Special Hearings — Prison Hearings — 1997-07-22

MR LEWIN: Could we get onto the Daily Mail articles?

HAROLD STRACHAN: I can't remember you know, it is such a long time ago.  I don't think I put him in.  There were other things more urgent, but he invited me to join a party cell which he knew was going on and he invited me to leave the country unlawfully.  He would provide transport and he tried this, that and the other, you know, but I knew all the time you know, that he was a plant and in fact, when he couldn't get me, he got another, he got a few other people.
 Some of them were in (indistinct) with us, you will remember them.  But never mind, so but I did think there was one thing I could do, you see.  And that was to blow the whistle on what happened in prison.  And we knew how dangerous this would be if one were careless you see.
 But I spoke to Turok about this too, you know, before leaving and I said you know, if one could be careful and not fall into any of the pitfalls there, it could be done, you see.
 We didn't establish a plan there to do it before I left, but when I came out, I was approached by Benjamin Pogrund, who seemed to have been having similar ideas and he pointed out, you know, that the Prisons Act specifies that any statement you make about any circumstance in prison, you have to be able to verify.  You must have checked that this statement is true.
 In other words it was careless, unsubstantiated statements that was going to get you nailed in terms of the Prisons Act, you see.  So I thought well, I have got the best check up in the world, I was there, I can talk about things that I actually saw and we decided that it would be safe to do that.
 And that is what I did or rather Benjamin Pogrund, and he sat - I was very much off balance you know on coming out of prison and I had flu and he arrived and I think the thing was done hastily, but it had a sort of vigour about it, the inconsequence of that and he made recordings, three recordings for three days in the Rand Daily Mail, front page, centre page articles on life in South African prisons.
 As soon as he had left with his tape recorder, I disappeared.  Oh, there is another thing.  You could expect when you came out of prison, to get a total set of restrictions laid on you, total banning, total house arrest, the lot you know.
 And harassment in other ways by preventing you finding any employment whatsoever, you know and generally badgering and bullying you and so forth and cheating in various ways.  And one expected this to happen, but it hadn't happen.  I had been a month out of prison and I was left in peace, I could go and meet whom I liked, you know.
 All the young folks coming into the struggle, including John Brooks, the plant, and this alone, you know, was to eerie a silence and that confirmed my suspicion that a trap was being laid you see, but as soon as Benjamin had gone with his tape recorder, I disappeared and went fishing down the coast with friends of mine.
 Because we knew what would happen.  As soon as the first article came out, you know, the Security Branch was there, they wanted the rest, they wanted to find me to put a banning order on me, to make it impossible for anybody to publish anything that I had prepared and they wanted to get the other two articles that were about to appear in the RDM, in the next two issues.
 But they couldn't find me to put the banning order on me and Benjamin by his cunning, had made the second and third instalments unavailable, even though they got copies, they didn't, they weren't able to stop the publication of those two second and third articles.
 Now, in this series of articles, I started off with "Die Rooi Hel", in Port Elizabeth, that is the north end prison and it really was a hellish place.  
 I said in the article that assaults were constant and they were, you know.  I think that was one of the things that I was eventually charged with, that it wasn't true because constant means 24 hours of every day people was assaulted.  It wasn't so, I mean what it really meant I was talking more figuratively, you know that you could expect at any moment of 24 hours of a day to see somebody assaulted and it was, one did see that you see.
 So I concentrated on specific things.  The main one was assault on Black prisoners.  I never saw a White prisoner assaulted.  But it was the mode of address you know.  When you spoke to a guy, it was like using a capital letter at the beginning of a sentence.  You would give him a "klap" on the side of his head, and then speak to him, you know.
 And it went with saying everything three times, you know.  "Kom laaitjie, kom laaitjie, kom laaitjie", with increasing impatience, you know.  He couldn't say once, "kom laaitjie", you know.  Three times, it always went with a "klap".
 Well, that is not even what I mean by assault.  That is just conversation.  I mean the brutal assault you have to see in a prison mate, I mean really, and I made a point of remembering every detail of one specific assault on a small Bushman type, coloured fellow who had escaped from somewhere you know.
 And they recaptured him and I was in the reception office when they brought him back.  And I hope never to see anything like that again.  I mean it is awful and I remembered every detail of it.  I could churn it all out now, I still remember it, but I think it would impede the story.
 That was one of the main things in the first article and that was what "Die Rooi Hel" was about, you know.  Of course there were other things.  As I was laying in bed with the flu there and Benjamin would say, you know, I would come to a stop and he would say, well, what about such and such and such and such and for example one of the things he mentioned was how was the food, you know.
 And I said it was lousy prison food and he said, what about the dishes and things.  Was the place clean and I said the dishes were always greasy, you know, but that is of no importance to me.  You know, you expect this to be greasy in prison, you know, I didn't regard that as any loss or any assault on my human dignity or anything, you know.
 And other things like that you know, did you have nice blankets?  No, the blankets were all covered with semen and the place was very shiny, it was unhygienic and dirty and we weren't allowed to use the shower room when we chose because it would be nicely cleaned up for inspection.  Things like that, and twice a week we were taken around the back to shower under cold water, you know, out of doors, and things like that.
 And the fact that we didn't have a toilet in our cell, you know, we had a flushing toilet in the corner and no seat or anything and then we had a stand with a canister of water on it and a mug.  You know, 12 people were living in this cell, and that was it you know.  If you wanted to brush your teeth, you could spit in the lav and get some water for this mug to rinse out your mouth and some of the guys, I think was really hardened fellow called Elton Bouwer, he was the king of the ducktails in Port Elizabeth and he had become king in his brief (indistinct) between indeterminate sentences in Pretoria Central. ... (tape ends)

MR LEWIN: Continue.