Human Rights Violation Hearings — Soweto — 1996-07-23

CHAIRPERSON: We will ask the next witness, Nomavenda Mashiyane, to come forward.  Nomavenda when we started this morning you were not in.  We emphasised that we will try to limit all of you to 15 minutes.  We thank you for agreeing to come forward to give your perspective of what happened on June 16th.  Before you do that I will ask you to take the stand.

NOMAVENDA MASHIYANE: (Duly sworn in, states).

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.  I would like to take this opportunity to introduce our MEC of Education, Ms Mary Metcalf.  I will ask her to stand up so that you can all see her.  To you, Mary, I would really like to welcome you in a special way.  Since we have been sitting for these two days we have been hearing from witnesses about our education system in this country.  People have been sharing about its history which, I must say, if you listen to what people are saying, you end up not being proud of our school system.
  The two witnesses who have just left, they were talking, sharing about how their young ones, their rights were violated while they were at school and they ended up loosing their citizenship and they died outside the country.  So we hope what is emerging here will assist our future planners to make sure that these things never happen again. 
 I will ask Russell Ally to assist Nomavenda in giving
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her testimony.

RUSSELL ALLY: Nomavenda, welcome and thanks for coming.  You are going to relate two incidents, separate incidents, but also related incidents which you personally experienced during 1976.  One in your capacity as a journalist and the other where you just happened to be in the surgery of the late Dr Asfat.  Please will you give us an account of these two incidents.

NOMAVENDA MASHIYANE: Thank you.  I am a journalist.  I have been a journalist since 1974.  In 1974 I was with True Love Magazine and I moved into daily reporting in 1977 when I joined the Weekend World Newspaper.  I lived just down the road at the Salvation Army Mission which is quite close by, close to Rajanamundie where a lot of activities took place.  Commemoration services use to take place in this hall as you might recall.  Across the road was a shopping complex.  It was called Machaning.  It was owned by Jewish people and Indian traders.
 So on this particular day we were woken up by a noise.  There were gunshots.  Although we were quite use to hearing gunshots, but on this particular morning the gunshots seemed to be quite close by and the residents of the Mission, we went out to investigate what was going on.  Also, just opposite where we were staying was a garage, a filling station.  So there had been rumours that the filling station was going to be blown up.  So we were anticipating that something was going to happen, but on coming out of our homes we saw that there were police vans parked out Machaning and some policemen were outside while there were some people, seemed to be, coming in and out of the shopping complex.  In no time we saw policemen coming out of the 
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complex dragging bodies by their feet.  They were carrying these people and loading them onto the van.  From where we were standing one could not actually count how many bodies were being loaded onto the van, but there seemed to be quite a lot.  
 After some time the vans moved out, drove off and we wanted to come out and investigate what was happening.  At that point people coming out of Rockville here and Dlamini and Senoane were running towards the shopping complex and no sooner were they into the shops than the police vans would come.  Again they would be shooting and at that point there was, the shopping complex was on fire.  So this plague of people coming out of the townships into the shops and the policemen coming and shooting and taking the bodies out into the vans must have taken about three hours, the incident. 
 For those who survived the shooting, they would not come this way because if they came this way then they would meet the police.  So they decided that instead of coming this way they ran towards the Mission Station and further into the other townships.  So when the police realised that some of the people were running from the police into the Mission Station, then they came over and started harassing residents of the Mission and saying where are the people.  ... all very well.

RUSSELL ALLY: When exactly was this Mary, freudian slip there.  When was this incidence, you do not give a date in your statement.

NOMAVENDA MASHIYANE: I do not give a date because I cannot categorically remember what day it was, but it was shortly after in 1976.  Just, I would say maybe a week or two.

RUSSELL ALLY: After June 1976?
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NOMAVENDA MASHIYANE: Yes, it should be around then.

RUSSELL ALLY: So in the first week after the 16th.

NOMAVENDA MASHIYANE: Yes, it should have been around then.

RUSSELL ALLY: And these people who were being shot and dragged out were they young people, were they mostly students?  Can you?

NOMAVENDA MASHIYANE: No, it was mostly women.  It was mostly women and young people, but I would not say they were students because, I mean, they did not seem to be students to me.  They seemed to be young adults and largely women.  Incidentally on the same occasion a famous soccer writer, I just do not recall his name properly, I think it was Eric Kongwane or something like that, met his death on the very same road because as he was driving down the road he was hit by a stray bullet.

RUSSELL ALLY: Did you ever follow-up this incident in your capacity as a journalist to actually try to find out what happened to these people or whether they went to hospital?  After this event what actually happened?

NOMAVENDA MASHIYANE: What I did after the event was to write a story of what I saw.  That I saw policemen coming in, driving up to the shopping complex and carrying the bodies and loading them onto the vans, but those were the days when you could not go to the police and say, you know, the people that you shot, what happened to them.  Also what I found frustrating was that as a journalist I was standing there and seeing people getting dragged by their feet and loaded onto the van and I could not call on anyone to say, stop this or do something.  I just stood there and I just took my notes and, you know.  There was nothing I could do, I could not call on anyone to say what is going on here.
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RUSSELL ALLY: And since that time have you found out what actually happened.

NOMAVENDA MASHIYANE: Not with that particular incident, particularly.  There have been so many other incidents that we have been following.  I have not followed that one in particular.

RUSSELL ALLY: Thank you Nomavenda.  There is another incident which you also were an eyewitness to.  Could you tell us about that?