Human Rights Violation Hearings — Klerksdorp — 1996-09-24

ADV POTGIETER: And you say that you didn't have a very good relationship with them.  Now what was it, were they making things difficult for you?

HELENE KROON DE KOCK: They still, they made things very, very difficult for us.  Now you know, as a law-abiding citizen, trying to be, I became an on-law-abiding citizen through the difficulties that we have faced.  They would not approve of any of our building programmes and then I would just have to go ahead and build illegally.  They were forever trying to close, to stall everything.  They would bring a lot of threats against us.  They would walk into the premises - now I am not violent at all and I disagree with all kinds of violence, but I found myself sometimes wanting even to slap those people. You know, I just felt this violence coming in me and to think that people can be so ignorant and so domineering.

ADV POTGIETER: I assume that from about - you said the second term in 1990, I suppose things became progressively worse for you, more difficult as you went into 1991.

HELENE KROON DE KOCK: Well, we were totally involved in an alone struggle.  The only people that stood with us, were the Black parents and the children.

ADV POTGIETER: Now in 1991, we know the actual arson incident happened.  But before we get to that, yourself, as the owner of the school ...

HELENE KROON DE KOCK: The principal.

ADV POTGIETER: The principal.  What happened, I mean, did you find that people were threatening, harassing, carrying on like that, towards you?

HELENE KROON DE KOCK: Not at that stage.  It started, the threats
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against our lives and the lives of my family started after the bombing.

ADV POTGIETER: Okay.  Now would you want to take us up to the bombing.  That seems to have been after the school was closed at the end of 1991.

HELENE KROON DE KOCK: Yes, we - I have got to mention this.  I walked and I knocked on doors of many financial institutions in South Africa at that stage, to help us, to build some classrooms and to accommodate the children and none were willing to even make loans.  Even though we accepted the interest rates that they offered.  There were none who were willing to offer us financial support or loans to build a school or to build the school.  We realised that time was running out on us and then somebody brought me a name of an outside trust in Germany, and I wrote a letter to them, and they gave us money, funding, as a loan.  We are still paying back on those loans.  They offered us a loan to build the classrooms and it was a great time in our lives.  We built the six little classrooms. Not six little classrooms, they are actually 60 square metres, and we were very proud of the situation and so thankful.  Everything was just completed.  January we would have moved in there out of very difficult teaching situations, circumstances at that stage.  And I remember the 15th of December I was standing there, and I just put my hands up into the air and I said thank you, God, for your faithfulness, that you love the people of South Africa, that you love the children and that you made this possible and that we can really go on and just give us the courage to restore people and to be hope-givers.

ADV POTGIETER: Was the 15th of December the last day of school?
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HELENE KROON DE KOCK: We closed the office then, with great thankfulness and happiness in our hearts and then we went - it wasn't the last day of school, it was the last day that we worked there. Then the night of the 16th we had a phone call, 20 past one to come out there, because the school was bombed.

ADV POTGIETER: And I assume you went to the premises?

HELENE KROON DE KOCK: I thought it is a joke, I thought people are just making a joke.  I mean, I couldn't believe it can be true.  When I came there everything was in darkness and I didn't realise exactly what was happening.  But at that stage a friend of mine who came out there, people that really stood with us right through the time, an old lady. We just grabbed hold of one another and we started shaking, because I mean, we just went into total shock.  We couldn't believe that what is going on here really happened.

ADV POTGIETER: And what did you find, what damage was done to the building?

HELENE KROON DE KOCK: I have got some photos here and the next day we really, we didn't sleep that night again, but the next day when the light came, we went out there and realised that we have lost literally everything, that there was just dirt and rubble and a mess and corrugated iron all over, and it looked like a war zone.

ADV POTGIETER: So was most of the structure actually destroyed in this explosion?

HELENE KROON DE KOCK: Yes, yes, everything that we built, everything that we have gathered in the three years, in a great struggle and pain, because it did not come easy, it was just destroyed by the sick minds of people, without faces.  People that live in hatred and I don't know how they live,
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but that's the way they live.  And taking up their own right to think that they have the right to go and destroy the life vision of somebody else. But I found that you cannot destroy the ideals of people.  We have seen it in our country, we have seen it in our nation, if you try to destroy the ideals of people, something inside just stands up again.

ADV POTGIETER: Is that what in fact happened to the school?

HELENE KROON DE KOCK: That's what happened to the school.

ADV POTGIETER: You stood up again after that heavy blow.

HELENE KROON DE KOCK: The parents, the day a lot of people came to see the situation and what I heard that day was a great shock to me.  I think that is something I will never forget.  People standing there and saying "good show, this should have - I would have done even a better job, I would have destroyed it even in a better way", and the remarks ... I just realised in that moment the hatred that the nation is standing in.  The hatred that we have got to face in this nation and the antagonism and I just said God, but it is impossible to live in this country, it is impossible to restore this place.  Those were the first thoughts that came to me.  Then afterwards, the parents come to you and they looked me straight in the face and they said Helena, are you also going to turn your back on us now.  I said God forbid that I do that, I don't know how we are going to do that, I have got nothing left.  We are totally, literally totally bankrupt.
 What was interesting at that stage the other Whites that still were supposed to believe in the project, in that very moment, turned their backs and said we are sorry, we cannot associate with this any longer, we are losing status, you know and we are losing our good name and our children 
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are in jeopardy and you know, the status and things are more important to people than vision and ideals.  You know, this is not really what we want for our kids, and this is not really what we want for ourselves. 
 We had to stand there and face this all and eventually there were two couples left, two White couples that stood their ground and said don't worry, we are going to go with you through this thing.

ADV POTGIETER: You say that there were persons who made some critical remarks and indicated that they associate themselves with what happened?

HELENE KROON DE KOCK: Yes, yes, most definitely.

ADV POTGIETER: Who said that if it were them they would have done even a better job out of this.

HELENE KROON DE KOCK: A better job, yes.

ADV POTGIETER: Now from section of the community did those sentiments come?