Human Rights Violation Hearings — East London — 1996-04-18

ROBERT NORMAN STANFORD: To save the Commissioners time I have made notes here yesterday to try and cut down on what I would have to say to try to save you time. I know how much you have to try and ge through in your limited period of time.
 I was born in the Transkei in 1922, in the village of Lusikisiki, my father was an attorney there, he was also born in the Transkei and basically we have Transkeian and a fairly much African background, if I can use that word. 
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The educational facilities there were very limited and I was sent to boarding school when I was quite a young age at Hilton College in Natal and my mother was a Canadian from overseas, and together we as a family had a very happy time growing up in the Transkei. In fact I could speak Xhosa before I could speak English because most of my playmates when I was young were African's, not whites.
 When I left school in 1940, my father who was an attorney in the beginning of the Second World War, and everybody at the time that I knew wanted to become part of the armed forces if they possibly could, but he insisted very wisely that I start a career before I do anything. I was only 17 at the time, and so I did start a legal career in Cape town and in 1941 I joined the air force.  After a year and a half of training I qualified as a pilot and was sent up to the Middle East where I spent a few months and then I was recruited to go to the Far East where I spent about three years before returning home.
 My experiences there taught me a lot about human suffering, human nature, man's inhumanity to man, I was present for example in Singapore, we were one of the first batch of Allied troops to get to Singapore when the war ended to see the release of the prisoners from that notorious Changi Jail, about which a book called The Rat was written, and I saw their physical and mental conditions, and very disturbingly, also the results of the Japanese torture of other people, the way they were treated and the way that came about and you learned a lot from that and, you carried forward in your mind and you do forget it.
 After the war I went back, I resumed my legal studies in Cape Town, I qualified as an attorney in 1948 and then I 
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came to Kingwilliamstown where I practised law for many years and married my wife at the end of 1948.  She happened to be a missionary's daughter from a mission station called Fairly Cross which perhaps is known to some of you in Pondoland, and we had a close and happy life.
 I built up a very big and a very thriving legal practice, I think I was a good lawyer, I gave good service and I worked long hours, 12 to 16 hours a day to keep up with my work and I had a successful practice, and a very happy one.  After the death of my wife in September 1991, then I seemed to gradually deteriorate mentally.  That only occurred in retrospect, not at the time, I didn't realise really what was gradually happening to me mentally, but I gradually lost a lot of the accu...(indistinct)I had had, although a lot of my work was, I still think of a very high standard at the time and I think I can say I was quite a good lawyer. 
    Unfortunately, I didn't pick up what was going wrong mentally with me quicker and so in a way this attack which Beth described in detail yesterday, was rather a blessing in disguise as it certainly forced me to take some dramatic steps.  After it I spent a long time in hospital, I think about six weeks first in Frere Hospital and then when I was moved to Kingwilliamstown where we have a very nice clinic I spent about a month there. 
 When I was in hospital I was surprised at the number of ANC visitors who came to me and said emphatically that the ANC would never have been involved in the kind of that sort.  It  must have been orchestrated by outside, it must have been part of a campaign by extreme other organisations and the PAC and APLA did claim responsibility for the attack, 
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but the mental effect on one is not known to you until other people tell you exactly how bad it is. And when I did go back after my discharge from hospital, I was on crutches and my staff immediately noticed a change in me and they reported it to my doctor who sent me straight away to a psychologist in East London, to Dr Woods where I spent some time in his clinic with him and he reported on me in detail.  I have his report here, I've got all the psychiatric reports here which I am free to hand in because, although they're part of a court action, they were used primarily in support of an application brought by my family to have me placed under curatorship, and that case has been disposed of. So while I am under a subjudicative obligation at the moment, I discussed
this matter with my counsel, and these reports I'm free to hand in provided they stay with the Commission themselves and don't leave them, and are not disclosed to outsiders.
 They do show the pattern of my mental disability from the attack and from previous to the attack onwards, and the advice that I was given by Dr Woods, not to practise law, not to drive cars, I wasn't in a mental condition to do so. 
 As you know, no one is prepared to accept that you're not quite normal, and you tend to fight against it and you tend to try and uplift yourself, you tend to try and show that you've returned to a state of normality whereas in fact, you haven't done so.  After some time in the clinic here, I then started a series of medical operations I had to undergo and they were very expensive because I had very bad wounds to my legs, to my ankles, to my back, to my buttocks, my hands which I can hardly use and for about a year, or year and a half I went through the operations  from time to 
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time. I think that altogether I had eight operations, two in Frere Hospital in East London, sorry it's St Dominics in East London, where the specialists who operated on me told me that unfortunately they didn't have the facilities here to detect and extract the shrapnel from my ankles and from my legs to get me on a better footing, so I was sent to Johannesburg to specialists there and one specialist to whom I went to three times.  The first time I went he couldn't do any operations because the doctors here hadn't diagnosed that I had a broken fibula in my left leg and it was the first thing he had to cure, when that came right he operated first on my right ankle.  I went back again and he operated on my left ankle, but a lot of the stuff he was unable to take out because it wedged between the bones and that is still what I have now, and I'm still having medical treatment for it.  
 My right hand was very badly damaged indeed and  I couldn't write for a long time.  I still have difficulty writing and the ordinary and the ordinary (...indistinct) medical circles where you have a couple of people in the country who specialise only in hands and I got a friend of mine who is a specialist in Johannesburg to trace one of these.  I went to him and he did a long operation on my right hand, a very painful one, at least I am able to move it now and I am able to write but these two fingers are still extremely sore, and the build up psychologically and mentally of pain, continued pain.  I was on pain killers for an extensive period, I still am, I take sleeping pills so I can sleep at night, and the stress of it all, built up eventually to such a condition that I was unable to completely control my legal practice.  
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 I did silly things, I made bad decisions, the Law Society took action against me, which I couldn't oppose because I wasn't in a mental condition to do so.  They moved top stop me practising and started an application to remove my name from the role of attorneys some two years ago.  I'm opposing it but I'm applying for my earned name removed at my own request because of my mental condition.  I believe that what I did wrong was not caused by me but by factors beyond my control and that case is pending, I don't know why, for over a year now.  The stress build-up has now resulted in me having a heart problem and I have to go to Cape Town on Monday to see the heart specialist....(end of side A of tape 17)
(side B tape 17)