Human Rights Violation Hearings — East London — 1996-04-17

DR BORAINE: We invite Mrs Nonceba Beauty Zokwe to and Mampe Zokwe to the witness stand please. I'm not sure if it's afternoon but it's nearly twelve o'clock so I'll say good day.  Welcome, we are very glad to see you, I will ask you to please stand.

NONCEBA BEAUTY ZOKWE: (sworn states)

DR BORAINE: Mrs Zokwe, you have suffered twice, not once, but today you have come to talk about your son Sithembile Zokwe, is that right?

MRS ZOKWE: Yes.

MRS ZOKWE: The story that you will tell is yet another, in the long history of tragedies that have visited this country aver many years.  You feel this very deeply and we want you to be very relaxed and Dumisa Nsebeza, who may or may not be known to you, but he is a commissioner, and he is going to ask you some questions to help you make your statements. Please be very relaxed and comfortable.

MR NTSEBEZA: Thank you Mr Chair. Thank you Deputy Chair. May I just begin by saying that I need your indulgence to present to you and to those who have come to listen, and countless others who will hear this testimony through the mass media, one of the most bizarre stories of our times, a story which is clearly indicative of state sponsored murder and equally unforgiven failure of justice.  Mr Chair, please EAST LONDON  HEARING TRC/EASTERN CAPE
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allow me to say it is a story, I have heard so many times because I was one of a group of attorneys when they worked very hard to get this nefarious killing into the open, into the law courts of the land.  We failed Mr Chairman.  Not for lack of trying, but because the state machinery that represents the machinery your Commission is trying to get a complete picture of was so powerful and far reaching, that some culprits like the murderers of Sithembile, somewhat escaped their day of reckoning.
 Chairperson you will hear through the testimony of these witnesses, a weird story of the security police so hell bent and relentless in seeking to snipe out the life of this young man, that when they eventually killed him, in his own home, it was with such unprecedented savagery, such unprecedented brutally, that even a seasoned and an enormously experienced pathologist, the late Dr Jonathan Glackman, coming out of conducting a horrible post mortem, could only say to us attorneys who were waiting, "Well this young man was shot, never stood a chance of survival".  Mrs Zonkwe in her own words will tell you how she hopes that the Commission will provide an opportunity for her, not only to be heard, but also for it to use its good offices in establishing the truth, in particular they will want you to establish whose hidden hand it was that made his son's killers kill with impunity, that made them licensed killers and still made it possible for them, even to this day, to stalk the streets of this country as free men, even to this day, Mr Chairperson.
 Mrs Zokwe, I know your story is very long. Remember that we have agreed that if you could tell your story it would take a few days. Is that so? I would request that 
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within five minutes, please you must not go beyond that, express how your life, your married life, your children, especially Sithembile, that's the person in question that we're here about, his life and struggle and then you must end up on the day on which you learned about his death.  Just five minutes and then we'll ask some questions.

MRS ZOKWE: I want to put my appreciation to this Commission, I am Nonceba Zokwe, a daughter from the Nogaka Family at Inymakwe.  I went to school from Sub A to higher primary until up to a teacher's certificate at Blyspoed.  That is the certificate I got.  As time went on I went to work only at two places, and I met an activist there called Spabalalla Zokwe.  I met him, Commissioner, you'll bear with me, I met with him there, it was during those difficult times of struggle, government was oppressing the people.  It was removing people from places to places, that was the tendency of that oppressive government.
    "Dumisa, I will ask you the permission to take out the name of that person when you greeted as the father of my children", he would say, "the minute that I am not in this house, I am a propagandist of human rights"
 He would ride his horse every day morning till night. My husband was fighting for human rights.  We had children, the first one was Thobela, the second born was Sibongile, Sithembile was the third and Sbusiso, the last one.

MR NTSEBEZA: Let us have a look at these children Mama. Ntobile Zokwe, was it a boy called Trinity?

MRS ZOKWE: Yes it is a boy called Trinity. When he was in exile he was called Tony.

MR NTSEBEZA: Is it one of the people who escaped the attacks when people were killed in Lesotho in 1982 in the
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so-called SADF raid where people in large numbers died?

MRS ZOKWE: Yes they were together in one room.  If you could have looked thoroughly at that picture, he survived alone and the two victims died.  That was my first son that one.

MR NTSEBEZA: Now what happened thereafter?  He was in Lesotho, from there he went straight to Zimbabwe?

MRS ZOKWE: Yes it's true.

MR NTSEBEZA: From Zimbabwe he went to Australia.  Is he back now?

MRS ZOKWE: Yes.

MR NTSEBEZA: After freedom?

MRS ZOKWE: Yes.

MR NTSEBEZA: Now let's have a look at Sithembile, the one you are representing today.  Sithembile, he was also involved in the struggle?

MRS ZOKWE: Yes it's so.

MR NTSEBEZA: He went into exile after passing his matric, he went to Botswana?  He came back from Botswana into South Africa.  Did he come to you and said to you, "Mum I'm fighting for the freedom of this land", and then he went again to Lesotho, then Angola, then East Germany?

MRS ZOKWE: Yes it's so.

MR NTSEBEZA: Your son disappeared, your second son, when did you hear that he was back in the country?

MRS ZOKWE: His lawyers told me, that's where Dumisa Nsebeza was working, they said, "Here is Sithembile, he was detained in Protea prison in Soweto".

MR NTSEBEZA: What happened thereafter?  Did you go to Soweto?

MRS ZOKWE: Yes I went there.
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MR NTSEBEZA: You heard that he was arrested in Bophuthatswana.

MRS ZOKWE: Yes that public security told me every time when he addressed them he would say, "You oppressors".  And he said, "Mum I was arrested in Bophuthatswana, and I was put into prison here in Soweto, tell my dear friends they will never catch me in one state and take me into prison in another.  They must either charge me or release me." He just stood by that fact.  He went further to say, "I was raised up, every morning, every afternoon, my family was fighting for their human rights, I want to destroy apartheid".
 I had two sons with me from home.

MR NTSEBEZA: When did he leave to Umtata?

MRS ZOKWE: Well from there I asked to write a letter to the police commissioner, so that they can charge Sithembile or release him.  After receiving a reply, there was a reply that he's been deported into Transkei.

MR NTSEBEZA: After deporting him to Transkei, did they just leave him there or was he in prison?

MRS ZOKWE: He was in prison.

MR NTSEBEZA: Was he released after you made some enquiries?

MRS ZOKWE: Now let's have a look at Sithembile after he arrived in 1985.  It was only two years from his departure in January 1988 that we are referring to today.

MR NTSEBEZA: His stay, how was his stay at home with you.

MRS ZOKWE: He was working at the cellar, taking beer up and down.  It was a difficult thing to follow.  He was going up and down, in and out the veld because they were saying he's a communist who was born by a communist mother.

MR NTSEBEZA: Who was stating that and what were they asking him?
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