Human Rights Violation Hearings — Queenstown — UNKNOWN

MS BRODY: Okay, thank you.  Well firstly in the actual context of the whole case, I would just like to very briefly tell you people and all the people sitting here, something small about my background very briefly.
 I was actually born and bred in the rural part of which was then called the Transkei, where I was actually a forth generation.  I grew up with the Xhoza people, lived and actually partook in, how can I say, in their culture. 
 I actually really doubt that there are many White people who actually know the Xhoza people like I know them.  Xhoza was actually my first language which I spoke until the age of about 4 or 5, I had to be taught the other languages.
 My parents were both, well at that stage working class, you know, people.  We had nothing, I mean they battled for years upon years, I mean, to eventually get on their feet.
 Both of them were not actually educated people.  It was as the Doctor earlier said, it was - is a dream, you have dreams for your children and you hope and my parents' dream was for their children to succeed in a way that they couldn't.
 Due to their backgrounds they were basically, as I said, not from a wealthy family or from a family which could have been advanced because of their background.
 We all know in the old South Africa, certain people were advantaged, being a  White person, obviously I also had advantages that most of the people sitting here, never had.
QUEENSTOWN HEARING TRC/EASTERN CAPE
24 SR BRODY
We eventually moved through to Queenstown, the Government of the day bought us out and we were forced to move here.
 I actually went to Queens in Queenstown where I went from Sub A until matric.  My parents explained that a person needs an education.  When I got to high school I studied Xhoza, which was actually co-incidently my favourite subject and also the one that I did the best in.
 From there on my parents sent me to Rhodes in Grahamstown, where I once again pursued with my Xhoza at University level.  I actually had, I would have liked to have in the future, used it to teach people, mainly White people to learn the language.  I think it is very important that people know the language and know the culture.
 And the fateful night of the bomb blast I - it was the same day when I got back from University.  I was basically finished, I had an extra two subjects which I had to complete the following year to eventually get my degree.
 And we never, we hardly even went home, I just - I phoned my two sisters and a friend of theirs and I had two friends also with me from Rhodes and we decided to go for supper at the Spur.
 Not having the money to do so whilst at Rhodes, I thought it would be a nice celebration.  So we went to the Spur, we arrived there quite late and we basically, myself and my two sisters, their friend Cheryl, my two friends, sat at the table directly next to where the bomb went off.
 I had my back facing the table where the bombers sat and my younger sister, who actually faced them, looked actually directly at them, she has now left the country, I don't know if she would actually come back, but we, you know, trying to convince her to.
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25 SR BRODY
 It was then I was actually chatting to her friend who was at my table, and suddenly, I don't really remember much
but I was blasted right through the ceiling.
 And it was actually basically, in our case, shrapnel wounds, broken bones, severe burns and that is on the actually more on the physical side.
 But the mental side, one, I mean, you can't really explain.  It is just a, well for me personally it is a feeling of, how can I say, actually betrayal that the previous day I was in the, I was actually in the company of Black friends of mine at Rhodes.
 Rhodes from the outside may seem like a liberal, lots of people there like to be fashionably liberal, I was never a fashionably liberal person.  A very interesting thing at Rhodes, in our dining halls, you found very distinct separation of the tables of the Blacks and the Indians and the Whites and whatever.
 Until I said to a Black friend of mine that that is actually wrong.  And in my own way I tried to mingle and to mix, you know, which eventually we had a group that actually did that.
 And it just seemed that after getting that right at Rhodes to come back and to be bombed, because the way I feel, of the colour of my skin, I do not actually, I was as I say, brought up colour blind, which I would like to call it.
 I have never really seen myself as being White because I'm not White.  This table cloth here is actually white.
 This here is more brown than white.  And I would just like to say that the whole incident, changed our entire lives.  I mean my parents it put them under intense
QUEENSTOWN HEARING TRC/EASTERN CAPE
26 SR BRODY
 financial stress, it put, it actually put me under intense financial stress, my sisters I feel honour bound to pay my parents back for sending me to Rhodes.  Three years there seemed to be just a waste, it was my career gone.
 As the Doctor mentioned, dreams.  My dreams were actually broken in two seconds.
 And I would just also like to say that I mean, the psychological side of things, the physical scars are still there, they are evident.  They have affected actually all of our lives, I used to be a very keen sportsman, which I can no longer play sport, because I've got shrapnel imbedded inside my tendons and inside my bones.
 I've got sections of my feet which are totally numb and we seem to battle with oozing shrapnel and that, you know, none stop.
 It seems to be ongoing problem.  And my younger sister has actually been for psychiatric treatment.  It seems as though she will probably be quite psychologically scarred.
 My sister and I as we sit here, we both suffer from insomnia, I actually do not sleep most nights.
 Depression is a big thing and just the human factor of feeling that you were actually worthless, people wanted to celebrate to kill you.  And as I say it is much like many people sitting here today, have suffered as we heard the previous cases, it is, we come from a very broken society.
 I'm sure we all know that and a fragmented society with there being problems on both sides, but as already mentioned here, it must take an incredible hatred to bomb somebody if not expecting it, who is trusting other people.
 When I go out, I am sometimes told by friends and by family that I am actually too trusting a person which people QUEENSTOWN HEARING TRC/EASTERN CAPE
27 SR BRODY
say is a bad trait.
 But to me that is a human trait, to trust and that is one thing that has just been taken way, you know.  That is a thing that died inside me, to trust a person.
 And as I say, basically it is the people who bombed us, I've - I personally don't want them to come and apologise to me if they don't mean it.
 Because true repentance inside your heart, you know, it would be wrong for me to ask for those people to come to me and to say forgive me, you know, even if they were not up to do that, the bottom line is that they have to want to reconcile, you know, that is what this whole meeting and this whole Commission is about - reconciliation.
 And for people who don't want to do it, people who are seeking amnesty just not to be in trouble, that doesn't really solve our problems, you know.  So to solve our country's entire problems is going to take a far deeper and a far more intricate process and system than merely wanting someone to apologise.
 So I have now basically told you people our physical damages, our psychological damages and it is about it.

ADV POTGIETER: Now, I accept that your University career was ended.  You never ended your studies at University?