben Island.   The warders came up to me, a Kleynhans brother, one of the Kleynhans brothers as there were four of them altogether who were sadists, absolute sadists, the eldest one came up to me and said I must go to the pool of dirty, stinking, stagnant water and drain the water in the quarry.  I went there and I started draining the water when he said, no, no, no, take off your shoes and get into the water.  I said no, there's no way I'm going to get into the dirty stagnant water as there was fine gravel stone there, you could get cut and it wasn't safe so I refused.  
 On returning to the prison that evening, he reported me to Lieutenant Naude saying that I refused to work and I disobeyed a lawful command.  I was then charged for disobeying a lawful command and the final result was I was sentenced to four strokes.  They tie you onto a ... your hands on both sides and your feet down there, you are stark naked, they put a padding on your back and a padding on your thigh exposing your buttock only.  
 The warder who did the caning could easily have weighed a hundred kilograms or more and he was a person of two metres tall.  He chose of one of six or seven canes that were lying there.  He tested them all, he tested the first, he tested the second and when he tested the one that gave him the right sound he said, this is it, this is it,  I'm going to make the Coollie cry today.  ... I'm not too sure of the name, I think it was Doctor van der Bergen examined me and he said oh this Coollie is all right.  ...  
 The first shot that landed, landed right in the middle of my buttock, it cut my buttock down the middle, I felt the pain but I kept my mouth shut and held on.  The warder then applied iodine which was even worse because the iodine burnt you.
 The second shot fortunately for me the cane landed on my buttock, the other half landed on the canvass which took quite a bit of the sting away.  The third one fortunately again landed entirely on the cushion but the fourth one, by this time the warder was very furious with himself, he said this has never happened to him before.  The fifth one landed right on the first cut, cutting me even deeper and they again applied iodine.  I see my brother is showing me the watch.  
 They loosened me and I felt that if I put my clothing on there I would faint immediately so I just grabbed my clothing and walked to my cell with my clothing.  It was only when I got to my cell that I fainted.  
 With the atrocities, it was a daily occurrence on the Island, we were beaten with rubber hoses, we were beaten with batons, we were beaten with anything that they had with them.  Their attitude was that this is Robben Island and no prisoners leave Robben Island alive and that was very, very clear to us.
 Unfortunately,  we were the first three Coollies to be on the Island and the warders would say where are the Coollies.  It was a bad time.  Unfortunately when more Coollies joined us once again they said where are those Coollies ... and this went on continuously.  Nevertheless we never took all this torture, all this harassment without a fight.  
 We went on hunger strikes.  I remember the first time we had a strike we went on hunger strike for five days.  We were separated from Nelson Mandela and others, they were in isolation cells and we were in the communal cells.  We started the hunger strike in the communal cell and Mandela and others only heard the next day that we were on hunger strike and they joined us the following day and when they asked comrade Mandela, why are you on strike he said, I don't know I ask my comrades on the other side.  
 We went on hunger strike, we went on boycotts.  Every time a visitor whether he was a Fascist, whether he was a journalist, whoever it was we raised our complaints and in this way we hoped that our conditions on Robben Island would be exposed to the world.
 I was beaten so badly on the Island that today I am totally deaf in my left ear and when I went to the doctor for treatment, the doctor just gave me some drops and that's it.  When I came out of prison years later I was told by specialists that if they attended to it then there would be a chance of me saving my hearing.   
 I was released in 1973 with my two other comrades and all of us were put under house arrest.  Being under house arrest meant that I could no longer speak to Shanthie, I could not long speak to Murthie and I could no longer speak to Sherish and Reggie my comrades that were with me in jail.
 In 1976 the Soweto uprising took place and the ANC pulled me out of the country in 1977.  I spent the next fifteen years in exile in Mozambique.  I was there when in 1980 the SADF killed thirteen of our comrades in Matola.  I was there when the South African Air Force bombed Maputo and killed one ANC person and four Mozambican civilians.  I was there when Ruth Furst was blown up in 1982.
 In 1986 we were asked to leave Mozambique for our own safety.  The President of Mozabique, Comrade Chisano said we are not kicking you out of Mozambique but for our sakes he would like us to leave Mozambique and we left.  
 I returned to Mozambique on my way to Berlin.  Albie Sacks picked me up at the airport, this was in 1988 and was going to take me back to the airport for my departure to Berlin but the day before my departure to Berlin, Albie Sacks was blown up in a car bomb that blew his hands off and extensively damaged him.  I saw him on that day and I saw him the day I was leaving for Berlin and Albie said to me, Indres I'm sorry I cannot take you to the airport.
 Months and months later I got word from South Africa or in fact from the Weekly Mail that a certain warder or a certain prisoner, a certain policeman has confessed that he placed the bomb that injured Albie Sacks.  He said that bomb was not meant for Albie, that bomb was actually meant for Indres as he knew Indres was in Maputo for one week and on his way to Berlin, it was meant for him but unfortunately Albie got injured.  They had some other method for Albie.  
 While in exile we lived in constant fear of attacks in Maputo, even in East Berlin where we were quite secure, there were a number of threats on our lives.  I think I have said enough, I would like my brothers and sisters to make their contribution.