Human Rights Violation Hearings — Heiderveld — 1996-04-25

CHAIRPERSON: You want to continue Mary?

DR BORAINE: Thank you very much, will you be seated please.  Ms Javens, if you wouldn't mind standing please.
MARILYN JAVENS Duly sworn states

MARY BURTON: Thank you Chairperson if I may I then ask Ms Javens to speak to us now, do we need to move the microphone near her.  Thank you Ms Javens, this is a story that is quite well known, so we'll try not to put you through too much as we ask you questions.  But your husband was one of the people who was killed in this attack and you were beside him in the church.  Would you like to tell us what you experienced at the time.

MS JAVENS: Well as Paul has said it was a very rainy day.  Just to backtrack we'd been married for 10 years and we started fellow shipping at St. James and during that time we both made commitments as Christians.  And it was one of those evenings that we went to church the normal time, started the worship service and a couple were singing
More than wonderful
And was just at the end of that song that the doors opened and I thought it was of the wind.  And I saw this man standing there and I realised that he had a gun in his hand and he started moving from left to right.   I must have still been looking  at him without realising it.
In that time my husband went down on his own haunches and I realised I had better get down too.  And on going down I thought I've got to do something so I prayed that the Lord would help us.  And there was a lot of screaming and initially but even in that there was a kind of peace that I can't even now explain really.
And there was different sounds I could hear and then eventually I heard a familiar voice of our Reverend  Ross Anderson just telling us to stay calm and stay down.  And this voice just kept going and I think that was incredible calming -  had a calming effect on everybody.   And after a few minutes we got up and - well I called to my husband and he didn't answer.
And I got up and he was still on his haunches and I think I was a bit bewildered at that stage, everybody was milling around and with that an usher came down in front of me towards my husband.   And he bent down and obviously to him to feel his pulse and I just said to him is he alive and he shook his head.

MARY BURTON: It's okay, just take your time.

MS JAVENS: Then a lady that I'm very familiar with - somebody came to me that I didn't know and just - was there to comfort and  shortly after that Laura came who knows me and came to me and she just - she said to me, am I all right, and I said Guy is dead.   And she said, no maybe he is just hurt, so I said no he is dead.
And in that time somebody had  straighten him out and when I looked again I just saw blood flowing from him.  But I still couldn't believe that he had died.  And then they put a sheet over him and somebody removed me to the other side of the church because they were trying to clear the church for the - just to leave those that were injured there and get the traffic cleared for ambulances and things like that.
And while sitting there our Bishop arrived and the look of absolute horror on his face.  I hadn't really seen much, I believe, I believe that the Lord blinded me to what was around me. I saw a stretcher being taken out.  I realised somebody behind us had been hurt, I didn't know that he was dead, but apparently it was a Russian that had died.
And it was shortly after that my son came to fetch me.  And I only - a couple of days later I was just - I was brought to the church before the funeral just to be - to feel more comfortable with it.  And it was only then that I realised the extent of what had happened for what I saw while they were cleaning up.  Holes in the carpets and blood and it was terrible.  But I can only - I can say that the only way I got through this was knowing God, he helped me through it.

MARY BURTON: Thank you - thank you Ms  Javens.  You must have relived that experience many-many times.  I think one of the things that one hopes can try and help is trying to make some sense out of it. As Paul said if one could understand why these things happen and also if one can see a way of moving towards a better society in which these things don't happen anymore.
But one of the lessons that St. James Church and community has given to the country is the way that the church and it's members rallied round all of you.  And we'll probably hear a bit more of that from Bishop Retief and Reverend Cameron.
Is there something  - anything else you would like to say before I ask my Colleagues if they want to ask you any questions.

MS JAVENS: No I don't think so.

MARY BURTON: Thank you, thank you, you could ask.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much.  Pumla Gobodo.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: Thank you Chairman, I just want to say this - I share your faith and although I don't like most of us really don't -  we haven't had experiences that you've had.  Every time somebody comes up here to share their pain we all go through the same pain.
It's happened many times since Monday.  I was wondering do you -  you are - I can feel that you are  in pain now and I just wanted you to share with us if there are moments when you re-experience the events whether in your sleep or in your waking life.  Do you - do you ever - does the event ever come back to you?

MS JAVENS: It does, it comes out at unexpected times but it's much easier now, one  I think you have to come to realise that you've got to put him to rest.  And for me knowing that Guy is with Lord now, he is out of his pain, and that we have to get on, life is for living.  And I have many friends of  church family that are always there for me and really I know that I can always turn to them and they will be there.
So it does help me and sometime just sharing what happened makes others realised that maybe they haven't gone through something as bad and helps them through whatever they going through.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you Advocate Ntsebeza.

ADV NTSEBEZA: Ma'am I can only echo the sentiments by Pumla with regard to your pain.  But I really want to know from you whether after there was a suggestion that this was an attack on the church by a member of a political party -  for the moment I am not concerned as to whether it should or should not have happened.
Was that by itself able to make a focus on the sort of society that South Africa has been and on the conflicts of the past.    And what are your views there about?

MS JAVENS: I don't understand.

ADV NTSEBEZA: Is the  suggestion in the newspapers has been that this attack was part of the political conflicts.

MS JAVENS: I am not at all politically minded. I don't - I didn't see it as a political attack.  I didn't - I just saw it as people, gunmen coming into the church.  Our church is not involved in politics, we teach about the Lord and what we would do if we died tomorrow.

ADV NTSEBEZA: Yes.

MS JAVENS: So to me they were just men that came and shot and I really  - I felt I couldn't deal with that because that was just an extra emotion that I couldn't handle at the time.   Whether they were caught or not, at that stage I wasn't even concerned about.  It was what we were having to deal with, our losses and mothers - children that were killed and  little one's - a little one left without a mother was to me far more important than who those people were because the damage has been done.

ADV NTSEBEZA: H'm.

MS JAVENS: You know you couldn't - you couldn't bring back any one of those lives or any one of those limbs that has been amputated or injured.

ADV NTSEBEZA: Yes.

MS JAVENS: So - and quite frankly I think the whole world, nobody wanted to own up to something like this because the whole world was devastated by it.