Human Rights Violation Hearings — Rustenburg — 1997-05-07

KEVN P DOWLING: I would like to begin by stating that in comparison to the suffering of my Black brothers and sisters, what I went through is rather insignificant.  I was really part of the struggle of my sisters and brothers and I was involved with them and to that extent I suffered harassment and so forth, and their sufferings really became part of mine and deeply affected me.
 Also I would like to state, that I was part of a wider group of pastors in this area, Christian pastors under the ReverenD Johannes Selapedi and linked to the SACC, who gathered around the issue of Human Rights.  And that group, we went to Mmabatho in 1992 in great distress over the human rights violations and avoided road blocks and managed to have a demonstration in Megacity as pastors against human rghts violations and we were manhandled and so forth.  But it is to that group I want to also pay tribute, I was part of that.  
 What I am specifically concerned with is the area around Phokeng and its environs, Rustenburg in 1991 and it went on into 1992, where there was a whole series of very brutal human rights violations, teargassing of funerals, the Isweletu homeless people in Tlhabane who were harassed and took refuge in our church and we took up an action against the Boputhatswana Government, interdicting the Boputhatswana Supreme Court to stop this, the homeless on our property in St Joseph's mission and so forth, these were the people that we were with and that were suffering at that time in a very serious way.  But what has to be understood, I think, in terms of what I was involved with, is where I was living.  On St. Joseph's mission in Phokeng, which is about 15 kilometres outside Rustenburg on the Sun City road, the unique situation there was that our Catholic mission, St. Joseph's was right on the border of Phokeng village.  And Phokeng village at that time, was in Boputhatswana, but our mission, right on its border was in South Africa.  And therefore that gave us the unique opportunity of offering our facilities to all the groups who had very great difficulty or it was made impossible in fact to meet in Phokeng and places like that.  I am talking about the political organisations, the civics, the unions and so forth and also the Baphokeng people who could not meet in Phokeng, because it was banned by the Boputhatswana Government and therefore I gave our facilities and supported always the right of whatever group could not meet, to give them the right to meet on our property.  And that is what brought me into conflict with Mr Mangope and the Bop Government.  With also certain people in the mining community and with the rightwing Farmers, and those three groups in particular gave me grief.  
 But what specifically happened was that in February 12 1991, I was called by Mr Mangope to appear before him, his cabinet members and security force personnel to explain why I was giving our church property for use by groups which they said are opposed to Boputhatswana.  I explained that our stance was one based on what I perceived was the Gospel message, to bring peace and reconciliation which has to be based on justice and that the basis of all this is a respect for human rights - freedom to meet, freedom of association, freedom of speech and so forth.  And that only through respecting human rights like this and allowing ourselves to meet, can we proceed to discuss problems and find the way to peace and reconciliation.  I explained that clearly to Mr Mangope and his cabinet.  They refused to accept this, saying that I was in fact supporting agents and groups that were bent on destabilising Boputhatswana.  
 Shortly after that, in March, this is where the first major incident happened, in March 15, which was a Friday, the whole ANC executive in Phokeng was arrested in the early hours of the morning.  One of the members, Mrs Bopolamo, was a Catholic of our community.  They were taken in and they disappeared and we did not know where.  She was taken away in her night clothes.  They did not even allow her to dress.  I struggled all day to find where she was and I took a chance and went to the Phokeng Governors' Office where the Security Police were also and I just went in and I took a chance and said to the Security Police officer, I think you are holding Mrs Bopolamo here.  And he said, yes we are, and I said, well I have brought clothes and I have brought food.  He said we can't take food, but I will take the clothes.  They were released that night.  
 Then on that weekend I met Mrs Semane Moloklegle, the wife of Chief Lebone and this is the issue around which the incident I am going to refer to revolves.  
 She was born in Botswana, married to Chief Lebone of Phokeng and she was therefore a Botswana citizen, but had the right from the South African government to residence.  Now Mr Mangope, after the coup in 1988, the attempted coup, when Chief Lebone had to go into exile, he increasingly focused on Mrs Semane Moloklegle, because she became the focal point of resistance to the Bop Government among her Baphokeng people.  And therefore, at the beginning of 1991 I heard from her, because she visited me regularly, that they were giving her a monthsextension on a Boputhatswana residence permit.  And then in February she was told that this would expire on March the 21st 1991.  She would therefore have to go voluntary or would be deported.  
 Just before that, on the Monday before that march on Thursday, March 21st, which was Sharpeville day of course, quite ironic that they chose that day to deport her, I went down to Mmabatho to meet the Minister of Internal Affairs, Chief Victor Suping, who is now the chairperson of the house of traditional leaders in Cape Town.  He was Minister of Internal Affairs at that time and I went to him with great concern to ask him to please talk to the cabinet and to Mr Mangope because the potential for violence and harm around the deportation of Mrs Moloklegle was great.  Could they not reconsider this and give her an extension of her permit?  He was nervous, but he promised to bring that to a meeting of the Cabinet the next morning, Tuesday the 19th.  
 That afternoon, Tuesday the 19th, Mrs Moloklegle herself was called down to Mmabatho to appear before Mr Mangope who spent ten minutes basically wiping the floor with her, telling her he had every right to deport her and that was it.  And she had to leave.  He even told her supporters, Chief Pilane and his supporters to leave the room.  He would not allow them to stay with her.  So she came back, saw me that evening, very concerned.  
 So what happened on March the 21st then, was that all the civic organisations and the little groupings were meeting on St. Joseph's Mission to commemorate Sharpeville.  And then the committee around which the whole concern about Mrs Moloklegle was responsible, this committee, decided to then turn that gathering into a protest march in Phokeng itself.  They asked the group of pastors I referred to, myself, to lead that with the political leaders.  Because it was all the people asking for this, all the organisations of the people, we as pastors decided we would lead this march.   So on that 21st of March, Thursday, after the Sharpeville Commemoration, we gathered on the Mission and we marched out into Phokeng village.  Of course they knew this was going to happen.  There was a very, very heavily armed Police presence, Security Force presence with armed vehicles and as soon as we turned into the village, they all jumped down from their vehicles.   They had automatic rifles and these were cocked and aimed at us.  We walked right up to them and then the Commander, Colonel Pitse, came forward, stopped us, and then we negotiated with him, a group of us, about what we wanted to do - to hand over a memorandum on behalf of the people to the Governor, Mr Morake of Phokeng, and then to allow the people to walk in peace with us to Legato, the home Mrs Moloklegle to say goodbye to her.  After a long time he agreed to that, but he said only a small delegation of us could go forward and walk to the Governor's office and hand the memorandum.  The people had to stay behind on the side.  So we agreed to this.  We explained it to the people.  
 So we then walked forward, the small group of pastors and political leaders, towards the Governor's office.  Before we got there, a car stopped right in front of us, coming the other way.  Out came Colonel Pitse with the Governor and Colonel Pitse's attitude now was very different, very hard.  He told us we could hand over the memorandum there and then we had to go back and tell the people to disperse.  But we said you had already agreed to allow them to go down to Mrs Moloklegle's house and we've told them this, there is a potential here for trouble.  So he said agreements are there to be changed.  
 So we went back, strategising on the way what we could do.  We told the people then what we have decided to do was please go back to the Mission.  We took up our position behind them in case there was any harm done to the people from behind by the police or the Security Forces.  They were told on the Mission what had happened and it had been explained that if they went down now, without the protection of the political leaders and pastors, the potential for getting injured would be very great.  They said there, that they would still want to go.  So I knew then that we could be facing trouble.  I went down then to Mrs Moloklegle's house, warned her of this, I had avoided the road blocks, going a back way, as I came out of the front entrance to her house there was a huge roadblock just ahead of me.  And I drove up to it.  I was stopped.  I was told that we have to go away.  And it was just then that I noticed between the armed cars on the side of the road, one of our pastors and one of our religious personnel sitting.  They had not gone back to the Mission, but had tried to come down to Mrs Moloklegle's house and had walked into this roadblock.  
 So then the police were very aggressive.  They told me we would have to go.  I said, at least let me get these people out.  And as I walked forward I noticed then that the crowd of people was just approaching the roadblock, coming down from the Mission.  It was then that the trouble started.  Because without a warning to the people to stop there was some command shouted out and the police from the -Security Forces from the vehicles opened up with water canons and then with these terrible teargas projectiles, which are very heavy with teargas.  If they hit you it could cause severe injury.  If they hit you on the head it could cause even more serious injury, perhaps death.  They fired straight at people.  They went beserk.  
 Just as they started that, I was so close to the vehicles, I heard a command, going up.  Shoot the Beruti, shoot the Ministers.  One of the Security Force personnel, jumped down and I was fully clothed in my white cassock as a Bishop, as were all the ministers that day in their robes, he took aim with fortunately a teargas gun and aimed straight at me, fired straight at me, I could see the gas escaping from the projectile and so I ducked.  And it missed me fortunately and hit the car behind me.  About five or six of these projectiles, I could hear them whizzing past me as I tried to get this priest out.  They all missed me, but other people, as we found out later, were hit by them, they were sjambuked by the police.  It was terrible.  They just went beserk all over the village.  
 We gathered in Mrs Moloklegle's house to report all this and then I went back later that evening to the Mission and she had to decide what she was going to do in view of this.  
 I want to say also that as they began the firing, I heard the staccato-fire"to-tto-to-to" like that and I said, oh my God, they are firing live ammunition and it turned out later that we found that one person named Johannes Mafatse had been shot dead and his body had been taken into the clinic which was very close by.  Another person had taken a bullet in the shoulder, which we found out later, that they had opened fire with live rounds.  
 That night, Mrs Moloklegle, came very, very late to me, it was around ten o'clock at night, to the Mission and in tears said to me that she had decided for the safety of her people, and to prevent this kind of violence, she would go into exile.  And she asked me then to phone a friend of hers in Johannesburg, to meet is somewhere on that road and asked me to drive her away.  And she got into my car and we drove out and we passed the road leading down to Legato and that is when she burst into tears.  She was leaving her home and her people and I will never forget the pain of that drive.  We went to one of church residences on the Johannesburg road where she was picked up and went into exile.  A brave woman who came many times in secret back to our Mission to meet her people, to discuss their problems and to support them in the on-going struggle for justice and human rights.  
 After that, the group of us who were responsible for the march, decided to collect together the many injured,  old women who had terrible wounds from sjamboks, people who had been hit by these and had wounds and so forth, to hold a press conference to publicise this, but unfortunately that weekend something happened in Johannesburg, another series of killings and the press went there.  
 The official media spokesmen for the Bop Government, Colonel David George, came on television to state that Mr Mafatse had been stabbed and his body thrown into the clinic.  I then went down and through a contact at the clinic we got a copy of the entrance register for the March, the 21st, where it clearly stated, a man had been brought in with a bullet wound, bullet wounds and dead already.  And another one with bullet wounds in the shoulder and he was transferred then to the hospital, George Stegman, up there by Saulspoort.  So that was where the incident itself finished.
 But then three pastors and myself, Reverend Selapedi Reverend Tawana and Reverend George Dalker, all of Tlhabane, were called to the police station in Tlhabane some weeks later and told they were going to drive us to Mmabatho to appear before a committee, concerning the march.  We then gathered and we decided, no, we could not trust being driven down there, so I said I would drive us down.  
 We went and we appeared before Mr Gert Nkau, one of the Ministers in the cabinet and the security police people, and they questioned us about the march and wanted to know who had drawn up the memorandum.  We refused to tell them and in the end we agreed that we would go back to the organisations and see what they would like to do about this invitation to a meeting.  They all refused of course.  And so the incidents of human rights violations continued.  The teargassing of a funeral in September of that year in Lesung.  
 And then we came to the second incident I speak about, which was in November 23rd, 1991, the bombing of the church on St Joseph's Mission.  One week before that, on a Saturday, one week before that meeting, I was visited by a delegation from the Boputhatswana Government, Reverend Segwe, Colonel Pitse, Governor Morake and one of the army personnel or Security Force people,  I can't remember his name.  They expressed their grave reservations, serious concern about the meeting to be held on the 23rd, why, because that meeting was an ANC meeting to be addressed by Mr Rocky Malebane Metsing.  It was a welcome home meeting for him and it was also a meeting called to highlight the fate of political prisoners in Boputhatswana, who were still in jail.  There were some hundred prisoners still in jail at that time, several of them on hunger strike.  
 Again I was put under pressure to forbid the meeting.  I refused, saying that this was our stance in support of human rights, in support of peace and reconciliation, base on justice and justice can only come about if we respect human rights.  And they could not accept this and I refused to bow down and they went away.  
 On the Friday, the day before the meeting, at two o'clock in the morning, there was a massive explosion on the Mission.  We heard this terrific explosion and we checked the buildings.  There are religious communities who live there.  If the bomb had been placed in any of these houses, near any of these houses, there could have been severe injury.  We did not think to check our church, because the year before, in 1990, our church and our commercial school had been fire-bombed, causing a lot of damage, but we did not think to check the church, only in the morning, we found this devastation in the church.  A powerful bomb, which the police explained to me was specifically designed to cause maximum damage through suction and so forth had caused severe damage to the church.  I then said the meeting was still to go ahead.  The ANC came in that evening and one of the things that I noticed, was that a bakkie, no not a bakkie, a mini-bus from one of the mines, came in with a whole group of White miners and they said they were coming to see the damage to the church.  The ANC martials turned them out.  The meeting went ahead.  Mr Malebane Metsing came in by helicopter.  The meeting did go ahead on Saturday, the 23rd and we then just had to repair our church.  
 And then from there, I was called again by Mr Mangope.  A delegation came to me to say he wanted to see me in April of 1992, where I was specifically threatened during that meeting. I was called to appear before Mr Mangope and his cabinet and Security Police as have happened in February 1991.  This time, Mr Cronje was there and the whole tone of the meeting was very much more aggressive.  Because there was trouble on the mines at that time, a lot of injuries and killings had gone on at the mines and I was being accused of contributing to this by allowing the National Union of Mine Workers to hold meetings on St Joseph's Mission, because all other South African Unions were in fact banned in Boputhatswana.
 And so I went in there and this very aggressive meeting where I was asked by Mr Cronje, in a very offhand way, you always talk about human rights, give us one case of a human rights violation.   And I said, I will and I took up the case of Mrs Maggie Bopalamo, who is now the district manager of education.  She, I think has given a statement to the Commission.  I was deeply involved with her where she was arrested for two weeks at the time of the attempted coup.  Her husband got five year's jail.  Some weeks later, she was taken in again and spent ten months in jail without trial and I kept saying this to Mr Mangope and the cabinet.  They tried to interrupt me, but I got my story right through.  It was the help of the Spirit as we read in the Gospels.  When you do not know what to say, the words will be given to you.   That happened to me that day. And I went right through all the incidences where she was kept in prison for ten months without trial, then released, cancer was diagnosed, she spent three months in hospital.  She was banned, house arrested, she had to report twice a day to police.  Then the next year, her so-called court case came up and there was no evidence.  She was being accused of sedition.  She was then banned form teaching.  She was a teacher at Tlabane.  She was head of department at Tlabane College of Education.  Her permit to teach was withdrawn, she had no job.  And then I went right though this with Mr Mangope, but then I kept quiet about something that was happening just then.  
 To get some kind of income, she had been given a job as running a tuck shop at Mankwe College, the Teacher Training College.  While she started there she got visits from the Security Police and Mr Morake and then the Rector of the College was told that she had to be sent off the premises.  She had no permission to do this.  That came from Mmabatho.  The security police came to her and said that he wanted her to be a spy, to inform on ANC and all these.  She came in great terror to me.  
 I went to Pretoria and met a lawyer friend of mine and we met Mr Brian Currin and we organised a trap for the Security policeman.  I hired a sophisticated recording device in a briefcase.  Mrs Bopalamo, a very brave woman, invited him to her house and they recorded a two hour conversation in which he gave all the promises and threats related to her being an informer.  
 This was officially translated and then I organised with lawyers in Pretoria to bring a court action against Mr Mangope and several of his Ministers and the Security police to exposed this whole thing, and on a technicality, because we were not given a court case, for a period of about nine months, the judge found against us for taking too long to bring this case to court.  
 Mr Mangope at the end of that meeting in April 1992, at the end of this acrimonious meeting, said to me, since you will not agree to stop these meetings, since you are supporting groups that are bent on destabilising Boputhatswana, we will take whatever measures we think are necessary to safeguard ourselves against you.  I took that to be an implicit threat against us at St Joseph's, perhaps against myself.  So I took it up with our bishops' conference who protested to the Foreign Affairs.  I had a meeting with Foreign Affairs.  They said but of course you must realise South Africa recognises that Boputhatswana is an independent homeland, an independent state, but they did agree to contact them.  I received some assurance that perhaps they would not cause any problems to us at St Joseph's and they said that I must try and stop having these meetings.  I said I cannot do that.  And that was basically the end of that saga and we continued with our struggle, which I wanted to just simply say was my own struggle, being part of the people who were struggling.  Thank you.