Human Rights Violation Hearings — Durban — 1996-10-24

CHAIRPERSON: The British Consul was taking a long time to deliver them, and when the children arrived in Durban Richard called me on December, the 27th, and  said they  would like to go to Botswana with Fowzia, could I get the passports.   I called the Consul, and we had a succession of calls over the next few days as the Consul tried to speed the passports up.

CHAIRPERSON: Finally, on the 30th of December 1977, the Consul told me it wouldn't be possible to get them and I called Richard again.   Remember, all of this time while we are talking, people are listening in on the phone, and making connections which aren't necessarily accurate.

CHAIRPERSON: On January, the 2nd, Donald Woods escaped.   This was very much the chagrin of the then Minister of Justice Kruger, who had had a personal campaign against Richard Turner, and on a far lesser scale against myself.   I think that whoever was listening to the phone calls, and we certainly exchanged a couple of phone calls about Donald, began to wonder whether Richard was going to go too.   And our attempts to get the passports and Fowzia's leaving on the Friday night, were perhaps the pre-cursor to Richard himself going.

CHAIRPERSON: You have heard what happened on the night of - or in the early hours of January, the 8th, but I would like to tell you once again how our privacy was violated.   The telephone was cut off, they said it was the rain, but I was woken at about 12.20 by the telephone ringing in my kitchen.   I ran to it and I didn't get to it.   About 10 minutes later Elona Kleinschmidt phoned me and said there is something terribly wrong in Durban.   And I started to pack, I thought Richard had been detained and I would have to come up and get the children, because I knew Fowzia was in Botswana.

CHAIRPERSON: At 3.00 am Jan was finally allowed to telephone me.

CHAIRPERSON: During this time she and Kim have been locked into their father's bedroom, while the police ran around the house.  Those children had watched their father die and had been left alone with a young, inexperienced policeman, who you can't blame because he had no idea what he was doing, but he was brutally rude to them, and frightened them to death.   This is not how you treat nine and thirteen year olds.

CHAIRPERSON: I submit that their human rights to respect was violated during that hour and a half.   Their human right to comfort was violated.

CHAIRPERSON: At 3.00 am Jan was allowed to speak to me.   When I asked her where her father was, she said, "I am standing over his body".   I feel that even under that state, people could have had some respect for what was happening to children at that moment.   None was shown.

CHAIRPERSON: You can see that this makes me angry.   The anger at that kind of human rights violation has fuelled me ever since and continues to fuel me.   And it fuels me sitting here.

CHAIRPERSON: They deprived Richard Turner of his right to life.  They simultaneously deprived South Africa of one of its brightest and best minds.   They deprived my children of their father.   They deprived Fowzia of a husband.   They deprived Jane Turner of a son, and they deprived me of a friend.

CHAIRPERSON: I flew up to Durban and Jan and Kim were still in the clothes they had managed to scramble on.   Their hair was full of blood and I will never forget the smell of dried blood in my children's hair in the hot Durban sun.

CHAIRPERSON: The next day we went to the house and this is where the next human rights violation occurred, the right to justice.   I went into the children's bedroom, where Richard had been shot, and I could see what had happened. He had been standing at the window and he had obviously clutched himself and fallen on the bed and his handprint, he must have done that, and put his hand onto Kim's bed.  You could see his handprint in blood on the bed.

CHAIRPERSON: I walked over to Jan's bed, because I could see the bullet hole above Kim's bed and I pulled back the covers, and so cursory had the police's investigation of this death been in the hour or two hours that they had been in the house with the children locked in the bedroom, they had not even bothered to pick up the bullet which was still in Jan's bed.

CHAIRPERSON: I ... (inaudible)

CHAIRPERSON: (END OF SIDE A)

CHAIRPERSON: 2B/0 (START OF SIDE B)

CHAIRPERSON: (Inaudible) ... our right to justice was removed from then on.

CHAIRPERSON: His mother, Jane Turner, who is too old now and too frail now to come to this hearing, spent many years trying to find justice, and when I read the notes of her almost daily conversations with the South African CID, with the security police, and with BOSS.   I cannot believe that they could treat anyone like that.   She trusted, she trusted in a system of justice that wasn't there.   A system of justice that we have recently seen deliver freedom to someone who possibly doesn't deserve it, but to those who deserve it, they didn't get it.   And on behalf of Jane Turner, I submit that her right to justice and her right to respect was violated by the South African State in those days.

CHAIRPERSON: You have heard  about my children's loss.    You have heard about his wife's loss.   And you all know about the country's loss.   I think Richard probably would have counted the loss enough to see the state of South Africa as it is today.   You have made enormous strides.

CHAIRPERSON: This truth commission is one of the boldest and bravest things that I have ever been or I have ever witnessed, but what I want from it is to ask you to dare further, to dare to find the truth, because it is the truth that will set us free.   It is the truth that Richard Turner fought for.    And until  South Africa finds the truth about its past, it will never truly be free.

CHAIRPERSON: South Africa is free now in one way, but until it has the truth about its past, it cannot guarantee that freedom into the future.  So, what I want from you is for you to subpoena the people that Fowzia has asked for and that Jan will ask for.   And for you to dare to dig and to dare to tell the truth.   Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much indeed.   Jan?
/JAN TURNER
JAN TURNER

CHAIRPERSON: Again, when you are ready, take your time.  We will listen.   Thank you.

WITNESS:   My name Jan Turner.  Thank you very much for hearing us today.

CHAIRPERSON: I am going to talk a little bit about the night my father was killed, and then about my own attempts to find his killer in the years since then.

CHAIRPERSON: My sister, Kim, and I were the only people, other than my father, in the house on the night he was killed.  She and I were asleep in our bedroom, which was at the front of 32 Dalton Avenue.   At around half past midnight, I was woken up by the sound of my father in the hallway adjacent to our room.   The house was dark.   I heard him asking, "Who's there?".   I didn't hear what had prompted him to ask this.   I don't know whether it was someone calling to him, or someone making noise on the stoep, or in the driveway outside.   He repeated the question, "Who is there?" and received no reply.

CHAIRPERSON: Then he walked in the room, where Kim and I were sleeping and went over to the bay window, that faced onto the stoep.   From the window he could see who was at the front door, and it was a long-standing habit of his to do this, to check who was outside.

CHAIRPERSON: From my bed I saw him pull the curtain aside and look out.   Surprise registered clearly on his face, but only momentarily, because a shot was fired and he was hit.  At the time I didn't realise it was a shot, I thought a bomb had exploded on the stoep because the bang was deafening and was accompanied by a brilliant flash of light.