Special Hearings — Prison Hearings — 1997-07-21

MR DLAMINI: Mr Masondo can I just interrupt for a while.  I'm sorry to be doing this to you but in the interest of time and other witnesses who are still going to come for the day, we're left with only eight minutes so can I ask you to pick up the highlights in the eight minutes at our disposal, thank you.

UNKNOWN: Time and again the ordinary chaps had it tough.  I remember one time they wanted us, just to go to the toilet you had to say Baas and if you didn't they refused you.  At one time a chap had diarrhoea and they refused and he messed himself up.  I remember also again at ... who gets into trouble time and again, he and some chaps were tied up at the quarry and at that time I was working in a punishment team and when I came back they said I wasn't working when I had been working the whole day so I was taken to the office.
 A number of them had gone on strike again because they were tied up and I was included with them and they beat the hell out of us.  That's when I decided after that to sue the Government for this and it was actually Bram who took my case, a great man.  Unfortunately I don't have time to talk about Bram.  
 What I had said at that time was I wanted the case taken so that we are able to take up the question of the wanton beating that was taking place.  We also took up the case Mlambo's case of being buried there.  ... and Aaron Molito were going out so Johnson and I arranged that when they get out we should publicize this and the police did come but I don't know whether Johnson knows what happened.  All we know is that they came and investigated but we don't know whether they did anything.
 In conclusion let me say this.  What has happened was, the tendencies would be to go for the Kleynhanses and all these people but you see that's not the point, the point is that these people were indoctrinated and they did those things because they thought that they were serving a system and I as a person, I don't even want to bother to know where Kleynhans and them are.  I can't be going around and looking for people like them, I have to build this country and if we spend our time looking for the Kleynhanses and the other people,  from my point of view we won't have time to work and I think there is only one thing we can repay those that died in prison, those that died in detention and that is to make sure that what they died for better work so that people don't talk of too much crime in this place, they talk of progress.  That is what will pay some of us, thank you.

MR DLAMINI: Mr Masondo just a moment.  I would now like to hand over to the Chairperson as there might be questions, Mr Chairperson?  I know about the time but there might be questions.  I want to just to underscore what Mr Masondo said in his conclusion.  In his statement the last paragraph says, I wish for a prosperous future for this land.  I think those are great words especially coming from somebody who has suffered in this way, thank you.

DR BORAINE: Mrs Seroke?

MRS SEROKE: Mr Masondo you say that you joined Umkonto in 1962 and later on you were arrested, why were you arrested, what had you done?

UNKNOWN: I'd sabotaged pylons, electric pylons because according to the regulations of MK I couldn't shoot people so I had to deal with the pylons.  You know when we started we were not supposed to kill people.

MRS SEROKE: Why did you do this, what was your mission and what was your ambition in doing this?

UNKNOWN: I grew up in the location, I remember sometimes the police would come there, a vivid picture I still have is one of an old lady who was hit with a ... and she had a baby on her back, she fell.  I have seen people arrested for a pass as they go to Betsani.  They come back, I've known them, they come back and I look at them, some died in there.  Those were serious offenses, just a pass.  Secondly, I am a teacher at heart and I think a good one too as  I was taught by one of the best Applied Mathematicians in this country, Professor Blacks.  I go to Fort Hare and I teach and when I want to take people to go and learn from the same man, suddenly Blacks can't go and do senior degrees at Wits.  I have seen what my people lived in.  Maybe I as a person might have survived but I think that life needed to be changed.  This country in my opinion was losing some of it's best people.
 You know I was with a chap at Wits, Vorster who was doing honours in Afrikaans and I did Applied Math's and instead of two years, I did it in fifteen months because I want to go but I didn't have time.  I wanted to go back and do my UED.  He did his honours in two years.  When I finished UED we were taken together as lecturers and where his salary started that's where mine ended.  Simple discrimination.  I belong to a class that was a bit privileged.  What now about the ordinary person?  I think for these reasons I was prepared to get out and make sure that the things change.  
 I continued to lecture because I had to teach.  That's something I would never leave but I continued to sabotage.

MRS SEROKE: Thank you.

THOMAS MANTHATA: Mr Masondo perhaps this is a follow-up of the question raised by Joyce, did anybody or was anybody killed in the pylons that were blown up?

UNKNOWN: I don't know but van Niekerk who was the man who was trying to make sure that I get hanged, you see I sabotaged one pylon and ... the area that was without electricity was five hundred miles by one hundred miles so it was a big area.  Van Niekerk in trying to prove that I was a murderer, he then tried to count the number of hospitals there and said to me, I think there's a possibility that you have killed people there but ... who was my attorney said he is not interested in a concatenation of circumstances.  He only wanted him to tell him that, in that hospital so many people died.  At any rate even if they died it would have been unfortunate but I wasn't at war.  You see I had to choose between sitting and saying how unkind these people are or doing something about changing the system and I'm not the type of person to do that so for me, if they found that people died and they hung me I wouldn't bother.  I'd taken a conscious decision.  Even in Robben Island I wasn't surprised at those people doing those things to me because I knew they were at war with me.

THOMAS MANTHATA: Was this deliberate that they could not distinguish between Polko and MK?

UNKNOWN: Yes it was deliberate but I didn't bother because I think those men were my comrades and whether they called me Polko or they called me MK, it didn't matter to me.

THOMAS MANTHATA: And this arose out of the extreme fear they had in terms of the resistance that was carried up by the two organisations?

UNKNOWN: Tom, you must understand I was brought up in an organisation which was non-violent for many years.  In 1960 they shot people so in my mind, I'm sorry that I sound bad but in my mind I was prepared to, if people could shoot people who were just marching like they did with the 1976 ... I would have killed.  Make no mistake about it, I would have killed to stop that garbage.

THOMAS MANTHATA: My last question is, this whole thing of having twins, brothers being on the staff of the prisons, I don't know whether you have an idea whether this was characteristic of a number of prisons and whether this kind of nepotism was calculated?