Human Rights Violation Hearings — Venda — 1996-10-04

THOMAS MANTHATA: My interest is what your cousin carried was meant to kill and it was meant to kill the bad person if I understand you, or the bad police and in that, my interest is that we need to be very clear which is the purpose of the Commission to be able to identify with the contradiction that we come from, the conflicts that we come from and be able to say despite all that, there is still some good and it is this kind of good that we are saying in future, as the Chairperson said earlier on, in future we must be able to respect, observe and uphold.
 Fine, let me leave that.  How did your cousin, Ngobeni, die?

TSAKANI MABOYA: He committed suicide.  He put himself inside a car.

THOMAS MANTHATA: I was asking where did he commit suicide?

TSAKANI MABOYA: In Alexander next to his house, he was staying in Randburg in the suburbs.
 So he decided to go and die next to his home, so he was inside a car, committed suicide.

THOMAS MANTHATA: Was it because the police were hot on his tracks or was there any other thing that forced him to commit suicide, besides the mission he was on?

TSAKANI MABOYA: I'll go back a little bit.  In 1979, September they subpoenaed me to come up here in Pietersburg.  They arrested him with some other people, they were arrested differently, so I went to College Road as a State witness.
 Sorry in Pietermaritzburg, not Pietersburg.  I think it was 19 years, between 15 and 19 years.  So he was released 
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when Mandela was released.  I don't know where he got the money, bought a house in Randburg.  His wife was a Social Worker.  What the cause of committing suicide if I use my own assumptions, he used to quarrel with his wife every time, that is the information that I got.
 So he assaulted his wife and then he thought she was dead.  So he thought she was dead and then he got inside the car, he went to Alexander just next to his home and then he connected a tube from the exhaust pipe and then he died.
 I don't know what made him to fight with the wife, maybe it comes from what he experienced from jail or some other things, I am not a psychologist, I can't tell actually.

THOMAS MANTHATA: It seems in your area you could have been at that time the only person who was openly against apartheid?  But I see here you refer to Eric Mqonto.  Is this the Eric Mqonto who was once a principal in Soweto?

TSAKANI MABOYA: Yes, it is the one I am referring to.

THOMAS MANTHATA: You're saying that his school had already taken a stand, perhaps in what you might have seen as the sort of vision you had of having to resist the system at the time?

TSAKANI MABOYA: I think I was the only one, because at that time if you hold meetings, Black school children, they will come there, they won't ask you, they'll just sjambok you.
 I just see the strikes going on in every school doing normal strikes, they were striking for food and so forth.
 But whether the school has taken a stand, I don't know, I can't tell you.

THOMAS MANTHATA: In fact what I wanted to establish here is that it seems right now or even shortly before 1990, there
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were already a number of people in your community who seemed to appreciate the fact that the system was bad and out of that group you now must be having almost a community that understands the situation and the kind of community that can enable you, Mr Maboya to get the counselling and the healing that you need for effective participation within your community?  I want to say it seems you performed so well that you got, you created a community that today you need to be proud of and you need to integrate into so that at least that kind of impatience, you know, short temperness, can be healed or can be addressed.
 I end my questioning there.

TSAKANI MABOYA: Thank you very much.

RUSSELL ALLY: I'd just like to ask the wife you speak about in your statement, is this the same person who was your girlfriend when you were detained, is this the Flora that you're speaking about?

TSAKANI MABOYA: Yes, she is the one I am talking about, but we are divorced.

RUSSELL ALLY: In your statement indicated that she was also tortured.  In fact in your statement you said that you think that they tortured her in order to get you to give them information.  They were using her as a way of getting to you.  Do you know if she ever made a statement to the Truth Commission about what she experienced?

TSAKANI MABOYA: I don't think so, because I went with one of the statement takers, Fikele, we went there to her home twice, she was not there.  She is a person who is too sensitive actually, I think there are some other people.
 People that would believe that now we are not free, those nightmares are still there.  She can't face crowds 
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like this.  I tried by all means to - for her to make a
statement so that people will - she was beautiful to me, having patches and sometimes the legs, when it is cold, it is painful.  I don't know what happened to her.  I wanted her to give a statement before the Truth Commission.

RUSSELL ALLY: Maybe our statement takers will be able to get a statement from her, because when people make statement they don't have to come to a public hearing, so people shouldn't feel that because they make a statement, that means they must appear publicly.
 Some people don't want to, some people just want to make the statement so that it is on record, so that when we make a report, we can also include in the report what happened to them.
 And it is people's choice sometimes as to whether they want to come to a public hearing or not, but I will take that up with the statement takers.
 And I also hope that our briefers and the briefers who are working here in the Northern Province will assist you and hopefully direct you to the right sources, because you do indicate in your statement that you yourself realise that there is a need for counselling after that very hard and traumatic experience and I hope that our briefers will be able to assist you in that regard, to point out to you where you can possible get such counselling.
 But thank you very much it was a very comprehensive statement, it was very long, but we appreciate you needed to get  a lot of this out of your system, thank you very much.

TSAKANI MABOYA: Thank you.