Human Rights Violation Hearings — Johannesburg — 1996-05-03

DR RANDERA: Thank you very much, I just want to ask you a few more questions, you mentioned two names, September and a young woman called Maniki.  First of all I understand that these are pseudo-names rather than - so do you know whether these people are still alive?

FELICIA AZANDE DLODLO: I do not know whether they are still alive or not, because when I was in Zambia, I was very different and my mother was living in England with my stepfather, Reverend Simpson and they asked me to come to England and rebuild my life and to work with the British Anti Apartheid Movement, so I arrived in England in 1989, I only came back to South Africa last year, so as to what has been happening or where these individuals are, I would not say for certain.  What I do know for a fact is that while I was still in Zambia making arrangements to go to Britain to be reunited with my mother, I was called by the ANC security to visit a certain house in Lusaka called Green House.  When I got to Green House, I met this lady called Maniki. I hadn't seen her since that day when I saw her at the hotel and I asked what was going on, to which they said that they have evidence that this lady has been working for the South African Security Police and they asked me to talk to her as they needed to find out certain information from her. So I went to her and greeted her by name and she started crying, she wanted to hug me, and wondered how my baby was doing.  I told her that my child was fine but could we get to the point, what was going on, what was she doing there?  I said to her that they said she was a spy.  I asked her if she was one and she denied this. I asked her to explain to me why I saw her going into that hotel the night my husband died, was she on a mission or anything? She said that she was only going there to socialise like everybody else.
 Oh and I forgot to mention this, later on just before my husband and I had left the hotel, she had come to us again and said, Hey you guys, do you know that September is in there playing snooker with the boers? I asked her whether she remembered saying that to us and she agreed that she does. I told her that it does look very suspicious that she moved around in these circles when everybody in the ANC had been told to lie low and here she was going to such dangerous places where these dangerous assassins were coming to play their monkey games. 
 For some mysterious reason that I cannot explain to this day she cried right there in front of me and started confessing and wanted to talk to a certain senior guy in the ANC security who she said is the only person whom she really trusted and could confide in. So I believe they had a discussion but I left soon after that to join my mother in England.
 That is the only information I have about her, I do not know anything about September, as to where he is.

DR RANDERA: Felicia, you said earlier on that you became very depressed after the death of your husband. These many years since he died, do you want to say something about you yourself have picked up the bits and pieces after his death and you have a little boy also to be looking after.

FELICIA AZANDE DLODLO: I was very depressed because like any young woman at the time, I really looked forward to married life. I mean he came especially just to marry me in December 1986, then left again, so we had been married for exactly five months when he died.  I was quite lonely and some of the people within the ANC had been taken away, killed, people whom we had been close to, and there were times when I began to despair, and wonder whether our struggle was really worth it, whether we'd ever attain the goal that we were fighting for, because it looked like we were just coming to Swaziland to get killed. So I was really depressed and I think I felt sorry for my son, because he was only two and I just imagined what it was like to grow up without a father, and that really hurt. We didn't get much sympathy from the Swaziland Government because even like in my case, it was exactly a year after he had been killed and they just came and took me into custody and told me that I had to leave.  So we never had any real counselling of any sort, it was like you're supposed to get on with it, you should realise that this is the kind of life you would be exposed to. And going to Lusaka, meeting Maniki, I just thought, what kind of world is this, you know people you live with, meanwhile they're going to kill you because I discovered later on that that very same night when my husband was killed, Maniki had been there with them at this gathering.  So I just asked myself, what kind of world this is, you sit with people at a party and have a nice time and meanwhile they know that within an hour's time you will be dead. It just came to a stage where I just couldn't trust anybody anymore, and my mother wanted me to come to Britain because she realised that I was terribly frustrated and she wanted to help me as best as she could.
 When I got to Britain I found a number of British people who were very sympathetic and they would ask me questions about Swaziland, and I would talk, and they asked me if I would mind going on a speaking tour of the British Anti Apartheid Movement, and I went all over Britain speaking about the South African Death Squads and what it was like, the pain and the anguish that we have to go through.  So I believed that even those speaking tours were quite therapeutic for me, they helped me to get it out of my system.

DR RANDERA: I just have two more questions, one is, what would you like the Commission to do for you and my second one, related, is, are there any suggestions you would like to make to the Commission?