Human Rights Violation Hearings — Johannesburg — 1996-05-02

HESTER GROBELAAR: I would just like to thank the Commission for this opportunity because I feel this is the last opportunity for ever stating this case, because what the public heard before was the version of a policeman and also that of a newspaper and that wasn't true.
 My son Jurgens born in 1962.  He became interested in politics at a certain stage at school, he wrote to various organisations and was extremely intelligent and also very curious.  For a time that was where it ended but then round about standard nine, matric, he attended a leadership course and when he came back from this course he seemed changed in some way.  I can't pinpoint exactly what had happened but just his attitude towards other groups of people had changed and what I found very upsetting was the fact that he'd been a devout Christian who helped people as far as he could, and all of a sudden, I don't quite know how to put it, but this new side of him came to the fore, and that was difficult to accept. In any event he had contact with Koos Vermeulen of the World Apartheid Movement and that's where he became further involved in politics. 
 But he also often told me of his friendship with a girl from the ANC on the campus and those two things I couldn't quite reconcile.  During the July holidays of that year he told me that he was very disillusioned with politics and that he had broken off all ties with that person I mentioned earlier and wanted nothing more to do with him.
 Now unfortunately, it's essential to give dates, on the t of September, the first of October he wasn't at his residence on the campus and it was strange that I didn't know where he was because I usually knew his whereabouts.  On the second of October he phoned me from a friend's flat and asked me to phone him back and he gave me the phone number.
I phoned him and spoke to him, my husband also spoke to him and shortly afterwards he phoned us back and said that he was back in residence because his friends were furious with him for phoning us and they had kicked him out of the flat.
 We went to fetch him to come and spend the October holidays with us and on the 13th of October he had to go back and he was petrified, he cried, he didn't want to go back and he begged me not to take him back to Pretoria.  In my stupidity, I thought he was just scared of his exams, and eventually managed to persuade him to go back.  During the next week I had contact with him on various occasions and on the twentieth of October around about 5 o'clock in the afternoon he phoned us and that was the last time we ever heard from him.
 I couldn't trace him at the residence and eventually I phoned this flat where his so-called friends lived and eventually spoke to a woman there who said that it was her flat, that her brother had lived there but that she had chased him away because she had found arms, ammunition, explosive devices and so on.  I asked her whether she knew Jurgens and she said she had no idea of such a person but she did give me the number of the flat where her brother was staying, she didn't have the address though.  We constantly phoned this number but nobody answered.  Eventually a man identified himself as Mr du Places and said he didn't know where Jurgens was, he knew who he was but he hadn't seen him for months.  
 I was beside myself with worry as a result of what this woman had told me about all the arms and ammunition and on the 25th of October, a Friday, I telephoned the police in Krugersdorp and a lieutenant came to visit me at work and I told him the whole story.  He took the address of this flat and recommended that we report Jurgens as missing and said that he would take the matter further and try and obtain information. An unknown person also phoned us and said that we could trust the security policeman.  On Saturday the 26th of October we reported him as missing.
 In the course of the next week we were dealing with various police units and each one of them dealt with this missing persons case.  On the 28th of October this Lieutenant from the security police visited me again and he alleged that the security police had a file on Jurgens and that he had been seen in the company of Mr Martin Maritz who was a person who had fled the country but it later appeared to be untrue because those people had already left the country at that stage.
 I was very shocked and I said to him that those were dangerous people and that he had to get my child away from them. And his words to me were it's not possible, if we find him we'll shoot him, we'll kill him!   
 He recommended that we go to the friend's flat and we went there, we first went to the residence, we collected his belongings because we believe the police when they say we're going to kill your child, you must accept it.  We took his things away and then we went to the flat.  We found a woman there who said she didn't know where Jurgens was, that she had seen him a week ago in the company of his friends, that he was very distressed and had been crying.  She also said, forget about your child, he no longer belongs to you. We searched the flat for some of his possessions and clothes and decided he had been there.  There was a surgical face mask on one of the beds and Pieter also saw the White Man's Bible, the Church of the Creation, he found that there as well.  And he was so upset that ripped the book apart but later he decided to give it to the security police.
 I contacted the Child Protection Unit from that flat and she told us to leave because the flat is under surveillance.  A person phoned us identifying himself as Jan van Wyk and later admitted that it was he that had phoned us on a previous occasion under a different name.  I approached various newspapers with this book and documents from the Church of the Creation.  As a Christian that really shocked me terribly, that somebody could allege and pretend that such a thing could be a bible and that there can be such a church. The only person who was interested was Jaques Pauw of the Vrye Weekblad, he was very interested.  He said he already had knowledge of this organisation.
 On the 5th of November members of the security police came to us and said that they were now dealing with this missing person's case which was nine days after we reported him as missing and in that time there were no reports, no information, nothing
 On the 7th of November the security police phoned us from Krugersdorp speaking to my husband and said that we had to be at the police station the next morning 7 o'clock at Krugersdorp because the security police from Pretoria wanted to meet us there.  At 6:30 that morning we heard on the radio news about two young men who had been killed at Noeniput by the police, and since that kind of promise had been made to us we just had a terrible premonition and we went to the police.
 The security police from Pretoria never arrived and there was another colonel who wanted to see us but he arrived late, we asked them to find out for us who these people were that had been killed and they then confirmed that Jurgens had been one of those killed.  They immediately said that he committed suicide, and that we found very strange as Jurgens was very outspoken about suicide and regarded it as an act of cowardice and we were immediately suspicious.
 Whilst we were still there a call was made from that office to the effect that Jaques Pauw had to be silenced. Our big problem was that the moment we arrived home we were surrounded and overwhelmed by the newspapers and journalists.  The white family only learned of their child's death only late that afternoon but the newspapers knew before we did.
 My husband had contact with Colonel Thiart in Uppington and he made an allegation that Mr White had shot my child.  At that stage we started receiving telephone calls day and night and this continued for months. Mr Vermeulen arrived along with a doctor and a policeman and said that they wanted to examine the body because they were suspicious.  Our biggest mistake was not to consult an independent pathologist to do the post mortem since all the photographs taken at the post mortem, the X-rays which showed various fractures, all these things had disappeared, we were summoned to the Murder and Robbery branch to collect Jurgen's possessions and clothes and then were told that he was involved in a murder on the 14th of October and we made an affidavit there immediately to disprove that and that was also proved afterwards that he could never have been involved in that.
 On that day I also met Mrs White for the first time and she told me that her daughter who had come from Namibia to attend a memorial service for her brother, was taken off the bus on her return journey by the security police at Pietersburg and she was interrogated for three hours.
 An organisation offered assistance in connection with the inquest advocates but a week before the time they withdrew and we had to arrange representation at very short notice. Mr Armand du Places of the Church of the Creator contacted my brother and asked for an interview.  He wanted to speak to him, went to him and when they started questioning him he bent forwards and they could see that his whole body was wired up.
 You have the document in your possession so I don't want to really go through the whole issue of the inquest. We have a lot of difficulty with the scenario sketched by the police of what had happened there and I must state unequivocally that we don't believe it.  Many bits of fancy footwork were executed in the courts, we were told, don't try and find the guilty party, just try and find the cause of death.  Eventually the magistrate's finding was that the court ?(police) had acted legally in shooting them but that nobody knew where their so-called suicide shots came and that nobody could be prosecuted for it. The magistrate also found that it was impossible that these shots could have been inflicted by themselves.
 The security police were aware of my child's whereabouts during the time that we were looking for him, because after his death, a couple of hours afterwards they arrested two so-called friends in that same block of flats.  This was at 3 o'clock the next morning.
 I would like to know who was responsible for this, who can be so sick to blast away a dead person's face?  The effect of this  whole incident on our family cannot be described. In about two years I spent almost three months in psychiatric hospitals, I have tried to commit suicide, I couldn't work, my husband had no wife, my child had no mother, my husband had to remain strong throughout all of this and I think that ultimately he suffered most.  He sat with the body, he saw how it was maimed but he had to keep going through it all.
 The effect on our younger child was terrible.  He had such adulation for his older brother, loss is tremendous.
 I would like to use this opportunity to say to anybody, who alleges that Jurgens was a member of the Church of the Creator, it is a lie and in his bible which I found he had underlined various texts saying that if you're a traitor to God then you lose your soul and for that reason I believe that my child died as a Christian and that he is with his Father in Heaven today.