Human Rights Violation Hearings — Umtata — 1996-06-19

MKHANGELI MATOMELA: I never asked for any doctor.  But I think it was the second day when I was at Cambridge, there was another White doctor who arrived.  It looks like he was a doctor who used to come routinely.  He did examine me.  He asked me what happened to me, all the bruises.  He said to me it was not even known that I was there, which is normal, because this is what people used to do. They would detain you without the knowledge of your family.
 He examined me and then he asked me what happened.  So I said but you can see what happened, but I didn't really want to say because I was scared of these people because they could just kill me at any time. So I just looked at him, I didn't answer him when he kept on asking. But I am sure they wrote that in his records.  He wrote what was going on with me, even though I didn't say anything.

YASMINE SOOKA: Do you remember his name?

MKHANGELI MATOMELA: No, I don't remember.

YASMINE SOOKA: (Speaker's mike not on) ... to let your family
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know that you were being detained over there?

MKHANGELI MATOMELA: I don't think there was any effort that that doctor made, because at home they didn't know where I was.  They didn't know that I was in East London.  They got information from me when I was from East London.

YASMINE SOOKA: Did you ever go to any lawyer?  Because you mention in your statement that you were put on trial. Was there a lawyer who assisted you in the process?

MKHANGELI MATOMELA: Yes, the attorney that was helping us, it was Prince Madikizela, but in our own case, we were represented by (I'm sorry, I couldn't hear the name of the lawyer).  But we used give all the information to Prince Madikizela, and Adv Wilson.  Those are the two lawyers that we used to deal with.

YASMINE SOOKA: What were you charged with at your trial?

MKHANGELI MATOMELA: We were charged under the Terrorism Act and we were charged for having banned literature and material.

YASMINE SOOKA: (Speaker's mike not on) ... at the time while you were being tortured by - I think you didn't tell us the name of the policemen who forced you to sign the statements.

MKHANGELI MATOMELA: The statement that I signed in East London before I was brought back, was made by Nxoba.  It was a Black limping policeman. During this whole time Nxoba was right next to me.  He is the one who said I must write. He is the one who was going to make me take the statement.  But when I got there the statement was already there.  I was just told to read it and sign it.  But I just tried to forge a certain signature which was not my signature.  Because I knew that I didn't write the statement, it was written by somebody else. So I didn't write my own signature.
 Now in court we tried to show that these statements 
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were not our statements, they must not be accepted as our evidence, because we didn't write them.  Even though they were taken as our evidence in court.

YASMINE SOOKA: Did the Court accept those statements as being yours?

MKHANGELI MATOMELA: No, not.

CHAIRPERSON: What happened in the trial, were you convicted?

MKHANGELI MATOMELA: I personally was not sentenced, I was acquitted, because there was no evidence that was linking me directly to the use of the weapons. So I was acquitted.  There were others who were sentenced, like Comrade James Khati, some pleaded guilty, people like Salewa and Mbetse and Mr Peter Kite, even though later on he was also acquitted, after he appealed.

YASMINE SOOKA: Did you file a claim against the police for compensation?

MKHANGELI MATOMELA: No.

YASMINE SOOKA: Why not?

MKHANGELI MATOMELA: Well, now this is my personal opinion, that we were just doing this for the liberation of the country, not necessarily to be compensated or gain anything.  But mostly, we were only concentrating on what we were doing.  It never occurred in our minds to ask for any kind of compensation. I am sure that even in our group no one can say that they wanted compensation.

YASMINE SOOKA: After you were acquitted, did you ever have a doctor examine you physically to see if you had sustained any long-term damage to your body or to your hearing, after the torture?

MKHANGELI MATOMELA: Yes, there was another doctor that I went to,
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Dr Solombela.   I explained to him everything that happened and he gave me some treatment.
 Oh, there is something else that I have forgotten. When I was in East London, after they took me off that hook, there was another Black policeman, I can't remember his name.  He came back to me and he held my shoulders, put his knee on my chest and then pulled me against his knee.  Something, my sternum broke, I think it cracked.  That was the problem, that was a physical problem that I had since then. I couldn't even stretch my chest.  But there was no other treatment that I received for this.  Even now I can still feel the pains.  But I think my sternum cracked.
 I tried to explain to the doctor all those things that happened to me and the cold that I got while I was in the cell, because we were arrested in August.  I got out the following year in October.  During this whole time we never got any proper treatment.  Health-wise that really affected me. I explained all of this to the doctor. He tried to give me some treatment.

YASMINE SOOKA: What would you like the Truth Commission to do in respect of your case?