Human Rights Violation Hearings — Soweto — 1996-07-23

YASMINE SOOKA: Thank you Murphy.  One of the frightening aspects of the uprising in June 1976 was the use of police in going into school property and assaulting students, shooting at them.  As part of our job is to recommend policy, to recommend policy to Government in terms of making sure that the kind of things that happened in the past do not happen again. What would you recommend should be some of the recommendations we should make to Government in that respect?

MURPHY MOROBE: I think that everything has its base from which it begins and that in a normal society there ought to be respect for law and order.  That respect must not only be for parents, it must also be for students and the young children must be brought up with that understanding.  That basically means that it is an understanding that will say a policeman and a police woman should be seen as a friend of the community there to serve and protect the community, but our experience, our history is that it is the very same policemen who were meant to uphold certain laws of the day, but they themselves began to undermine those very same laws that were meant to actually protect.
 If you would mention to me, I mean, there were so many people that were shot and killed.  I do not think there is any proper record that has been kept of those incidences or inquests that were subsequently held about the various
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killings that happened.  
 The one episode I should mention is when we went, I think it was November or so to bury, I cannot remember his first name, but his surname was Mashabane, who was killed, I think in detention, he came from Tefloop and we went to bury him at Dorenkop Cemetery.  The very same police actually waited for us to ambush the funeral.  As we were marching into the cemetery, even before the coffin was put down, they opened fire on the mourners.  There was no violence there, there was nothing that suggested that police should act that way, but the mourners and the family had to flee and leave the coffin there.  People had to fall and jump into graves to hide themselves from the barrage that came and more people were killed.  Now the question for me is if upholders of law and order can act in that way, how do ordinary citizens supposed to respect the law and for me, I think that one of the biggest thing that this Government is going to have to do is to begin a campaign that will ensure that there is respect for law and order.  
 The very same policemen, you know, have a big role to play, but it is important that, I mean, in my statement I mention a number of policemen.  Some of whom were involved, you know, in detaining some of us.  In many instances the tortures that happened in detention were conducted by white policemen and the black and coloured policemen were merely used as monitors or like prefects when they made you to squat without your clothes on for days on end on the cell floor.  They will sit there on the chair and guard you in case you do not robe, you know.  So you have to do that torture process until the end.  Those policemen, some of them still stay in these townships.  They must come here and SOWETO HEARING GAUTENG PROVINCE
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talk about this because reconciliation also means that they have to be able to reflect on their past roles, the things that they did to inform on people.  The information led to the deaths of many people and where are they today, why are the so quiet?  Probably, some of them are now drawing pension from the same taxpayers whose children they led to be killed.  I think that there has to be some way in which balance is seen in the way this matter is run, but in the main, the education system which was the cause of all what happened has to change.
 There are efforts to change it, but I think that it is important that the way in which it is being done there is a sense of the urgency that is required because it will be a tragedy if in another year or two years we relive, again, what we went through.  I do not think that, I would not want my children or anybodies children, today, to go through what we did.  I lost most of my youth, you know, because of those events where other young people in the world were windsurfing and riding things, etc.  I was sitting in jail. Many of our colleagues were sitting in jail.  We lost that part of our youth and I think that we owe the youth today the benefit of enjoying that most exciting part of their lives which is the age between, you know, 15 and 30.  I know some people who like to mention 40, but I cannot.  I think that is rather old by then.

YASMINE SOOKA: Thank you very, very much for sharing your story with us.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much Mr Morobe.  I will ask Piet Meiring whether he has got a question for you.  Russell Ally.

RUSSELL ALLY: Just a very brief question Murphy.  So much has
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been written about 1976, books, articles.  From what you have encountered, from some of the literature, how accurate a portrait do you think there is of 1976 and I ask that because of the things that, the tasks that we have as a Commission is to prepare a report which is based very much on what witnesses or what victims actually say about those periods that we cover, 1960 to 1993.  Just very briefly your sense of what some of the literature has been saying about 1976.