Human Rights Violation Hearings — Soweto — 1996-07-22

THOMAS MANTHATA: My last but one question will be this one of the graves being filled in overnight, were the students able to create a structure that would monitor the missing students who could have been the people dumped in those graves?

DAN MONTSISI: All we did was to report all these issues, firstly to all those individuals, to Motlana and to Sis Winnie that time and to Mr Matabata and also to the BPA structure, and I cannot recall whether the structure that came later, that is the Committee of Ten whether it was able to address that problem.

THOMAS MANTHATA: My closing question would be, I don't know whether you dealt with this in your introduction, what suggestions would you give say to the Reparation Committee for the reparation processes that could be made for some of the victims of that time, one?  Two, in very brief manner what would you suggest the way forward to address the plight of the students?

DAN MONTSISI: Tom firstly about the Nationalist Party government, the previous one, it's unfortunate because this new government has got to pay for the sins of apartheid.  Reparation in one way or the other has to be seen to be
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accomplished by unfortunately our own government.  And do not think that the Nationalist Party government has got remorse over what it did in 1976.  It doesn't have any remorse and they don't even - even when they say they apologise they don't mean it, because they are not for transformation in education.  They don't want any changes to take place in education.  I am a member of Parliament Tom, let me remind you.  Now I stand in a committee, the Education Committee, there are two bills that we passed.  The first one was the National Education Policy Bill.  I was just saying that the National Education Policy Act it was the type of Act that wishes to address the disparities in education.  In the past for instance, when you talk of allocation of budget you had a ratio of something like 6 is to 3:2:1 which meant in essence 6 would be the allocation for the Whites and 1 the allocation for the Africans.  Now this policy bill wishes to address some of those disparities and actually give the powers to the Minister Bhengu to use the financing in order to address the disparities of the past.  The same Nationalist Party that is saying it is sorry for what it did in the past for the sins of apartheid is the same Nationalist Party that took us to court, they walked out of the meeting of the Standing Committee on Education.  When we thought we could find each other in addressing matters of education they walked out of that meeting.  They took us to court, to the Constitutional Court because we thought it would be good, it will be in the interest of South Africa for us to bring parity in education, but they still wanted to cling to the privileges of the allocation of the budget in favour of the White schools.  Not to mention the fact that they actually wanted to defend to the hilt the SOWETO HEARING TRC/GAUTENG
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Model C schools.  The Constitutional Court overruled that.  That bill has been passed in Parliament also.  It is an Act, the issue of education in this country is going to be addressed despite the mess in which the Nationalist Party put our own education in.  The other bill Tom was the South African Qualifications Authority Bill.  Now this Bill is also another attempt in order to be able to streamline the qualifications, I mean the certificates of most of the institutions.  There are certain good institutions which were not recognised in the past by the Department, now the attempt is to bring those education department into the fold.  And secondly the White universities they were also reluctant to be part and parcel of the South African Qualifications Authority Bill, why?  Because even without this bill those universities have been able to produce very good doctors in South Africa.  Chris for instance who has been performing tremendous work for the country, Chris Barnard, the heart surgeon you know, most of those doctors are recognised outside and the certificates of White South African universities are recognised outside.  What they wanted to do was to keep an island of elite education within the White universities.  Now you talk about our own education, our own universities for instance, the Turfloop's, the .(indistinct), and the present Vistas that they have actually established, those universities leave quite a lot to be desired.  Now this saga was an attempt to bring all our universities into the same pie, now they complain about the declining standards.  That the ANC government is attempting to bring the standards down.  So the Nationalist Party at no stage have they actually come to accept the fact that they were wrong because they still 
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defend to the hilt the privileges they enjoyed in the past.

THOMAS MANTHATA: Thank you.  I will hand you back to the Chairperson.

YASMINE SOOKA: Dan I have just a few questions just for clarification.  You mentioned I think right at the beginning of your statement that in some of the planning before June the 16th that there had been university students involved with the students as well, could you give us a bit more detail on that?

DAN MONTSISI: I think the involvement of university students in this instance is such that immediately after the eruption of June 16 they actually held their own support demonstrations.  They held their own pickets and they began to organise themselves.  We should remember that during that time there was no SRC.  Now even our own Soweto Students Representative Council it was the type of organisation that ought not to have existed.  We forced the government at that time to recognise the SRC, and despite their recognition of the SRC, the SRC operated.  Now even the SRC's for instance in Turfloop, in Fort Hare, in quite a number of other universities they were non-functional, but now immediately after the eruption some of the SRC activists were able to resuscitate those structures and begun to function and attempted to create liaison between themselves and the students in Soweto.  So there was quite a number of areas and sectors from which support was able to come from.  Even some of the students here in Wits University, because there was quite a contrast, RAU University was against their student initiatives whilst Wits University, some of the student activists there were in support of what happened in '76, I mean the pledging solidarity with the demonstration
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by students.  And they were able also to organise themselves you know and come up in a symbolic way including the Black Sash and so on to say we support the students and we support the community of Soweto.  Those were some of the support initiatives which we were able to .....

YASMINE SOOKA: You talked about the fact that when you went to the ANC there was a refusal to supply students with weapons and in fact you say later on that you agreed with the restraint that was practised by them, at the time when the uprising took place was there any liberation movement involved?  And can you tell us a little bit more about the kind of ideology that influenced the June 16 uprising?