Human Rights Violation Hearings — Johannesburg — 1996-04-29

GEORGE DUBE: So as we were working every day being beaten, this place has got gorges you know, so we collect wood, we chop these dry trees you see, one day we went to get a tree down, it's like to down, and we had to carry this tree up and yesterday it was raining so I was carrying this log, it was a big log that three guys must pick up and pick it up on your shoulder.  My shoulders were somehow sore here because of these logs.  So I was behind this guy, we two carrying these logs.  So I slipped, it was muddy this place, this log fell, it fell on my leg, this right leg.  I had a fracture.  I didn't know that I had a fracture, I just thought that this log was beating me.  I had a small fracture there.  So I carried on working like that, I never had treatment.  I told the medical officer that my leg is always painful, I don't know what's wrong with it, but I think it's because of that log that beat me.  So he gave me rubbing stuff.  I wasn't taken to the hospital.
 The other thing is Chairperson that I forgot to tell you, the first medical officer that we found there, that was Thobile, the moment you go to the hospital, we got our clinic there, the moment we go there most of us, you complain about a headache he gives you stomach pills.  You 
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complain about the stomach he gives you headache pills, that was Thobile.  So they changed Thobile.  Then came in Comrade Spider.  Spider was a bit better.  So Spider didn't like this that we were being beaten around and pills were being wasted.  Just wasting pills because I have to give these guys pills and bandage them, you are beating these guys purposely for nothing.  These guys are working and so forth. So alright I had a fracture there, I carried on.  One night I was cold after another guy was cold and this guy was crying for almost an hour he was beaten in a certain room.  You know we've got rooms and our room was the biggest, we were 15, these others were five, 10 and so forth, and we don't know each other and you can never know your neighbour here because when they come out they lock you up.  When the others come out just like that.  We don't mix.  You never know them, two years can pass in that place.  
 So the first corner there there was a room there where beatings were happening, torturing.  So I was the second, they called me, it was 11 at night.  So I went there.  I knew that today is my last day because always there at that place, the way it was so bad my brother I was praying.  I remember I prayed three times that I would wake up one morning being dead, please God, why don't you separate my soul, my spirit and my body.  Really I was very serious I wish I would wake up dead. And of course we would wish that, it was not only me.  So I was taken to that room at 11 o'clock. I was beaten at night. Whooo I was beaten my brother!!!!  They told me to strip my clothing off and remain in underwear, I did so.  You lie on your stomach and pick your legs up like this, boots out, pick my legs up then they hit me with electric cord under the feet there.  My 
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feet were cut, like being cut by razors.  I couldn't stand it so I wanted to stand up and sort of fighting myself.  There were four officers, the commander, the commissar, I don't know the other two guys were helping the commander and the commissar of the camp.  That was Sizwe Mkhonto, Morris, the other two I forget.  When I entered the house you could also when you went into that room there was blood as though somebody was just splashing blood on the walls.  I saw one tooth down there.  I just thought today here that's my last.
 So I was beaten there.  Sizwe was kicking me.  When I was taken with the two fists like this, dotted me down, kick my mouth, I'm sure that's their system they know you won't tolerate this beating under the feet, you will want to refuse and then they put you down and they kick you on your mouth and your teeth out.  So I was torn, my mouth was torn, my eye here, even now if you hold me you can hear the bone is broken bone that very day.  The boot, the boot had an iron in front there.  So I was kicked around and beaten on my body, fists, kicked my abdomen, boots and then they told me I should sit around the corner there, by the corner there, they drank tea.  They told me that you are lying you are going to tell us who sent you here, you don't want to tell us you are going to tell us.  So I couldn't tell. What was I going to tell, because I knew nothing about being a spy.  I never spied anybody in my life.  To an extent that I even saw that Comrade Wandile, I told him that John Vorster Square is here now.  You have been calling me a spy, John Vorster is just nearby, let's go and ask if George Dube was a spy, do they know George Dube. So he tried to be smiling around.  
 So okay I was beaten there, they rested and then they 
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started beating me again and so forth for almost one and a half hours, I don't know how many minutes they were busy beating me there.  Then they took me out of that house.  They told me to go and sleep.  I had to go the next day with those swollen feet to go and work.  Because even to go to the toilet in the morning you run, you don't just walk there.  Always you are (...indistinct) in this camp here, there is no walking.

REV XUNDU: Okay.  And in 1983 you were released?

GEORGE DUBE: Ja in 1983 I was released.  But my friend, alright, let me just tell you something that I didn't like.  Because the moment I have tried to go to the toilet, when you went to the toilet you don't go and sit there and relax and relieve yourself, you sit there for about a quarter of a minute, just 15 seconds, then up, then you would dress up then sometimes you have to touch your toes and then you are being beaten, you don't know what for.  Early in the morning.
 Then okay, so Comrade Masondo came after the four years, it was 1983, it's now almost four years there, somewhere at the end of 1983, September, October, he came and called my name.  So he called me, I went there in the offices of administration.  He told me that - because there I was called "Bishop" now, my name was Bishop because our names changed there, for the second time now.  Now there already they give you a new name again for the other guys not to hear that there is Sipho George Dube that's staying next door here somewhere.  So my name was Bishop, okay.  So he called Bishop.  I went to that administration.  Comrade Masondo told me that I must - today I am going to be released from this place and I am going to join other 
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comrades so I must understand that the Congress makes some mistakes.  That's what Comrade Masondo said to me, that I must understand that the Congress makes mistakes.  So they are going to release me to go and join other comrades.  So I just thanked him very much.  That was all.  Then I was released.

REV XUNDU: Did you raise the complaint with the senior officers of the organisation?

GEORGE DUBE: You see the time - Comrade Masondo said that when we were released, we were three that day, from that very same cell, we were told that when we arrived there, the camps wherever we are with other comrades we mustn't tell other comrades that we've been here in this place, this rehabilitation centre otherwise we will be taken back.  So we kept the secret that never tell anybody. If somebody asks you where were you if he knows you, you tell him that you are from Zimbabwe or Zambia, you have been in school or what-what-what, that was all.  So I couldn't just go and tell anybody.

REV XUNDU: So lastly George what would you like the Commission to do for you?