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

CHAIRPERSON: I want to call the hearing to order again.
 The next witnesses are Ella Mahlophe and Winnie Makhubela.
 Gcina, do the witnesses need the ...  
 Thank you.  Are you able to hear me clearly?  Are you ready to go?  Gcina, we're ready to go. We know that it's not going to be easy for you to talk about the pain that you've experienced and Winnie as well.  To assist you, we're going to ask Commissioner Hlengiwe Mkhize to help through with your evidence.  Hlengiwe.

MS MKHIZE: Thank you, Chairperson.  Gcina, maybe they don't need this.  I will try and talk to them in Zulu.  No, they're speaking in Zulu.  Oh, okay Tsonga.

CHAIRPERSON: Tsonga on four.  They can put it back.  Ella, you'll be more comfortable in Tsonga?  All right.

MS MKHIZE: I will ask you to stand.  Then I will assist you with an oath.  You will just - if you can just at the end follow me - if you raise both of you - maybe we'll start with you, Ella Gloria Mahlophe.

ELLA GLORIA MAHLOPHE: (Duly sworn, states).

MS MKHIZE: Winnie Makhubela, I wi ll also ask you to say the same at the end.

WINNIE MAKHUBELA: (Duly sworn, states).

MS MKHIZE: Ella, I welcome both of you and I will ask you to start talking to the statement that you gave us.  You would take us back to the time when in this country we were having problems especially around the East Rand, and I will be happy if you can just talk to your statement as it is written here.

ELLA GLORIA MAHLOPHE: It was in 1993, on the 27th, when my child left to the shopping at the shopping centre.  I had sent them to buy some meat.  When they came back from the shopping centre, they came back together with another girl.
 There were three of them.  There was Tembe, Norwin and Molly and they were coming back.  When they arrived at a certain place in Thokoza, there were two men who came, who
came to call them and said there was a meeting at Thokoza.
 They went to this meeting in Thokoza.  When they arrived in Thokoza, they were put inside the hostel. They started undressing them, taking of their clothes.  After they've undressed them, they raped them.
 After they raped them, they took them and threw them outside the hostel, at the back of the hostel and they started shooting at them.
 They were trying to chop them with some huge bush knives and two of them died, and the other one managed to escape through the window.
 Out of this, Tembe died and here Winnie remained that didn't die.  Whilst they were still there, that other two died, Winnie survived. Winnie said a police car arrived and took this other two who had died and they took her to the hostel.
 Now we were surprised why this children are not coming back.  We were up and waiting until four pm and we started looking for them, because they're not coming back.  We were surprised at what had happened.  We looked for them all over and we went to sleep.
 In the morning there was a sister of the other girl who we thought they've gone to the sister of this other girl.  So we started searching for them in police stations and we couldn't find them.  
 When we couldn't find these young people, even in the police station, we started searching in hospitals.  We found Winnie at the hospital and the other two were in the Government mortuary.
 So we went back home and we went there and we started mourning them. My child who had already been born was already 16 years old then.  At the stage she was in Std 10.  She was doing Std 10 and she died while she was doing standard ten.
 That was the child I had hoped for.  I thought this child would help me, but today she passed away and she's not able to help.  And I am not happy about how they killed her.   When I went to see my child at the mortuary, I found that she had been chopped, she was full of grass all over and was naked.  During that time we then left and we went to identify the child at the mortuary and we did say that indeed it was the child.
 That's how my story goes.

MS MKHIZE: Thank you very much, Mahlophe. You're one of those women who have seen the most, to see your child leaving home and then having to identify her in a mortuary.
 Can you just tell the Commission a little bit about Tembe.  Was she politically active or whatever memories that you might think of, anything that will help us to have a vivid picture of her.

ELLA GLORIA MAHLOPHE: She was very interested in school work.  She wasn't involved in politics. She liked books. She used to read a lot.  Even the day she had left home, she just was accompanying her friend, because she was lonely. She was a very quiet child.

MS MKHIZE: How did you - you said you looked around, because when they didn't come back, you looked everywhere.  What kind of an explanation were you given by authorities, the police, you know, surrounding her death at the time when you ultimately realised that she had been murdered.

ELLA GLORIA MAHLOPHE: In the morning, the following morning when we had been searching for them, he said there weres some children who were arrested at the shopping centre.  They said some of them are dead and some of them are in hospital.  That's how we realised.  That's when we started looking for them and we found them at the hospital and at the Government mortuary when we didn't find at the hospital. But Winnie explained all of this to us;  how it had happened.  That's how we heard the story, through Winnie.

MS MKHIZE: I was just interested in what the authorities said. As parents, when your children are found in mortuary, I assume that you must have asked some questions or you must have been told how did they land up in the mortuary?

ELLA GLORIA MAHLOPHE: We didn't see the police.  We only heard that the police picked them from behind the hostel after they had been thrown there. They didn't come to us.  We just came and fetched the remains of our child and went home. There we never met the police. We never had any contact with the police.  The one who saw the police was Winnie during the time they were thrown behind the hostel.

MS MKHIZE: Was the matter ever taken to court or were you called by the police to come and listen maybe when they were having an inquest, the examination, the sitting that is often held after a person has been killed?

ELLA GLORIA MAHLOPHE: No, the police didn't explain anything to us.  We just found our children at the mortuary. That's the whole thing just and after we have found our remains of our children.
 But one day, in the morning, the police then came and said they were looking for Winnie.  They just wanted to find out from her if they knew the children who had been killed.
 So we were scared to let Winnie go with this police.  So we took Winnie and hid her away and took her far away to a place called Bush and that's where she was cooling off for a while, but we never had any contact with this police.

MS MKHIZE: Before maybe I ask Winnie to give us her perspective;  can you tell us how were these three children related?  That is Tembe, Molly and Winnie.

ELLA GLORIA MAHLOPHE: Molly is the neighbour's child.  She was the neighbour.  Tembe was my child, was my first-born.  Winnie is my brother's child.  We were staying in one family with Winnie and Tembe and my brother at home.

MS MKHIZE: If they were not politically involved;  what do you think, when looking back now, how did they pick on them at the time when they were picked up?

ELLA GLORIA MAHLOPHE: During that time in Thokoza and Spruit there were fights, there was violence, although it was still a cold kind of violence. It wasn't heightened. There was a meeting.  That's when they were taken at this meeting, but when they were attending this meeting, that's the time when they were killed.