Human Rights Violation Hearings — Sebokeng — 1996-08-07

CHAIRPERSON: Mrs Mbongo, you're very welcome at the table.  We are privileged to have you at in front of us. Can you hear me?

JANE NOZILILO MBONGO: Yes I can hear you Sir.

JANE NOZILILO MBONGO: (sworn states)

DR BORAINE: Mrs Mbongo you heard earlier from the Commission that 49 people were killed on the 17th of June in 1992. That was a bare statistic, just a number. What you and your neighbours and your friends and colleagues have come to tell us, is that the people who were killed are human beings. They have names, they have children, they have parents, husbands, they have wives, they have pain. I don't want you to think that because other people have told their story that your story is not important.  It is important as life and death.  You're going to tell us what happened. Before you do, I wonder, can you tell us the name of your husband please?

JANE NOZILILO MBONGO: His name is Zefret Sibizi.

DR BORAINE: Could you repeat that please?

JANE NOZILILO MBONGO: Zefret Sibizi.

DR BORAINE: Thank you very much.  You were living at Slovo Park, number 21?

JANE NOZILILO MBONGO: Yes.

DR BORAINE: Tell us what happened that night.

JANE NOZILILO MBONGO: In 1992 in June, in the afternoon  with my cousin, and I had a baby in my hand. I left for the bedroom
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to go and put the baby to sleep. I left my cousin alone, I left to put the baby to sleep in the bedroom. Suddenly I also fell asleep.  I left my boss with my cousin.  My boss was with us. It was my husband.  He switched off the heater and he joined me to bed and he slept and he said wake up and put on your night dress and get into bed. I hadn't put on my night dress because I was putting the baby to sleep, I wasn't sleeping.  
 At midnight I heard the windows breaking and we woke up with sudden surprise, what's happening. Voices were saying, "Open up dogs, you dogs, open up". They were throwing stones and the stones came through the windows destructing inside the house and we suddenly woke up and we hid under the bed. He tried to go out, I told him,"don't go out, get under the bed, join us under the bed". They were throwing stones until the door opened.  When the door opened, I saw a group of people just storming inside the house and they had the matches on. They came to the bedroom, my husband came out and they killed him. Before he was killed, he tried to run away from the door, through the door but when I got out from under the bed to see what's happening, I could not see people out there and I tried to shut the door. I tried to lock the door but I could not. I decided to go back under the bed again with the kids. We went down underneath the bed and my husband was outside and the people came back again, they had the paper, burning paper and they threw that paper in the bath and there were clothes in the bath and they stabbed the bed, the mattress, they kept stabbing it and they found us hiding under the bed and they said, "Come out you dogs, come out!".
 When I was trying to come out, I remembered, no I had 
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the child here, let me try to get my child out here, it would be poor if my child be left if I die alone. I got my child and I held her in my arms and the bath was on fire. They stabbed me, they stabbed me, and they also stabbed on my hands, they were beating me at the same time and my fingers were chopped and my head was broken and they put a spear through my child.  When I looked I saw the spear right through the body of my child.  I then decided to slip over the child so that they cannot put the spear through again over the child. I said to myself, "No they're going to kill my child, they rather kill me, and they did put the spear on my back and they left. They went outside. I was quiet and my child was crying because the spear went through her. 
 After they'd left, I saw the bath was in fire and I tried to extinguish the fire that was in the bath and I tried to take a blanket and extinguish the fire that was razing the bath as well as the clothes.  I went outside whether they were still there.  I discovered that they had gone and I saw my aunt and children outside. Then the other ones told me that the child had been stabbed and he had died in front of the door. He told me that Meme had left us, that he had passed away. She also told us that Nono had died already. I ran and went inside the shack, I took the baby, I put the baby behind my back, but I just couldn't because my hand had been severed but nevertheless I took the baby and I ran to another house, at my neighbour's place. 
 I got there, I knocked and I opened the door. I think my neighbours were also looking, they had seen what was happening. I fell inside the house with the baby. I asked them to phone my parents, to tell my parents what had 
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happened. They told me that they didn't have a phone. I went to another neighbour, they took my baby and I enlisted some help from my neighbour, even those neighbours did not have a phone so they could not help me and everybody was peeping through the windows to see what was happening.
 I threw up and when I was in the kitchen, at that time I was confused, I went to the bedroom and there was a little girl there, she lit the candle, looked at my child.  She said my child had been stabbed.  
 At that moment the ambulances came and took me with the baby to the hospital.  When we got there we were admitted, myself and the baby.
 Up to the funeral, when I was discharged I discovered that all the people who had died had already been buried. My husband was buried in Backville.

DR BORAINE: It's very difficult to find words, they seem so cheap after the story that you have told. Can you tell us please the name of your daughter?

JANE NOZILILO MBONGO: Her name is Victoria Mbongo.

DR BORAINE: Thank you.  And how old was she when she was so brutally stabbed?

JANE NOZILILO MBONGO: She was two years old.

JANE NOZILILO MBONGO: What you witnessed and what you experienced is a slaughter.  It was a slaughter. How long were you in hospital?

JANE NOZILILO MBONGO: I was there for quite some time in hospital.

DR BORAINE: And you can't remember, it was at the Sebokeng hospital, all the records will be there. Now how is...(intervention).

JANE NOZILILO MBONGO: I was at Suke(?) hospital and also I was somehow mentally disturbed from this event.
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DR BORAINE: /...
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DR BORAINE: I'm not surprised. It would make anyone disturbed, mentally and physically.  How is your daughter now?  Has she recovered from that terrible wound?

JANE NOZILILO MBONGO: No she's not any better. She did attend treatment at hospital.  If she watches television and sees people shooting on the television, she gets scared and wants to run away.

DR BORAINE: And you yourself were also badly injured. How are you now?

JANE NOZILILO MBONGO: I'm not so healthy. My health condition is not excellent. When I receive a telephone call, after putting down the receiver, I can't remember who I was talking to. Even my hand is not working perfectly. I even asked one of our relatives in Newcastle to come and help us here at home.

DR BORAINE: Your husband was killed, did you get a death certificate?

JANE NOZILILO MBONGO: Yes I did get it.

DR BORAINE: What, now we know that he was attacked, and he was killed, but did they say how he was killed, was he stabbed, was he shot? What happened, do you know?

JANE NOZILILO MBONGO: No that is not made clear.

DR BORAINE: That's alright.  Now you didn't, did you go back to Slovo Park or are you living somewhere else?

JANE NOZILILO MBONGO: No I never went back, I'm home now.

DR BORAINE: Where is that?

JANE NOZILILO MBONGO: It's at Boipatong.

CHAIRPERSON: Boipatong. Now are you working?

JANE NOZILILO MBONGO: No I'm not working.

DR BORAINE: Do you have some kind of pension or do you have somebody who's helping you?