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

GEORGE DUBE: Yes.  Thank you very much Mr Chairperson.  In 1961 my mother went to visit in Zimbabwe where my father was born.  So we have got relatives in Zimbabwe like my cousin for instance, he was staying here in Johannesburg, so he departed to Zimbabwe with his better half and children.  So then my mother liked that place.  When she came back from Zimbabwe she decided we depart also to Zimbabwe, to stay in Zimbabwe.  So we agreed, my father agreed.  So we decided to take all our belongings with Stuttafords Removals to Zimbabwe.  So our cousin got a house for us in Bulawayo. We went to that house with my mother, me being the last born of the house.
 I am sorry I have forgotten something.  I was born in Alexandra township in Bridgeman Hospital.  I am the last born at home.  So my family is a christian family, we belong to an Anglican Church.  I was confirmed in St Augustine 
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Church in Umzimlhope. So in 1963 we went to Zimbabwe we stayed there with my mother.  After four months, three to four months my mother got sick because she was suffering all the time from heart failure.  So my mother died in hospital in Bulawayo, after three or four months as I have said.
 So she was supposed to be buried there in Bulawayo by Father Deka, Anglican Church, but then my father came there and my father said that the uncle, the brother's of my mother, my uncles, they want my mother to be buried back home in Johannesburg.  So my mother was taken back to Johannesburg by plane being a corpse.  We came this side with my cousin's car, me, my father and my cousin to bury my mother here.  Already we were staying in Soweto from Alexandra Township.  So we buried my mother in Nancefield cemetery in July, 1963.  I was still schooling, doing my standard six.  I didn't pass my standard six with good marks.  My marks were about 50%, so I repeated standard six in 1964 in Bulawayo in Zimbabwe.
 So after that in 1964 I completed my standard six I left school because so far my father wasn't taking care of me because I think we had a new mother here at home in Soweto.  Somehow my father was supposed to follow and my brother and my elder sister.  We are four at home, it's two boys and two girls, I am the last born.  After burying my mother in Soweto, in Nancefield we went back, me and my cousin and my sister, my younger sister.  So we had to stay there, the two of us with my sister.  My sister and my brother remained here, they were about to follow and my father.  So my father didn't do that.  He got another mother and he remained in Soweto at our very home.
 So from there I left school in 1964.  I decided that I 
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should go and look for a job.  My first job was in a restaurant, an Indian restaurant washing plates, so I got so fed up about this washing plates the whole day that I left the job.  I went to seek another job.  I worked as a sweeper somewhere in Monte Carlo restaurant in Bulawayo.  I also worked for three or four months then I left the job.  The from there I started looking for a better job, I couldn't find a better job.  So then I thought I had better go back home to my father in South Africa.
 I tried to apply for a passport in Harare, the then Salisbury.  They gave me forms to fill in.  I was asked questions that - alright, as I am saying I was born in South Africa I must produce my birth certificate and ID, I was young that time I had no ID, I was still 14 years when I went there.  I didn't have a birth certificate because that time we didn't have birth certificates, it's a new thing.  I never had an ID.  So they said they've got no proof that I was born in South Africa so I couldn't get a passport.   I decided I had better go on my own, I'll have to jump borders without a passport, and I did so.
 So I went to Beit Bridge, I crossed the Limpopo River on foot.   A certain small boy I met there he showed me the way where people cross, people with no passports.  I came here footing all this bush and forest here in Beit Bridge up until Messina where I got a lift to Louis Trichardt.  So in Louis Trichardt I got a train I went home.  I arrived at home here in Soweto in 1971, Christmas Day, on the 25th of December, only to find my father there with a new mother.
 So alright neighbours were telling me that this is the third mother or fourth mother rather, that your father has been taking. Okay.  I stayed with my father there.  I looked JOHANNESBURG HEARING TRC/GAUTENG
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for a ID, I got an ID.  That time we used to get ID's in Albert Street.  So I got a permit from the superintendent that they know George.  I went to Hook Street, the City Council to get some papers that they really know me in the books in 1949 that I was born by Mary.  They gave me papers and then I went to make an affidavit at the nearest police station in Meadowlands, that how did I leave the place, do what, where I was and when.  So I took all those papers, I took them to Albert Street to the pass office.  I got the ID and then I looked for a job.  I got a job in Cleveland, my first job, in ...(indistinct) Modern Furnishers as a lorry boy.  I worked there I am sure until I got an idea of mine, that was I am sure six or seven months working there, I left the job.  The money was very small, it was R15,00 a week at that time.
 So I went, I looked for another job, I got a job in Wonder Furnishers in town here, in Plein Street.  I worked there a bit as a sweeper, they changed me to be a lorry repossessing furniture around Soweto here, so there was a lot of fighting when repossessing furniture so I thought I'd better leave this job because it was dangerous. Okay.  I left the job then and I got a job in Baragwanath Hospital as a waiter where doctors were having their supper, breakfast, lunch, dining for the doctors.  So I worked there.  
 All the time I was thinking of going to Zambia to go and join ZAPU.  The time I was in Zimbabwe ZAPU had a majority of support in Zimbabwe, a lot of people supported ZAPU, not ZANU.  People who supported ZANU were usually burnt by petrol bombs at that time.  In the late sixties and early seventies ZAPU was the only party that was liked in Zimbabwe, so I used to go for rallies in the stadiums, 
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Joshua Nkomo used to make some meetings.  I used to be around there.  That's where I started liking politics before I went back home in 1971.  So all this time I was thinking of a way of going to Zambia of going to go and join ZAPU.
REV. FINCA: Okay.  I have been asked to intervene just to bring you to the event that you are going to be testifying about.  You came back to the country in 1971 and you left again in 1975, your destination was Zambia but you preferred to go via Mozambique.  Can you tell the Commission then what happened when you left the country in 1975 via Mozambique?