Human Rights Violation Hearings — Pietersburg — 1996-07-17

RUSSELL ALLY: Welcome Mrs Nchabeleng, thanks for coming.  Just one announcement quickly, will photographers not use flashes, especially when the witnesses are testifying because it is very disturbing and so please no flash photography inside the hall where the proceedings are taking place.
  Mrs Nchabeleng, are there any, do you want to tell us who the other people are with you on the stage?

MRS NCHABELENG: Yes this one on my left hand is my daughter, on my right hand is my son Morris, my daughter is Lesapinkie.

RUSSELL ALLY: Both you and Morris made written statements so I am going to ask if you are both prepared to take the oath.

MRS NCHABELENG: Lizzie didn't make any statement, she was with me when her father was taken, she was asleep and she couldn't move out from her bedroom and the police didn't want them to leave their bedrooms, but she was in the room.

RUSSELL ALLY: In the proceedings witnesses can only testify if they have actually written down statements which are sworn and we have a statement from you and we have a statement from Morris which did come a bit late but that statement has been sworn.  I'm going to ask whether you're both prepared to take the oath?  Do you have any objections to taking the oath?

MRS NCHABELENG: Yes we do agree.

MATSATSI GERTRUDE NCHABELENG: (sworn states)

MORRIS NCHABELENG: (sworn states)

RUSSELL ALLY: We will ask Mrs Joyce Seroke to facilitate your testimony, thank you.

MS SEROKE: Hello Mrs Gertrude and your family, I will just remind you what you've written in your statement and then after, you will tell us your story, the way you remember it.  You said on the 9th of April 1986, policemen came in your house and they took your husband Peter.  I would like you to explain to us what really happened?

MRS NCHABELENG: Before the policeman came to fetch Peter, two men came to our house and they asked him to come with them and they said, comrades want to kill your wife. And then he answered and said it can't be comrades who would want to kill my wife.  And we told the comrades that they shouldn't be involved in things like murdering people, killing people and they asked him to come with them and then he agreed to do so.  The man who came to fetch him, if I can remember well is called Tobijan.  They left with him in a police car, Richard Marule was also there, and they went with him to Marula's shop and they discovered it wasn't comrades.  And then he said to them, now you see it wasn't comrades and if it was comrades they were they were going to come and now it shows that it wasn't them.
 They came back, my husband went to bed and it was the difficult times when boys went to the mountains.  The police came and knocked at the door.  On that night I couldn't sleep very well, and I was busy peeping through the window and I saw the lights and I and said that I thought I saw car lights.  They came and knocked and when they knocked I asked who it was and they said, police. I woke my husband and told him that the people who arrived say they are police. He asked me what they want and suggested that maybe it's the boys who they want.  I told him that they insist and he said I must open for them.  I opened the door, there were many, and all of them came into my house and my bedroom.  They woke my husband and he started dressing and they called him into the dining room where they started asking him questions about whether he belonged to the ANC, to which he replied that he did not, he was a member of the UDF because as they were aware, the ANC has been banned.
 They then started searching the house and found Chief Luthule's photograph and they took it, Lemumba's photograph, John Hayemba and some of the novels and some of the certificates like our marriage certificate, they took them all.  After that they took my husband and they asked him if he had been arrested before, to which he replied that he had, and that he had spent time on Robben Island. They told him that this time they will kill him.
 They then started hitting him even in his private parts and he asked them what was going on now.  They insisted that they were going to kill him, the eight years on Robben Island were nothing, they are going to kill him. We didn't even know who they were, all we knew was that they were just policemen.
 We went to lawyers, and one of them called Thomson tried to help us, we went to Mangkweng to the police station and we were not happy because on the 9th before they took my husband, one man by the name of Sribele asked if his wife was dead, and he said no, he does not remember, if he had said so in his statement, he did not remember what he actually said.  They said that the King said he must come to my husband.  He then asked Moses and asked if this old man was saying his wife is dead.  He did not know what was going on because he insisted and said if had he said his wife was dead he didn't know, he was confused, he didn't know what he was talking about.  He called the lawyer called Gadimeni, and when I tried to contact Gadimeni, he wasn't there and the case was handed over to Ramusi, and I don't know what went on afterwards. This old man Sribele came to me, brought his watch and glasses.  On that day when he was arrested I saw one man who was working with me in the shop and I asked him if he is going to the police station to look after my husband because they also took him that last night.
 When he came back I asked him if he saw my husband and he said he did but that they hadn't spoken to each other.  They went there together, they didn't know each other but started getting acquainted on the way.
 After that during those days when the Commission started, one man came and said to me that he heard me on the SABC, and he said to himself that I don't know things.  He knows the story. These men died at his hands, and he can actually explain to me how he died.  They hit him and gave him a paper on which to write that the police are not killing people, and my husband refused and insisted that the police take him to hospital because he was hurting and needs to go there.  This man, called Magalene, he was with another woman who had a tin containing sour milk, nkomasi, and they asked them that if we hear something about this man we will know that it came from you.
 I went to the police station to get a death certificate for my husband but they said they would not give me a certificate because they didn't know who killed him.  The sent me to a police station.  When I arrived there they gave me a tin which had a beetroot label on it, it looked like a beetroot tin, and they told me that the rule of the prison is that when you bring food you sign here and you brought this food here one day.  I asked them I asked them when I signed and they pointed to a signature which they said was mine.  I was surprised because I knew that I never did that.
 He was brought to Pretoria by the Special Branch and they took him to Medical House and he stayed there until we received a paper on which was written that he was in American House  That's where we went and fetched him.  
We went and visited and gave him food and where we were staying it was our house.  We used to be able to pay for that house.
 One day, one man called me and said, "Old lady come and take money for your rent because you won't be able to pay for your rent if you don't have a husband".   Because people are able to stay in these houses because they have husbands and they are able to pay.