Special Hearings — Children's Hearings — 1997-06-12

MS MKHIZE: Excuse me Dr Coleman.  As I had indicated earlier on, I had asked you to try and really give a very, very brief summary because as I've said that the Commissioners have gone through your document and they were planning to engage with you on what you are saying in the form of questioning.
 So I don't know whether it will be fair to ask you to stop, so as to ...

DR COLEMAN: Well, Chairperson, I can stop and stop here but I mean so far I have actually condensed this down to about a quarter of what I would normally have said, so I am in your hands.

DR RANDERA: Max, I wonder if we can for the rest of your submission, take you by interacting with you, just take you through the rest of the submission, rather than you actually, so we will actually cover the rest of your submission, if that is okay with you.  Can you hear me?

DR COLEMAN: I can't really, no.

DR RANDERA: I was suggesting that we take you through the rest of the questioning by asking you questions, if that is agreeable to you.

DR COLEMAN: I am in your hands.

DR RANDERA: Thank you very much, Max.  Dr Coleman, I wonder if I can start by perhaps trying to personalise your submission.  Throughout the life of the Commission, we have heard countless stories of people being harassed because of particular positions that they took in the period that we are looking at.
 Perhaps you can tell us about your own experiences and the experiences of your family.

DR COLEMAN: Yes.  I can do that although you know, I didn't come here to do that.  My own involvement in monitoring of human rights violations over the last 15 years or so or for a 15 year period, was triggered off by the detention of one of my sons.
 And he was subsequently banned, he was detained for five and a half months and then subsequently banned.  I have another son who was detained during the state of emergency of 1985 for a similar period and also received a banning order subsequently.
 I have been associated with an association which has probably had in excess of 1 000 of its members detained without trial, and that is the Detainees' Support Committee.  It had its premises firebombed, we occupied a floor or a number of rooms in Gotso House and that was bombed and we were together with the rest of the occupants bombed out of Gotso House.
 We've had a number of our members assassinated.  I can mention in that connection Skilla Longo and David Webster.  Personally, at a personal level, my wife Audrey who is going to give testimony later, has had her passport removed from her by the authorities, because they said that she was running around the world telling untruths about children and the like being detained.
 I, myself have been trailed by the Security Police by innumeral occasions.  One could go on for quite a long time about this, but as I said, I didn't really come up here to personalise the matter.

DR RANDERA: Thank you Dr Coleman.  My next question is related to interventions.  I am sure that during this period of existence of both the DOSC and the HRC, you must have approached the then government on a number of occasions, highlighting these issues that you have raised within your report.  Can you give us an insight into the responses that you got from the then government?

DR COLEMAN: Well, that is correct, yes.  At a very early stage in 1981 we approached the authorities at John Vorster Square here, demanding certain arrangements in terms of getting food, parcels, a change of clothing to detainees and demanding visit rights which were refused for a while and then there was the death in detention of one of those people, called Dr Neil Aggart and that was in February 1982 and that in effect was a trigger for the Security Police to change their stance and allow visits to take place for a while, limited visits.
 We then approached the National Head of Security Police, who was at that time General Coetzee, to try and establish the same pattern for visits to detainees throughout the country and at great difficulty in getting any kind of agreement there, we then took the matter to the Minister of Police and the Minister of Justice, that was Minister La Grange and Minister Coetzee, early in 1982 and at which we said as a delegation that first of all, we reject the whole notion of detention without trial as beyond the civilised (indistinct) and secondly to point out that within detention, torture was going on at a routine level and that this should stop.
 They thereupon challenged us to produce evidence on that score and we did just that. Over the coming months, we presented 75 statements of people who had been tortured and we released this to the press and of course from then on, we were persona non grata, with those authorities.
 During the state of emergency when they published regulations on the conditions under which detainees should be held, we requested a meeting with Minister of Justice, Minister Coetzee, who was responsible for those regulations and requested a meeting with him to discuss those conditions of detention, to try and do something about improving them and we were refused a hearing totally.
 There have been subsequent conflictual contacts with the authorities such as when later on we maintained that there were still a number of children being kept in detention, this was as late as 1988 and this was contested by Minister Vlok at the time and he invited me to go into the prisons and point out the young people under the age of 18 who were still there, which is precisely what I did.  And sure enough, they were there.
 So this was a whole history of let's say in the beginning, trying to meet with the authorities to first of all argue with them on philosophical grounds about the issue of detention without trial and then at a later stage to try and improve the lot of detainees and to counter the misinformation which was being put out about the detention of children.

DR RANDERA: Max, you've highlighted the effects of destabilisation on countries surrounding South Africa.  Is it your opinion and that of the Human Rights Committee that when we - in looking at reparations and rehabilitation that we need to actually  look at the effect that South Africa had on the surrounding countries and consider some form of reparation to these countries as well?

DR COLEMAN: Yes, I would say undoubtedly, undoubtedly.  I think we owe in particular Mozambique and Angola a huge debt.
 South Africa in the form of the apartheid  government has been responsible for massive dislocation of communities in both of those countries.  I leave out the other countries for the moment, but those in particular there was massive dislocation as we've heard this morning from - most eloquently - from Graca Machel, the devastation was complete and utter, that children in particular bore the brunt and then the reports I read say something like half a million children were removed from school or from their homes or without schooling, without health care and so on.
 Angola has the largest limbless population in the world per capita, 40 000 are limbless in Angola or were in 1989, it is probably well beyond that now.
 And a large percentage of that is children and we have this bizarre situation where the mines which were used in Angola, were manufactured in South African factories and now South Africans are getting a second benefit out of getting the contract for the removal of the mines which they actually manufactured, I think that is a disgrace.