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

FELICIA AZANDE DLODLO: Theophilus Dlodlo was my husband, someone I respected very much.  Someone who had a very kind heart, somebody who cared about this country with a passion,  someone who wanted every South African in exile, whether you were political or not, to be active in liberating this country.  He did not believe that a person from South Africa can just come to a foreign country and just settle there and forget about the problem which our people were going through. He loved this country very much.
 He left this country in 1978 after a close friend of his was killed and he went to join the ANC.  We met in 1983 after he had been detained by the Swazi authorities and myself, a group of other women and some of the wives of the ANC cadres who have been detained made it a point that we visited these cadres because we had been told that the South Africans were planning to bombard this prison camp. It was in a lonely area, almost like a forest, quite remote from the nearest homestead, and we made it our duty to visit the cadre so that they do not feel lost or threatened and that is when I first met Viva.  We fell in love at that time but soon afterwards the Swaziland authorities decided to deport them and so they went to Lusaka in Zambia.
 We never really had a chance to call ourselves lovers because the entire time the ANC would send him all over the world to go for further military training.  We hardly saw each other.  He came though in 1984 and we spent the longest period that we ever spent with each other, about six months, but then he had to leave again, but just before our son was born in January '85 he asked for permission to be there, because he didn't know how long it would take before he must part with us again.  He left the day after the child was born to Lusaka Zambia, and the whole of 1985 I never saw him.  
 We wanted to get married but there never was a chance because the ANC always said no he needs to go for further training, he needs to learn this and learn that.  In 1986 he did ask for permission though to come to Swaziland for us to get married, and we had a very secret quiet marriage and he left the country again.
 The following year in 1987 we had all these massacres in Swaziland, people were just dying and Swazi sympathisers just dying and nobody knowing what was going on, it was just like a killing field.  All we just read was just in the papers by I suppose, the South African security police claiming that all these are terrorists, they needed to be killed, which in my opinion was not true. I know one couple for instance, that was not even political living in Mbabane, they were killed one morning while they were still in bed.
 Then my husband contacted me from Lusaka in April 1987 and he told me that the ANC was intending to clear out quite a number of ANC operatives inside the country, because, to him, it looked like the ANC could not even trust its own cadres at the time, so he told me that there would be quite a lot of movement, people being removed from Swaziland to go to Lusaka for a while whilst the place is being cleared up. However the ANC wanted him to come to Swaziland to find out a few things and question a few individuals about all these assassinations that have been taking place.  
 So he came round about the 20th of April 1987 and he stayed with me but he did emphasise to me that his was a very very dangerous mission and he would prefer that he wasn't seen to be coming to me here all the time, more so because we had a very young child and he did not want our child here to be caught in the cross fire. He was hardly with me at the time, he was always away, but he would make a point now and again, maybe every week or so, to get in touch with me and we'd go out, then he'd bring me home again.
 Then on the 21st of May 1987, the night before he was killed, he came home and he said to me that he needs my help, a senior member of the ANC called September was here, who was allegedly abducted the previous year while he was not there and it seems he has turned against the movement, he was very active with the South African Death Squads. At least he had that information from various sources that he was here in Swaziland and he asked if I still remembered what he looks like and I answered in the affirmative.  But fortunately I knew that September did not know me, but I knew him.  He then told me that he had just received information that he was at a certain hotel right then, this was in the evening, he did not know with whom but he was allegedly playing snooker or pool, I'm not sure now what he said, could I come and help him and at least tell him whether I had seen him.
 So I left with my husband, it was quite late at night  and we went to this hotel, I've forgotten its name, but it's quite close to the Swaziland Houses of Parliament.  We went there and my husband parked his car underneath some tree and then he said I must please go but make sure that nobody should see me.   I went in there and I was just looking, there were quite a lot of South African registered cars parked outside, so I went inside and saw quite a number of people but I just couldn't see him.  And then I asked one gentleman who worked there if they had a room where people play pool and he showed me where it was. I went into the room and I found September playing pool and he was in the company of about 10 or so white men, who to me were South Africans, because I could tell by their accents, they were having a good time enjoying themselves playing snooker, laughing, September laughing, having a good time and I didn't want to stay long in case somebody notices me, so I walked out.  As I was walking out I met a certain lady who was also a member of Umkhonto e'Sizwe, she was just going into the building, and she saw me and for some reason I thought she looked frightened, but at that time it just didn't make sense to me, I thought that maybe she's also just coming into the hotel.  So I left and I said to my husband, yes I had seen September, the very September who we had been told had been abducted and was languishing in a South African prison.  I told him that I saw him playing pool and he was in the company of about 10 white men.  So my husband said that was fine and I added that I had seen something else, I had just seen a second lady who we called Maniki in the ANC, I said I had just seen her and asked if he might know why she was here.  He did not know things like that, maybe it was where she came for her entertainment.  Anyway he just dismissed it and suggested that she might be on a similar assignment, he didn't know but he had not given her any instructions, to the best of his knowledge.
 So we left the hotel and for a while my husband just sat in the car, not saying anything, and then he remarked that these people had come to kill us, he knew that.  I asked him what he was going to do and he apologised for having put me in this danger but he had really needed someone that he could trust, just to confirm that September was really here in the country.  He thought that he should just take me home then because he didn't want me to be involved in all this which was a very, very dangerous mission.  So he took me home and that was the last that I ever saw of my husband.
 I'm not clear as to what happened that following night because I was not there.  All I can tell you is what I was told by one of the survivors in the car.  My husband had said to me that I should stay where I was and he would come and collect me the next evening and perhaps we could spend a weekend together with our son, but further than that he really did not have time for that because he was here on a very, very busy mission, and that was it.
 Like I said I do not know what happened on that day but one of the survivors in the car told me that they had gone for a very brief meeting after which there was a party for a Swazi student who was going to study overseas, and some of the people who had been with my husband there knew this student very well and they wanted a lift with my husband. So he went there, the party was not even that long because he insisted that he cannot afford to be seen going to parties. So they left the party and on their way, this is in Thembelihle now in Mbabane, on their way they saw a car flicking its lights from behind and he couldn't recognise the car, he kept on asking the other person who it was flicking lights, and they looked around and said they didn't know, they didn't recognise the car. So he just ignored it but after a while the car was attempting to overtake them and he thought he recognised a voice from a member of the ANC who cried, Viva, Viva, stop, what are you doing, we need to talk to you, there is something very urgent I need to tell you!  They could hear that because he rolled his window down. This person was just shouting for him to stop and to pull in onto the side, so that is exactly what he did and before they knew it the car was completely surrounded by mainly white people, they looked white even though many of them seemed to have covered their faces with balaclavas and what have you, but they could tell from their hands and the way they were talking, they were talking in Afrikaans. They had no time to think as they just fired on the car.  My husband died, Musa Msomi died and one of the university students who had asked for a lift called Tutu died. I think there were two or three other survivors, I'm not sure.  
 I never heard anything else that day and then the following morning I was just wondering why he didn't come like he said he would, but I knew that because of the type of work that he was doing, something quite important must have held him up.  I just happened to switch on the TV and the news was on when I saw this car which was identical to the one my husband and I were in when we went to the hotel to look at September, I saw this car but at that moment it just didn't register to me what had happened.  I saw all the bullet holes and all they said over the news was that it is still not known who these people were or why they had been killed but their bodies are lying in a government hospital in Mbabane. And before I knew it, one lady who used to help me look after the child said to me that she thought I should switch off the TV as there were some people who had come to see me. I wondered what for but she said that she would rather not say but thought it looked like something serious.  It was just a group of ANC women, and I thought of what I'd just seen in the news, and of these ladies coming to see me, and then I said no, it cannot be true, it can't be happening, I could just guess what had happened. I let them in and they started crying, at that stage I didn't even know, I just guessed, but they tearfully told me about the incident.
 I went to the hospital and I saw my husband there as well as the bodies of the other three at the mortuary. 
 That is all that I know except for all the newspaper stories that I heard where the South Africans were claiming responsibility for the assassination. That is 
all the information which I have, anything else is just hearsay now.
 I forgot to mention that the following year I was also deported from Swaziland and no explanation was ever given.