Human Rights Violation Hearings — Soweto — 1996-07-23

SOPHIE THEMA: Only on one occasion.  I think it was because I had taken a stand and I said to myself the police are going to harass me once and not twice.  I got home on this particular day and my children were in a state because the police were there, did not find me and they left a little note to say that I had to report to Protea the following day.  The entire family spent a sleepless night because they knew that if you go to Protea, you do not come back.  I got to Protea and on the note I was told that I had to look for a Major van Eck.  I still remember his name very well.
 I got to Protea Police Station and I asked for this Major van Eck.  I was shown this Major van Eck and I was taken to his office.  In his office certain questions about June 16 were put to me and I answered him the same way as I answered the Cillier Commission.  At the end of it he actually said to me that I can go.  After he had questioned me he said, you can go, but if we need you we will call you again.  I took a stand, I said to him, if you think that I will come to you, you are making a mistake.  If you need me you will come to me and that was the last time they called me.

YASMINE SOOKA: Part of our function is to make recommendations to Government about reparation policy, but also about interventions that can be made at an institutional level to make sure that human rights abuses do not take place in the future.  Do you have any suggestions or recommendations that you would want to make?
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SOPHIE THEMA: Well, I have heard some of the witnesses yesterday make recommendations for transformation in the community.  Yes, I agree, but I would like to make a special appeal for those people who I work with in the prisons.  I think that rehabilitation should really start taking place in our prisons, but rehabilitation in such a way that we do not frustrate people at the same time as it is happening right now.  The conditions under which prisoners live in the prisons are not conducive at all.  It makes it very difficult to rehabilitate people when they live in appalling conditions, when they are being frustrated because in the prisons we still have those officials of yesteryear who still use the same old methods to frustrate our people in prisons.  Remember that I believe that some of them are there not through their own liking or their own choice, they are there because of the system in which we lived.  Some of them were actually forced to be where they are today.  I think the Government should really, you know, turn its attention to the prisons and see if something really constructively cannot be done to help the prison community because we have to work with the ...

YASMINE SOOKA: Sophie, thank you very much for sharing your story with us.

SOPHIE THEMA: Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Sophie, other fellow Commissioners wanted to ask you a few questions.

SOPHIE THEMA: I am sorry.

RUSSELL ALLY: This is not the Cillier's Commission.  You can stay as long.

CHAIRPERSON: Okay.  Joyce Seroke, have you got a question.

MS SEROKE: No.
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CHAIRPERSON: Hugh Lewin.

MR LEWIN: Thank you Madam Chair.  Sophie, could I, you call yourself a self-styled journalist.  Once a self-styled journalist always a self-styled journalist.  Two questions please.  One about the methodologies of June 16.  There has always been the story of the dog, the dog.

INTERPRETER: The speakers mike is not on.

MR LEWIN: Can you tell us the story of the dog.

INTERPRETER: The witnesses mike is not on.

INTERPRETER: The speakers mike is not on.

SOPHIE THEMA: As we were doing our rounds around the area we came across this dog and when we enquired how that dog came to be there they told us that it was a police dog that was killed by the students, but I did not actually see it.  It is, for instance, like the white guy who was pushed into a dustbin, was killed and pushed into a dustbin.  We did not see it, we only got there after it had happened.

MR LEWIN: But you saw a dead dog?

SOPHIE THEMA: Yes, it was a black dog, police dog.

MR LEWIN: Thanks.  More seriously, how would you identify the idealogy of the students at the beginning of June 16?

SOPHIE THEMA: I have to think a little bit about this one.  Can I start by saying I think the students had been frustrated to such an extent that when June 16 actually dawned they had no choice but to do what they eventually did.  I can imagine that on June 16, I do not think that it was their intention to actually cause violence.  Their intention was just to express a feeling that was within them that we do not want Afrikaans as a medium of instruction.  I think this is one message that they actually wanted to get over to the officials, but the officials would just not listen.
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MR LEWIN: Thanks very much.

CHAIRPERSON: Joyce Seroke.

MS SEROKE: Sophie, in the same way that we heard of young people who were very angry, killing white people because they were white, but during that time we did hear of incidents where the black people disguised white people in order to save them.  Do you remember that?

SOPHIE THEMA: Well, I heard about such incidents, but I was not actually, it was not actually my personal experience, but we did hear of such incidents.  If that was the case I do not think I would have a good reason to say they should not have done that because I do not know why they did it.  Perhaps they had a good reason for doing, perhaps they were trying to save them.  I do not know.

MS SEROKE: What I am trying to say is that even in the midst of anger there was also compassion among the people.

SOPHIE THEMA: Yes, yes.

CHAIRPERSON: Sophie, I have one brief question for you.  Yesterday we heard one of the Press people who really drew our attention to the amount of mental pain and anguish that most journalists are still living with today following their firsthand involvement with the atrocities of the past and in your testimony I saw you sort of singing through whatever you saw.  Would you agree with him that in our reparations we have got to think about trauma and its effects?

SOPHIE THEMA: Yes, I agree.  You know when I look back I think of the times where journalists were themselves never safe in this country.  They took a great risk, even in 1976, to have exposed what happened during that period and not journalists only, but even other people in the community.  Leaders, you know, people who were recognised as leaders of the
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community.  People in the community tried to help.  Some of those people were actually silenced and I think that the Government should really take a stand that people should be allowed to express their opinions, they should be allowed to express their feelings.  I mean if we are talking about democracy I think that is what it is all about.  We are experiencing something called democracy for the first time in our country.  It is something that we are not use to, but I think with this new Government our appeal would be make it as safe as possible for the journalists that they do not suffer the same consequences as some of our journalists suffered in the past and are still suffering today.

CHAIRPERSON: Russell Ally.  Thank you Sophie.

RUSSELL ALLY: Sophie, you testified before the Cilliers Commission.  What was your perception of this Commission?  Did you feel that the Commission was genuinely trying to get to the cause of 1976 or did you feel that there was, perhaps, another agenda?