Special Hearings — Women's Hearings — 1997-07-28

MS MKHIZE: Thank you very much, Sheila.  I mean, I'm sure fellow Commissioners and the audience at large and other witnesses, they will agree with me that it
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 ... multi-levels of abuse, of human rights violation.  You are referring to what happened within the family to our children and to friends.  It must be overwhelming and confusing.
 Having said that, I will ask you one or two questions and hand you back to the chair so that they can clarify and ask you questions of clarification.
 If I may ask you, as I have acknowledged that it must be overwhelming for you, when you look back now;  what you went through,  do you think you suffered a lot by virtue of being a girl/child in the Mathopeng family?  
 Did being a girl add to all the pain and suffering you went through as a child?

SHEILA MASOTE: I definitely feel so.  Why?  Like I've said, the boys always get it easy.  They always - sometimes defy the parents.  Mothers give in quicker, or whatever.  I've got sons myself, but I haven't had that experience with them. But as a girl/child, besides any, I think society first of all has demands on me.  I have to have a conforming way of living, I have to be a good girl, I have to, I don't have to voice or even raise my voice.  That was at least my teaching.  I have to pretend that things are right even when they are not right.  And above all I had take over a mother role at an early age and I couldn't be me.  I had to be Mrs Mathopeng. I'm not taking over her, but made in the house.  Because I would want to say, if I'm not there, then my mother cannot survive.  It can't happen without me.  I've always been the child whose there, and as a girl, I think, yes, even the relatives would say;  you know, how can you of all.  If there's the boys, it's understandable they can give your mother problems.  But you as a girl should know better. You know, and whatever,   And you know, whatever that even when my father passed away, he still left it on me to say, "esryakgadi";  the aunt in the family.  I don't know how to put it in English.  The only girl in the family of Rachad in the family, my name should never really (indistinct)....
 So I've always stood up there and part of why I nearly divorced, is because I realised when I look back that I left my family to suffer.  I left my husband.  I was looking at my home, at my father, because at the same time I'm running after his case.
 And even when he came back from prison, I had to be there.  And even my husband have said, yes, for the first time my wife I'm beginning to enjoy you, now that your daddy has passed away.  I'm not begrudging it, but I'm saying you are warmer.  You are giving all your attention to me.
 Yes, I suffered as a girl, more than if I was a boy.

MS MKHIZE: Thank you very much.  Just another concern.  When you - before you were detained, here it says that you were detained because you were visiting your parents a lot, but were you at that time politically active yourself, in your own right?

SHEILA MASOTE: I shall put it this way.  From my childhood I developed a block.  I hated politics.  I hated this gogga that took my father away from me.  That destroyed my home.  When I asked why is my father (... indistinct) I'm doing this to save my nation.  I hated that nation.  What is that nation that I can't touch?  Where is that nation when we're going through all this anger.
 And therefore, most of the time I was looking to, yes I was very supportive and I didn't become actively involved in going to meetings and whatever you know.  But I was always there for people who came.  When the people were running away, we carried them.  You know, that kind of low profile.  Yes I was, but at the same time I had torn conflicts.  A split, I don't know, personality, or view of politics.
 It's until, as things were unfolding, that I understood.  And maybe my imprisonment re-emphasised that all these people are suffering, or my father, is this what he's going through and is this the meaning of it all?  I'm not doing it for personal gain.

MS MKHIZE: You also mentioned that you lost pregnancy while you were in detention.  Do you associate that with any of the experiences in detention, or how did the doctor explain that?

SHEILA MASOTE: I must say that maybe, one, talking now, looking backward, because when my mother was taken, it was in November, I already knew that the writing is on the wall.  I had that premonition I'm next.
 At that time I decide I'm going in exile.  And I went into, that was in October, I went into Botswana.  And my husband took us there with my two children.  We stayed for about two months and it is Pamla of Apla who was very instrumental in saying to me weigh your options Sheila, are you sure you want to go in exile?
 And at the time, I'm saying I think I was also not becoming very healthy.  But the last straw was, yes, when I was kicked in prison.  That, yes, I lost my pregnancy.  But yes, I may have lost it because the overall circumstances that I was going through, maybe, but then it didn't happen fortunately outside prison, but it happened there, or unfortunately.  I don't know if I'm answering here.

MS MKHIZE: Thank you.  Chairperson.

CHAIRPERSON: Joyce.

MS SEROKE: Sheila, a while ago you described yourself as a tomboy.  Why would you call yourself a tomboy when you were showing characteristics of strength?  You were the only one who was left behind, looking after your mom and your family.  Why do you think your character and your strength should be interpreted as being a tomboy?

SHEILA MASOTE: These are - I'm failing to explain it in English, to express myself in English - that's the word that was eluding me, but we always - I believe first of all I'm stronger than all the men that have come in my life, but because the way society interprets strength as for he, this macho, but then the tomboy in this case was:  I'm strong, I'm carefree you know, I assumed character of being boyish.  I used to wear my brother's shorts.  You know, I became, I don't know, a carefree kind of person and not prim.  I was rebelling against the image of a girl that should be conforming, soft, gentle and always saying, hear me, you know kind of, but I just began at an early to be able to speak up, but then I would get beaten up for it. And that is why this phrase, tomboy, I don't know.

MS SEROKE: You described your mom's anguish and bitterness and anger at what was happening to her and her husband and how it was now transformed into the kind of abuse you got from your mom;  the beatings, the swearing and so on.
 How - and you transferred that to your daughter and your children.

SHEILA MASOTE: My children.

MS SEROKE: And your son, especially.  At what stage did you come to recognise that in spite of that, your mother still loved you?