Human Rights Violation Hearings — Duduza — 1997-02-04

MRS SEROKE: Mama Thelmah, in your statement you say the people were actually allocating land amongst themselves.  Can you just explain what you meant by that?

THODUOE THELMAH GQINEBE: There once were local residents were dividing and allocating land amongst themselves as well amongst their sub-tenants.  So this caused a fight and there was an altercation and these police came to quell the fight that took place and when the police came they did not want the Comrades to give part of the land to other members.  These were ANC members who were dividing and allocating the land.

MRS SEROKE: Thank you Tom.

CHAIRPERSON: Mrs Thelmah, we do understand the problem that you are in as well as your family.  As we ask as to where Kamdar is and as to what efforts were made by Kamdar to try and find out as to what happened to your son, we want to get in touch with them to ask them as to, what is it they found, what is it they failed to find and how best can we get that.  So, with that which Dr Russell has said, you can count on us.  We will do our best in this regard.  Please give our regards to the family and let it know how pained we too are.  Thank you.
 This brings us to the end of our hearings for today.  We thank the communities of Duduza, Kwatema, Ratanda and Zakane who made this occasion possible.  We thank, in particular, those who came to witness and we hope that we shall be of service to them and our service is not only the service from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but we, by and large, ask these communities to help us to establish the kind of understanding and information that will lead to the reconstruction of its communities.  We thank the police who have been with us.  We thank the Mayor and the councillors.  We thank the Churches and we thank all the organisations that made this occasion possible.  I think, amongst them, Kulumani.  We thank everybody who graced this hall.  You matter, you made it possible that 
this occasion be what it is.  We thank the media, we even thank our foreign visitors.  We hope out of these hearings they will be able to construct something of what the Government and the community of South Africa seeks to construct out of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. 
 To those who can be able to, we shall be having the hearings tomorrow in Benoni Town Hall.  The hearing will start at nine am.  If there is anybody that I may not have mentioned in terms of gratitude for being here, please just understand the limitations under which we operate.  It being the end, we are going to request all who have the headsets to bring them back and I think that sums up, this sums it up that we are very happy.  You made this occasion a success.  Your numbers, okay, we constantly asked for silence.  Perhaps it was unavoidable for you to behave the way you did, it is just human, but we are very grateful for your support.  Sorry, can anybody, that is alright.

MR LEWIN: Does Joyce want to give a prayer?

CHAIRPERSON: Did you want to give a prayer.

MRS SEROKE: Maybe we should just sing the anthem.

CHAIRPERSON: Okay.  Can we make it.

MR LEWIN: But we do not know it.

CHAIRPERSON: Leave it.

MR LEWIN: Just leave it.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes.  We are having a little bit of problem with our new anthem and since we do not know it, we are requesting you to rise and depart peacefully.  Thank you.  Safe journey home.