Special Hearings — Children's Hearings — 1997-05-22

MS KWASHANE: Causes.  Gross human rights violations have been committed against children and youth throughout the history of our violent colonial past.  The causes are many and complex.  Some of the more immediate causes in the period under the mandate of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 1960 to 1994, include the following.
 The early 1960's saw thousands rise against the Pass Laws which divided mother from father and parent from child.  During these peaceful protests for the basic human rights of families to live together where they chose the wrath of the State led to many being killed and injured, among them children.  Thereafter many youth saw no other option, but to leave the country, to take up arms and fight for the liberation of their country.  The student uprising in 1976 marked the beginning of a new phase of involvement of the young in political struggle which was to last into the 1990's.  
 Immediate causes of the first protests were the rejection of Afrikaans medium instruction in schools designated for Africans.  Calls for the abolition of apartheid education gathered momentum with the school boycotts of the early 1980's and youth protests soon broadened at the time of the establishment of the tricamaral Parliament to target all aspects of the apartheid system.  The young recognised it as unjust and as compromising their present and future lives.  They refused to be silenced and they became direct targets of State Repression.  As one of the tactics of the State was to terrorise those who stood for a just order.  So the children of activists became victims of violence done to their parents and other family members.  Political polarisation and fear promoted intolerance and dehumanisation of others.  It became easy for neighbours, old enemies and even family members to be labelled spy or turncoat.  As they young were both victims of violence and the leaders of the struggle, those labelled enemies frequently became victims of their collective rage.   As the South African State used military power to assert it control over Namibia in the face of SWAPO resistance, and as it sought to destabilise its neighbours in the region, so it prepared white youth to go to war.  Millions of white adolescents were militarised through participation in the school cadet system.  During compulsory military service in the townships, they were forced to participate in the oppression of their fellow South Africans.  
 We need to understand why most gross human rights violations in South Africa were perpetrated on those between 15 and 25 years of age.  A key reason is that youth is a period of life which lends itself to involvement in political struggle.  Youth, as the period that bridges childhood and adulthood, is commonly recognised as a period during which designs and hopes for the betterment of the human condition find a fertile soil.  It is commonly a time when struggles to consolidate personal and social identities are important.  In our society youth is a time when values of strength, self-reliance and courage are promoted.  The struggle for a just political order in South Africa provided many opportunities for the pursuit of ideals by the young.  It provided opportunities for them to take on heroes roles in an attempt to end repression, and in doing so, the probability that they would be subjected to a variety of forms of violent abuse increased.

MR KAMALDIEN: Nature.  The Commission calls for a description of the nature of gross violations of children's rights.  They cover a wide range.
 Children and youth were killed, abducted, raped, tortured, poisoned, imprisoned for long periods without trial, denied rights while in prison, and harassed mercilessly for actions taken and beliefs held in relation of political conflict, or even just for having been in the firing-line.  
 Many lived in fear spending months of the run away from home, many were forced to flee the country.  The nature of abuses ranges from the finality of death through the use of terror to physical harm and symbolic humiliation.  Sometimes a young persons life was obliterated and the traces left by the young live one were obscured, swept over.  Remembrance itself was tempered with.  Terror tactics including tracks, misinformation, smear campaigns, harassment of kin and intrusion into domestic space interference with education, suffocating techniques to turn people into enemies of their colleagues, intensive interrogation, forced executions, isolation and denial of contact occurred, were all used to divert the young from their political purposes and destroy caution among their peers. 
 The need to control the young was inscribed on their bodies in countless ways as power was expressed through the infliction of pain.  Limbs were broken, joints crushed, heads smashed so that brains no longer function well, eyes were gouged out and so on and on and on.  Symbolic humiliation was used to undermine dignity and purpose.  One direction was in prison with a white pig in a cell painted black.  Another young person who was made to kick bricks as they were dropped through the air, yet another had milk poured on his penis and a calf to suck on it.  A young woman was blindfolded and then left alone in a mortuary besides the body of someone who had recently committed suicide.
 Testimonies given before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission attest to the full range of cruelties.  Four points can be determined from the evidence.  The age of an opponent or enemy gave no protection at all.  No one group aside in the conflict have monopoly on cruelty.  There is no need to plead for the innocence of the young engaged in political activity, but there is a need to acknowledge the full extent and character of brutality used against them.  The range of gross human rights violations and the peculiarities of many of the techniques resorted to call for an understanding of what makes such adult behaviour possible.