Human Rights Violation Hearings — Johannesburg — 1996-05-03

PRISCILLA GAMA: When I got married I had two children and those are the ones who died in 1993. The one died on the 8th, I also found out that he's issue is not acceptable, the first one died on the first of October.  I would first begin by him joining the Struggle.  It was somewhere in the '80's, I don't remember well, the police came at night, between 12pm and 1am, we were still asleep when we heard the windows being hit and they were knocking shouting,Open up, we are police!  I was very confused because this child Nkosinathi was in the house. I woke up and went to him and asked him what was happening. He asked me not to be afraid and to open for them. I suggested that I should perhaps hide him but didn't agree to this, and he said he would open if I was scared.  They opened and got inside, three white policemen and one black person but his face was covered and we could only see his eyes. They asked where Nkosinathi was and he identified himself to them. They told him to get dressed and to go with them. It was very cold as it was in winter and he asked me for a polo neck.  While I was doing this these white police were opening up cupboards and asking Nkosinathi where the gun was and he asked them whether they had given him any gun.
 They got out and left with him, and I took a pen and paper with which to write out the registration number of the casper but the one white guy covered the number plate with a boot so I couldn't see it and they left.  I stayed behind crying and my husband asked me I wasn't sleeping and I told him that I was so worried that I can't sleep because I didn't know where they were taking my child to.
 They said these children had taken the law into their own hands, they knew so much, that's all they had said to me when they left. As I was still sitting there I made myself coffee because it was so cold.  While I was still thinking of pumping the primus stove I heard some noise outside in the street and I got out and I saw a lot of people around the corner and I heard his voice and I could see that he arrived and he said, Mama I am back. I asked him how he came back and he said that he managed to escape while they were looking for another boy at another house. 
 From there he left an he was involved in the Struggle, at the age, I think, of about 13 years, and my husband and I asked him one day if he couldn't stop being involved in it as he was so long and wouldn't live long if he continued his involvement and he refused saying he wouldn't stop even if they killed him because we would still live well on our child's blood.
 In 1993 things continued and he was very involved in the struggle, he went to all the ANC rallies, he used to help organise transport and people used to come to my place to get transport.  At the beginning of '93 before he died, he used to be very well known.  When he ran away that night there were a number children in the street and people used to ask us who was a stronger comrade than this child and the children were instructed not to say anything if they were asked such a question.  They did say they didn't know. 
 As things went on there were a lot of eyes on his life and one day, he had dread locks on his hair, he was like a Rasta, and he said that he was well as he was aware that the police were identifying him by his dreadlocks, and asked if I could please make him a hair piece that he could use. I suggested that it might be better for him to go away to Soweto or to Natal or to run away somewhere but he refused to leave me alone because things were very very bad and his other brother went to Soweto and the last born also went there so it was only him my husband and myself who remained behind. Even when he went to school he really liked it but things used to be very difficult for me when going to school and sometimes he would phone me and tell me that he's unable to come home because of the situation, but I must not be worried. He told me that in school he had been told that there men who come to the school who were looking for Rasta from Rhadebe but many people don't know who Rasta is.  
 On the first of October there was a funeral of one of the comrades at Mavimbele, a section behind our section.  When he left home it was about eight and he asked me not to lock as he would come back to sleep at home.  
 In the morning I didn't realise that he was there, as he had come back at night and had left again, so I went back to my neighbour and while we were talking I saw many people in the street covering their shoulders. And I asked why were these women who were coming towards us wearing shawls. The boers were killing our children quite a lot at that time, it was a time of chaos and confusion. Mamsa suggested that we check where these women were going to because it was as if they were coming down towards us, to my house. 
 I left my neighbour and came back home and it didn't occur to me what was happening but the last woman said that I should please go inside. As I went to the bedroom where I found my husband and the last born on the bed crying. They told me that Nkosinathi had been killed by boers and I would not believe it as we had not seen anything.
 A lot of comrades then started coming and told me that we must go to the camp at Spruit. We went there, my sister, her husband, my husband and I and on arrival he told them that he had lost his child. They asked his name and what he was doing and my husband said he was a scholar, they asked his age and they asked him to go to one side where they had put the people and then after a while my husband called me and I saw my child.  I couldn't believe it and I even slapped him on his cheeks to find that he was already cold. My husband said they found him facing downwards on a tray where they had put him and he had to pour water out of the tray and turn him around.  His one hand, I cannot remember whether it was the left or the right one, it was completely burned, and looked white and broken.  On the side of his face was a dark mark and when I touched him I found that the bones were broken..... (end of tape 22 followed by a break in recording by tape 23.....this child had beautiful dreams. I'm still very hurt about this.  He had already impregnated a girl who gave birth to a baby boy, so I asked the mother for the child so that we could bring it up.  This child will be five years old on the 13th of this month.

THOMAS MANTHATA: Mama it appears for the time Nkosinathi was with you that he was very close to the family.

PRISCILLA GAMA: Yes it was so, he always wanted to be at home.  I remember when he was about 10 years old when we wanted them to visit they phoned us from where he was visiting that he was crying, missing his mother and wanted to come home.

THOMAS MANTHATA: He was at the same time a very popular youth, both amongst the students and the ANC Youth Leaders of Kathlehong.

PRISCILLA GAMA: I don't know among the leaders if he was known among them, but I could suspect that they did know him. before I had the ANC card he was still very young, 13 years old and I asked him what card that he showed me was.  He didn't like talking and he just laughed and said that he would tell me one day, and while he was growing up he continued and I saw a lot of books that he had.  When I asked me what they were he said they were about politics and he would read them for me one day.  At school he was very popular and well known.

THOMAS MANTHATA: When you were taken to the mortuary and you found all the marks on his body, didn't the family think about having to find out how he died, in short, couldn't the family be advised to go for an inquest?

PRISCILLA GAMA: No we didn't get any advice like that, we just got told that a lot of children had been attacked on that day. That the boers had killed a lot of children that night was the only thing that we heard.