Human Rights Violation Hearings — Johannesburg — 1996-05-02

RUSSELL ALLY: ... although it might have been well known to certain people I think this is an opportunity to become well known to the country as a whole and part of the task of the Truth Commission, a very important task is to try and establish as detailed a picture as possible, as comprehensive a picture as possible of what happened in the past, and it's testimony like this which I think will greatly assist us in achieving that particular objective, so I think it was a very important testimony.
 Just a few questions, the first is, could you just tell us a bit about Neil, the type of person he was and about his involvement?

ELIZABETH FLOYD: Neil actually grew up in Kenya and his parents left Kenya at the time when the new government came into place and came to South Africa, and he went through a fairly standard middle class upbringing.  I think when he came to university initially he was not exposed to explicitly a political environment, but certainly was a kind of young intellectual who was looking at other realities than the ones that he had been brought up in.
 He was at medical school in Cape Town but it was when he came to Jo'burg that he met up with people who were more directly involved in issues, particularly the Labour Movement. Initially in Johannesburg he was a doctor working at Tembisa Hospital. He then had the problems with the Army.  His initial plan was to leave the country when he faced a call-up but by the time that that came he was involved enough to decide to stay, but it was quite difficult because as a draft dodger, he couldn't take a conventional job.
 He then was involved in setting up the Johannesburg Branch of the Food and Canning Worker's Union.  In the '60's food and canning had been very extensive, it had then kind of lost ground under the repression and they were reexpanding.  Food and Canning was part of a range of unions at that time which were going in similar directions. SAWU people came up here and he assisted them in getting going, and he linked up with people like CAWUSA and  The Municipal Workers Union.  Through that experience he became more and more exposed to the realities that people faced and more responsive to that kind of organisation, and very committed to the union movement.  And when the pressures and the dangers built up, I think felt so involved in that that he didn't really think about extricating himself from it. 
 But the dual problems of being in the union movement at that particular point and being a draft dodger, put him under tremendous pressure, and his life really was completely involved in the union.

RUSSELL ALLY: Thank you, in your statement you say, and I'm quoting,
"We do not know whether he was killed or was driven to a situation where he saw no option but to take his life".
what do you feel about that particular statement and how do you think the Commission can assist in perhaps clarifying that situation?

ELIZABETH FLOYD: I think for some people that's an enormous issue and particularly if you hear some of the evidence given today and the history of people who were quite obviously extremely badly physically assaulted and were alleged to have committed suicide.  Everyone's very sceptical about the so-called suicides out in detention.  I think with Neil I don't rule it out but I'm saying that that's a huge issue for debate, I think it's a technicality.  For me it's fifteen years ago, it's not really an unresolved issue for myself.  I don't know if that answers your question.  It may be more so for his family and my feeling is, if there are interrogators on the team who know about it and they want to come forward, let them do so willingly, and I think the issue there is that those people should be protected from intimidation by their peer group, if that's what they want to do.

RUSSELL ALLY: Thanks that does help.  In your testimony you actually spoke quite a bit about the methods which were used, the alleged torture methods by the Security Police. In Neil's case there was a particular period according to the inquest in which there was allegedly an intensive period of interrogation referred to as the so-called Long Weekend which stretched from the 28th of January until the 31st of January where Neil allegedly never left the 10th floor, never changed his clothing, never washed or never had any exercise, for 62 hours he had no contact with anyone save his interrogators.  Do you want to tell the Commission a little bit about that so-called long weekend.

ELIZABETH FLOYD: Given the situation where Neil was in detention and people didn't have contact, it's quite difficult for me really to comment on that, but I think when people are exposed to that, you really get a disintegration, everyone has their limits, and that came after a two month period of solitary.  Everyone has their limits, and the descriptions of people who've been through that deprivation is that they disintegrate and certainly that kind of interrogation is accompanied by extensive threats, and as I mentioned, when you've been in solitary, you don't have the mechanisms to defend yourself against that onslaught.  I don't know if I can give any more kinds of insight.

RUSSELL ALLY: Thanks that was very helpful, I'm done.

MEMBER OF PANEL: Thanks very much.  You've spoken at great length about the situation in the '80's through your own personal experience and also studies that you've done subsequently also on conditions in detention.  I wondered you could comment on an earlier stage which in fact comes within the brief of the Commission.  We begin in March 1960, now through my own experience and what we heard from Charlie just this morning, there seems to have been a quantitative leap in what you call the professional interrogation, between say the time of Sharpeville when it seemed that quite a number of the people who were taken in detention that time had a fairly bumbling experience of how they were handled.  There was a quantitative leap between 1960 and certainly by the end of '63, beginning of '64 that would suggest as well that the sophistication of interrogation, of handling, the sophistication from the police and particularly the Special Branch side, came from a period of training, a very rapid period of training that must have taken place in those few years.  Do you have any comment or in fact any suggestions for the Commission about where the South African Police would have got that training from, they obviously went out of the country?

ELIZABETH FLOYD: I don't, but what I think what we do know is that, if you talk about the systems of organised violence and interrogation and detention is one of them, is that there are international patterns and that that expertise is shared internationally.  There's no question about that.  I can't shed any more light, I was quite young then.

MS MKHIZE: Liz I would also like to thank you for sharing openly about your understanding of our victims' experiences in detention, partly as you are aware, as a Commission, we are expected to assist in making sure what people like Neil went through doesn't happen again. I would like to hear from you, and I know on the basis of what you've been saying, you might have some ideas as to what needs to be put in place.   A related question is about possible reparations, you have mentioned that there are quite a number of people who went through a similar experience that you have worked with and as a Commission we have to come out with a policy guide line pertaining to reparations.  I don't know whether you can share with us just briefly on those two points.

ELIZABETH FLOYD: Can you just remind me of the first point?

MS MKHIZE: The first one was really as to how or what do we need to think about as a Commission or what advise can we give to policy makers to make sure that what you are describing to us doesn't happen again?