Human Rights Violation Hearings — Port Elizabeth — UNKNOWN

N SANDI: Sorry, Mr Jack, what are Mr Bezuidenhout's full names?

WITNESS: I am going to give it to you now.  It is Piti.  His first name is Piti.  I met him recently at the Highway.  We had a good chat.  I did not even touch the fact that I am going to talk about him in the Commission.  My position was now changed and then I was tortured and beaten up again.  There was another question.  This question was, "Mkhuseli..."  I cannot remember how early this was.  They said, "Jack, you have said something at one of the universities in Cape Town."  You said, "Policemen from Port Elizabeth are Gestapo.  They are even worse than Gestapo.  They are even worse that Ivan the Terrible, who was torturing the Jews."  This is true.  It is something that I said but I flatly denied it.  
I said, "I have never said anything like that."  There was this other man who was watching me the whole time.  He said to me, "Mkhuseli, you are asking for trouble now and you are going to get it."  Then he grabbed a knobkierie and he was on me.  He beat me up for a long time.  I screamed and screamed until I gave up.  I was trying to deny the fact that I said that they were Gestapo.  I said this in Cape Town.  I was trying to give a picture of how powerful the security policemen from Port Elizabeth were.  They simply had all the powers.  Nobody could do anything against them.  This is why I said they were more terrible than Ivan the Terrible.  What I have written here is something that has been written in 1985.  You can see from the ink it is already faint.  At that time I was a bit unconscious.  I could not hear properly.  I could not even see properly.  They poured water over me trying to wake me up just to regain my consciousness.  They said, "We are very nice to you.  You are going to go for a shower."  So they took me into the showers.  Now listen to this.  Listen to what Bezuidenhout said when they were dragging me because I could not walk.  They were dragging me on my stomach.  He said, "What is going on with you?"  I said, "Please just look at this I cannot even walk."  Bezuidenhout said, "Give him a microphone to address the people."  They said, "Let us pretend you are in Centenary Hall.  Give him a microphone."
From there I was taken into another room.  When I got there there were no showers as I was promised.  There was another tin who had a black, very dirty towel.  I saw a mixture in it.  When I looked at it I thought no, hell is going to break loose here now.  My body was black and blue with bruises.  My bums was so swollen, they were so big at that time, even my head was swollen.  My clothes were taken off.  They put something that I could not feel at that time.  Now what I thought for myself, I thought it was a certain herb.  They asked, "Why is she so prominent in the Black organisations?"  I said, "No, Molly can feel peoples struggles.  They said to me, "You are lucky."  When I said that I was told that I was going to beaten up again and they did.  Then I was sent back to Algoa Park.  I was going to give a picture of how this room was.  People must know that this person we are not supposed to mention, must know how active he was in the torturing of people.  You could see even when he was walking he would just walk as if he owns the world.  What I am trying to come to now is, when I was going back to this place they said to me, "With your big mouth, if you can just once say that you have been beaten up by the police you will be starting trouble for yourself.  The disappearance of Godolosi Hashe and Galela, it was because of their own problems.  They were the ones who were stubborn.  
They died because they were very stubborn just like you.  You are as stubborn as them."  The State of Emergency at that time allowed the police to do whatever they wanted to do to people and nothing was going to be done to them of course.  You see, Dennis Neer, Alex Hara and others they have been tortured a lot, beaten up.  Even then they did not lay charges against the police.  He said to me, "What I went through yesterday was just a tip of the ice berg.  They were just warming me up, there is still more coming."
I was taken to St Albans the following day.  I was picked up there by members of the Reaction Unit.  They took me to St Albans.  I was put with other inmates from other prisons.  What is funny here now is that Koen asked all the warders to come and look at me.  He said, "Look at him.  Can you see how well he has been beaten?"  What I am trying to show you now is that we have gone through a lot of torture.  Unfortunately, I am not able to tell the details and various methods of all the torture that I had to go through because most of those details were psychological.  That is how I suffered.  Another thing that was interesting is the way the police tried to destroy the role that the white liberals used to have in the struggle.  They used to portray them as abnormal people.  They used to have different tactics.  
They used to think that working in the townships would be a promotion because they did not want to go to the White suburbs.  Because going to the White suburbs meant to be a demotion.
Mr

N SANDI: If I hear you correctly there was a link between, a rift between the White and the Black policemen at that time?

WITNESS: Yes, here is an example.  The man we are not supposed to mention said to me, "I am going to disgrace you because it looks like you like the crowd a lot.  You like to be known by people.  You want to go to Robben Island because of politics.  I am going to make you a criminal.  When you go to Robben Island you will go to jail."  I had three cases, attempted robbery, attempted murder and the other was intimidation and assault.  In all those cases... a person who was a State witness was Hlongwana, but I was not found guilty in all those cases.  Mr

N SANDI: Mr Jack, was there a time when you laid a charge against the police?  Did you at any time take them to court?

WITNESS: Yes.  Another man arrived at St Albans.  That is when I started to make my statement to one of the people who came to us.  He said, "Do we have anything we wanted to say?"  I said, "Yes."  I was told to call the journalist now.  I have one of the documents with me.  I am going to give it to you just now.  They wanted me stop the accusations of the police because they did not want this to happen.  
They did not want to be accused.  There was another one, I cannot remember whether it was Colonel Paulsen, there was another officer, Colonel Paulsen, on the 24 August there was a docket opened in my case.
Mr

N SANDI: How did that case end up, the one that you laid charges against the police?

WITNESS: It did not go anywhere.  It simply disappeared.  This other one refers to when I was beaten up in New Brighton.  Fortunately there were other people.  When I was beaten up when there were people walking up and down.  Some of my Comrades were walking up and down.  They could see what was going on with me.  When he saw what was going on with me Du Plessis was taking charge of my beating up.  He asked me, "What am I doing with Hlongwana?", then I was beaten up again.
Other than that, some of the names that I have mentioned in my documents are people like Zuzi, another one from Ciskei, his name is Nongwanya.  Nongwanya was very good in interrogating a person.  He just did something that he liked.
Mr

N SANDI: Can I just interrupt you there.   I noticed, Mr Jack, when you are talking to us you keep on referring to certain papers in front of you.  Do these documents have all the details that you are talking about?  Are you going to bring them forward to the Commission?