Human Rights Violation Hearings — Heiderveld — 1996-08-22

NOMAKULA EVELYN ZWENI: I can't remember some of this incidents, there were so many.  After I was beaten up in Bellville, then the boers came again.  When they came in, they told me we are here to fetch you, you are wanted in Court.  I told them I am not going anywhere, you want to kill me now.   
They pointed a finger at me and I said to them if you - if you point a finger at me, why are you still doing that, it will be better if you were now crossing over - abroad and leave this country.  You came to our country and take everything that is ours.  I said you are the - you are the offender, I am not offending anyone.  This is my country, I want to - I want to go around in the country with no fear.  And you come to take our land.  You - you came here as visitors, you are only 12,  I must just tell you that.
That day the boers didn't say anything, they just kept quite and left.  I told them that we - you are just 12 here, I don't even know that there was that you came with, you were just - you were just nothings when you came - you don't have no where you suppose to be.   I know myself, I am Xhosa speaking, one of them just said ag just leave her alone.  I said I am ready for your beating, do it again beat me up, just do whatever you want to do.
After that I just kneeled down and I prayed and prayer my God.  I said I have been praying God please don't kill me- I trust God, I still trust him.  I trusted him then, I trust him now.  After that some people were just arrested that time.  Bars were set alight, I was there, I told the boers no we told the boers not to have their bars in the locations, because these bars were abusing our husbands, our husbands use to come back from this bars, drunk with no money, those are the things that the boers did to our people.
Our husbands would go and spend the money in those bars and come back with nothing to us.  When I talk about apartheid, I feel like crying, I feel like screaming.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: It is - it is obvious mamma that many things happened to you, it is not just the beatings by the police, the things that you talk about, there - they are talking about the way you lived then.  We know - we can see that, that beating is not the only thing that tortured you.  It is obvious to see that you are very angry to the people, we understand.

NOMAKULA EVELYN ZWENI: We burned this places up, there was a bar where I use to live, we burnt it -I am telling you we burnt it.  Because they use to call us kaffirs how can you call a person kaffir, what is that - what is kaffir, what is that, what is that?  I don't want apartheid at all.  You will be beaten up - you would be beaten up  in your land by the boers.  People who came from abroad [intervention]

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: When are you going to leave mamma - when did you leave mamma?

NOMAKULA EVELYN ZWENI: In 1978 the boers told me that I must go anywhere.  I was not under house arrest.  They will come in everyday just to check me up.  One day I took a jacket, I took my shoes, put them into a bag, I simply left,  I left.  Then I came now - when - when I was told that Mandela is back.
If I hadn't left, I would have died, I left my small child, nobody knew  what happened to that child, children - children were buried in black refuse bags.  Even now our children's graves, but I don't know.  It will never be 20 years and the child is still alive, I don't know if my child is still alive.
Yes I know, I agree we must have reconciliation, now because if you don't - if you don't take the pass out of - out of a wound, that would will never heal.  We understand that this pass has to be taken out of this heal - this wound for it to heal.   I am grateful that yes this reconciliation must happen.  But there is one thing I will never forgive and that's apartheid, apartheid I don't even want to see it anywhere I go.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: Mamma how do you feel about coming here during these past minutes talking to us, how do you feel now that you have expressed yourself?

NOMAKULA EVELYN ZWENI: I feel like that I have vented everything from myself.  But now I am worried about my child, God will give me a forgiveness, because I pray him all the time, yes he will give me peace.  I also pray that he gives me peace, a soldier dies in the war.  But now how can I - how can I accept the death of somebody else's child if I will not accept my own child's death.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: Yes.

NOMAKULA EVELYN ZWENI: On this date, on the 22nd I do accept reconciliation with both hands.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: Thank you mamma, thank you very much.  Mamma is there anything else that you would like to add?  Something else that you would like to go on about before we talk to the woman next to you?

NOMAKULA EVELYN ZWENI: Please help me with something because I will - my - I lost my house, I am just nothing now.  I would like it if you can just help me with something, I don't know, you will - you will see what to do yourselves.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: You said that Ms Girlsie Nyembezi  will be your witness because she knows something.

NOMAKULA EVELYN ZWENI: Yes she knows something about 1976, there she is.

MS NYEMBEZI: All right.

CHAIRPERSON: Please mamma  wait just a while.  Yes Wendy.

WENDY ORR: Ms Zweni do you know the names of any of the police who beat you, sorry?  Ms Zweni do you know the names of any of the police who beat you?

NOMAKULA EVELYN ZWENI: I would never know their - I will never know the police names, because I was never friendly with the police.  There was nothing that I was associating me with the police anyway.

WENDY ORR: Ms Zweni you mentioned that you saw bodies when you - you said that the - you saw the things flying around and you saw bodies.  Can you tell me a little bit more about that please.

NOMAKULA EVELYN ZWENI: About the bodies, these - these bodies were the result of the shootings from the citizens.  On the way to the flats to Langa, there were - there were shootings and I am telling you for sure I saw - I saw this bodies, we buried those bodies, all those people we buried them.

WENDY ORR: Do you know how many of them there were more or less?

NOMAKULA EVELYN ZWENI: The ones I saw if I can just estimate, there were more than 20, but now I cannot really remember because it was a long time ago.

WENDY ORR: Thank you.

NOMAKULA EVELYN ZWENI: All right.

CHAIRPERSON: Any other questions, [indistinct]

ADV NTSEBEZA: Excuse me mamma, I would like to follow up a certain question that was asked by the - my colleague here.  Just listen that's all right.  The history about this period, especially things that happened on this day that you talking about.
They say there are only two people who died.  But now you are talking about bodies.  Now what do you say about that, are there three of them.  No but the reports that we get say only two people.

NOMAKULA EVELYN ZWENI: Never there are not two, there were not two, they were bodies.  They were not just two, there were strewn all over from twelve to fifteen or even twenty.  There were even over twenty, some of - some of the people I actually saw them being shot myself.  I witnessed this.
I was going up and down by a car.  I was looking at all of them, nobody can ever tell me about this, I was there myself.  I was there from Langa to Guguletu, nobody can tell me any stories about that, I was there myself.

CHAIRPERSON: Denzil - no - you said you want to ask about her son.

DR BORAINE: Ms Zweni I wonder  if you could just put the [indistinct]   Ms Zweni I have two questions, the first please tell us a little bit more about your child, the one that is either missing or dead that you don't know about.

NOMAKULA EVELYN ZWENI: In the first place I left my child here.

DR BORAINE: How old was the child?

NOMAKULA EVELYN ZWENI: He or she was born in 1953 on the 20th of March.

DR BORAINE: [Indistinct]  when you came back the child was gone?