Human Rights Violation Hearings — Durban — 1996-10-24

DR MEER: I was first banned in 1954.    The events surrounding that banning should really go back to 1946/48 when the Indian people launched the passive - launched a passive resistance campaign against new laws that were passed against them.    As a result of this campaign, the whole issue of racism was, for the first time, tabled before the world at UN.
And this evoked, from the Government of the time particular animosity and hostility against the Indian people.    And it is my reading that one of the main reasons for the violence that erupted in 1949 was linked to this, and as a matter of fact, the commission that was instituted to explore the reasons for the 1949 disturbances made note of this among other things.    We women of the African National Congress and the Natal Indian Congress felt that we should get together, unite, and for the first time group - a group of Indians and Africans came together as women and we began working in the Cato Manor area, which was at the time the most blighted area in and around Durban.
We started a creche and we started a milk distributing service.    My own feeling is that these activities, and we formed an organisation that we called The Durban and District Women's League.    My own feeling is that this must first have attracted the government's attention to me.    
Though in those times it was possible to get a reason from the Government as to why you had been banned, and such a reason was asked and such a reason was obtained, and I read out the prime reason for my banning order, which was communicated to me.    It was said, that I had said at a meeting that the aims of the Congress of the People will not be achieved immediately, that it will entail a hard struggle, but that we will gain our freedom eventually.
I think this is worth noting, because it represents - it indicates the very low level of tolerance that the Nationalist Government had for any opposition to it.    That a statement of this nature should have been given to me as the reason for my banning order.    In 1954 my husband was also banned and we were given special permission to communicate with each other.
My husband was, in addition as a member of the Communist Party, listed and there were certain activities that he could not engage in for the life of the Nationalist Party Government.      In 1956 my husband was charged with treason with one hundred and fifty-six other people and, as a result of that he was away from home for a whole year, and I had to tend to his office.    And we are grateful that there were friends in the legal fraternity who came to our assistance.
In 1960 my husband was detained, imprisoned without trial following the Sharpville assassinations and the Declaration of Emergency in the country.    During 1960, post 1960's we went through a decade where the terror of the Nationalist Government was so intense and so severe as to have cast the entire country excluding, of course those who were party to the apartheid system of government, in a state of numbness, in a state of fear, and we found that there was, in fact, no response and no reaction to the atrocities of the Nationalist Government that were accelerating.
In the 1970's this silence was broken and youth and women were at the forefront of the new challenge that emerged against the Nationalist Government.    In that state, in 1976, when there was the uprising of pupils in Soweto, and I shall not go into reasons for that, we find that in Durban and throughout the country there were again mass arrests, detentions and banning orders.
I was banned again in 1976.    
My first banning order was for two years.
The second banning order was for five years.    
My young son, Rashid, who was a first year student, and still in his teens, was arrested and put in solitary confinement and later on I, too was arrested.    We women had formed The Durban - the, The Black Women's Federation in reaction to the government.
The main work of The Black Women's Federation was to try and  [indistinct]  our women to try and get them to develop self-help projects, and the focus was mainly on developing water projects and educational projects, both in the urban and rural areas.    I was elected the first president of The Black Women's Federation, and I would think that that was one reason why, during that year in 1976, even before the eruptions in Soweto, as far as I can recall, I was banned and then subsequently I was detained at the Fort in Johannesburg, with practically the entire executive of The Black Women's Federation.
The Black Women's Federation was subsequently banned as an organisation.    On our release at that - I must add that not only my son, Rashid was put into prison, but also my son-in-law, Bobby Mare, both of whom were students at the University of Durban Westville were imprisoned.    At the end of their release, both Bobby and Rashid were also banned, which meant that we now had three members of the family banned and the Government gave us permission to communicate with each other, because in terms of banning orders, banned persons were not allowed to communicate with each other.
For Rashid, the banning was particularly pernicious, because we were banned, the banning mounted to a house arrest, because we were banned and confined, in terms of the banning order, to our handkerchief-sized group area of Sydenham.    Moreover, Rashid was precluded from joining any university or any institution learning whatsoever, which meant that the prospects of spending the next five years without any education appeared far too grim for him, and he escaped and went into exile.
He remained in exile for fourteen years, and during that time we had very little contact with him, I mean physical, because we also had great problems in getting passports.    Rashid, of course, could never return to his country until this Government had ceased to exist.
Now, proceeding from 1976.    In 1977, the very next year, an assassination attempt was made on me.    We were at home, my husband and I, telling stories to my nieces who had been staying with me at the time, when my daughter Shanaaz sounded the alarm that our garage was on fire.    This immediately got me rushing to the door.    Fortunately for me, staying with us at the time was a friend, Zwelenia Ngoba, and he preceded me by seconds, or minutes, to the door.    He is a tall man, I am a short woman, as is obvious, and he was shot twice on the shoulder, and when I got to the door, he was already lying there bleeding and he said to me, "Please go away, they are calling your name, and they are swearing at you".    Had I been the first to open the door, I would have been shot in the head, and I would not have been here today to tell the story.    
A few days later, I think it was about eleven days later, but the year had changed since the event at our house had happened in - at the end of December 1976.    On January 9th, my friend and colleague, who was also banned at the time, he was shot dead in his home, and from the description of the car that had left our house, and that one observer had seen at the house of Dr Rick Turner, it appeared - it appeared to have been the same car.    But this is as much as we can say on that score.    Subsequent to this assassination attempt, there were two arson attempts on our home.
Here I want to point out that these two arson attempts were fobbed off at the time as having been made by my own friends by organisations in whom I had faith.    The first organisation was The Black Conscious - The BCP, I don't know whether BCP was formed at the time, but it was The Black Consciousness Movement, the movement which had very profound effect on all of us.    A movement with which I identified completely.    It was suggested that it was members of The Black Consciousness Movement who had actually carried out this arson attempt on our house.    Subsequently, two young men's names were cited in court.    One of them committed suicide, and I ask, and I am still trying to understand the meaning of that suicide.
Was it, that this young man recoiled in disgust against himself for having been used by the system to carry out this arson attempt on somebody whom he knew well and with whom he worked.    Later on, in 1985, we suffered a second arson attempt, and I want us to go back and look at the events in 1985.    Because to my mind, these are the events which began the blood-bath in Natal which remained part of our life right up to the 1990's and almost up to the eve of the emergence of our new Government of National Unity.
In 1985, I myself identified that as the period when the Nationalist Government began its death dance.    In despair it tried to do whatever it could to change the situation in its favour.    The Government excesses which took the form of rent hikes, a rise in the cost of transport.    These were amenities that were monopolized by local governments.
As a result of that, and as a result of the rising failure of the councils it had erected in the townships and councils in which ex-Robben Islanders like Harrison Dube were prepared to work in - these councils demonstrated their failure.    We find that right up to the end of the 1970's Inkatha and Chief Buthelezi were highly respected in our region in Natal.
I think we should remind ourselves that Chief Buthelezi himself had gone into the Kwa-Zulu system on the advice of the African National Congress.    And we were all supporters of both Inkatha and of Chief Buthelezi.    But a situation was being developed in the 1985's in Natal where Inkatha was being alienated from the liberatory front.    There was frustration.    There was irresponsible name-calling.    There was hurt.    And in this situation it is my humble interpretation that Inkatha itself, found itself vulnerable to a new ally.    And that new ally was the Nationalist Government, its very pernicious system.
I think that Inkatha sincerely believed at the time that it would still work the system to its own end, but it is, again, my opinion that it did not transpire in this way.    In 1985 it is significant to note that the - an intelligent source reported by the Sunday Times on 14.7.85 said there is a revolutionary assault going on out there.    We have no instant counter-revolutionary force.
The Government was therefore planning to develop an instant counter-revolutionary force and it found this counter-revolutionary force in Inkatha.    It is not an interpretation that I ask people to accept, but it is an interpretation that I do offer.    In that situation we must also note that the press played a very important part.    Suddenly the police withdrew.
Within days of this statement made on the 14th Seventh '85, on the 1st of August the first stone was cast by the Government to cause ripples in a situation which up until that time was fairly calm, and that was the shooting of Ms Victoria Mxenge.     The assassination of Ms Mxenge understandably provoked a response on the part of the students and pupils, but the response was not very severe.    There were some demonstrations.    There were some stone-throwing.    There was damage to one or two houses, but generally speaking it was low-key.    On the 8th of August we held a meeting a Umlazi to protest the assassination of Ms Mxenge.    
And it was - I was part of the platform group, and it was at that meeting that the very first, what I consider to be mobilized attack by the system, by the government, using people against each other, using black people against each other, occurred.    I did not realize the full scope of the violence which had been inflicted at that meeting.    I went back to my car and I found a man lying there next to my car.    I thought he was probably still alive.    I asked some people to help me put him into my car.    I rushed with him to the hospital.    I might say that when I had come to Umlazi to that meeting, the whole place was calm, but when I was leaving a few hours later, the whole township had become inflamed.
There were people all over and people were stopping cars and there was pandemonium.    Any case, I reached the hospital.    The hospital would not allow me to offload what I thought was my patient.    A nurse came and said to me that the man was dead and I now had to find the mortuary and take him to the mortuary.    So I remember that night, when on an empty street I tried to find a mortuary to deliver the dead man who was now lying in my car.    That was the beginning of the killings that swept our province and remained with us for almost a decade or more.