Human Rights Violation Hearings — Johannesburg — 1996-04-30

MS DLOMO-JELE: In the beginning I would like to tell this Commission that the harassment and the pain didn't start at the time when my child died.  The whole thing started in 1985 when he was still very young when he started getting involved in student's organisations and then he started being harassed by the police.  Until other organisations also got involved in conflict with his organisation.  He was also being harassed during school hours.  Soldiers and police used to go to school to look for him at school and the headmaster would take him away and hide him among other children.  Until there was a conflict between him and the other organisations so the cops were looking for him and other organisation.  These things really worried me a lot because this other organisation wanted to kill him as well.   I don't know if they were influenced by the White people because these people who were looking for him they were riding in flashy cars but they were looking for him, and they had guns.  Until our house was burnt down, it was petrol-bombed.  When our house was petrol-bombed I suffered quite a lot and I was also very worried that because my mother nearly died during the petrol-bombing.  When my mother tried to take the blankets, to retrieve them from this fire we asked my mother to get out and then when she tried to take the blanket the bomb hit the bedroom and we had to take her to the hospital.
 So we were harassed and worried quite a lot.  I am very grateful that I have got this opportunity of coming here and relating this evidence.  The police always used to come in 
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and out of our place harassing my child.  The police used to urge me that I must tell my child to stop being involved in politics.  I said to them I do not know that he is involved politically but I do know the organisations he's involved with.  I really didn't understand what was the relationship between politics and student organisations.  I did try to tell my child to stop being involved in political activities but he said to my mother these are our rights, I cannot stop being involved.
 He just said to me that he was worried that his involvement in politics would also lead his family to being harassed.  And because the police were after him he started living in hiding.  They moved from one place to another. All those things harassed me spiritually as well.  
 Now I am going to talk around the period before he was killed.  In October 1987 my child was taken by the police for the whole day.  When I phoned the school they said my child was not at school.  I was very surprised.  I thought perhaps he had a special meeting at school with the organisation.  Sometimes they had meetings and he wouldn't attend school and I thought maybe he had run away from the police.  But in the afternoon he arrived and I told him what had happened.  
 He told me the police had taken him to the police station the whole day.  They were talking to him, urging him to be their informer.  He says we know what your parents are suffering, they can't afford to take you to school.  Your mother is very sick, she is a street vendor, and once you start working for us we'll give you money, we'll give you cars and your father earns very little.  We will also give you a house for your parents and yourself.  My child said I 
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will never be your informer, I would rather live all my life suffering rather than work for you.  One day things will be all right for me.  On that day I realised that I had to take him away.
 The most painful thing that happened is that I phoned the lawyer who was in Commissioner Street asking them if they could help me put my child away in hiding somewhere because these cops were after him.  They wanted him to be their informer and I knew that if he refused that, as he had refused, they would kill him.  That's why I tried to find a safe place for him.
 In January, when he was in Khotso House, because when he had free time, when he wasn't at school he used to assist at DPSC, it was the organisation that was assisting the detainees.  He said I am going to help this organisation because they have also helped me looking after me while I was in detention.  That's how I came to know DPSC.  
 When I went to DPSC the cops took him there for the whole day and asking him why does he say DPSC - why did he say DPSC had asked him to appear on television and have a programme and the police said he must stop relating all those things and they are going to kill him if he doesn't stop this.  
 But on the day that he left, and the day that he died, on the week that he was going to die, on the Wednesday he came to me.  He was always in hiding.  He was no longer living with us.  He was staying somewhere in town with an elderly boy.  He said to me mother and father, he called us by our traditional name, he said today I have come to sleep at home and I was very happy to see him.  And I was very, very happy and very relieved on that day because I knew he 
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was not living in peace.  He used to sleep in different people's houses.  Sometimes he would even sleep just outside people's houses.
 Sometimes I used to see him that he was very tired.  He looked very fatigued and he said he had a headache.  I used to take my nerve tablets to give to him because he was always harassed.  Because he was a child he understood all those things and realised that he was fighting for his rights.  I also let him go.  I allowed my heart to accept his situation.  I released him.
 When we asked him to sleep he said mum I asked you to be strong, I asked you to be strong Mr Dlomo, he was referring to his father, he said my father be strong, it may happen that I will die.  I want you to know that whatever happens to me you must be strong, pick up my spear and continue my struggle.  I was very sad, I was very upset.  When he told me about his lack of security I said just this tonight, sleep here at home.  And he said you won't like to see the police killing me in front of you.  So it will be better for me to go somewhere else so that you can only find my corpse but not see them killing me. And he left home.
 He was the kind of person who didn't want to be followed when he was going.  He didn't want us to know which direction he had taken.  But on that day I followed him under the hedge.  I saw him turning around the corner.  I think he slept in the passage.  He woke up in the morning.  And on Thursday and Friday and Saturday morning I phoned.  He phoned he said please I ask you to ask my aunt to cook for me I am going to come and fetch food to take to the place where I am living.  And we cooked for him because he had gone to the meeting on that day, it was a Saturday.  He 
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didn't come back to fetch his food.  We were worried then but we just prayed to God to keep him safe.
 On Sunday while we were still preparing - because we were hoping he would be coming home his aunt cooked some food for him so that he would take this food and he would store it for a while and he would survive on it for some days. At around ten o'clock the phone rang and I picked up this phone and I said it's you my son, and he said it's you my mum.  I said are you all right.  From there he just kept quiet, he didn't answer.  I was very, very worried.  Although I consoled myself.  I wanted him to continue phoning so I suspected he didn't have money to put into the phone box so he could continue talking.  That was the last day I spoke to him.
 The following day the policeman arrived at home.  I could feel it, I could just sense it that my child was gone because the policeman came with his pocket book.  I said to him have you killed my son.  The policeman said why are you saying such painful things, I didn't kill him I just heard people saying there's a young boy who is dead under a tree.  I went to see this boy and I found this pocket book on him.
 This policeman asked me to accompany him to see where the body was.  I didn't agree.  I didn't want to go with this policeman.  I knew they had killed him.
 There's a gentleman who is our neighbour.  He took me with his van, he took me to where my child was lying.  He was full of blood on his one  ...(tape ends)...