Human Rights Violation Hearings — Soweto — 1996-07-23

YASMINE SOOKA: Nomavenda, I want to ask you about a matter that is not related to your statement here.  In our first hearing, the mother of Imbiyusa Makoebo, the youngster who was carrying Hector Petersen, she came to the Commission and I think at that time she was still uncertain about what had happened to her son.  She did mention that you had followed that up.  I wonder if you could give us anymore information on that particular matter while we have you here.

NOMAVENDA MASHIYANE: You should have warned me.  I met a lady who
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had just come back from exile and we were sitting at a party and she started talking and saying that they were in Nigeria and she was with other Soweto students.  She was also from Soweto.  She was with other Soweto students and in their company was Imbiyusa.  She said that Imbiyusa decided that he was going to have a swim in the sea and that was the last time they saw him.  I said to the lady I happen to know Mrs Makoebo and she is very worried about her son.  She would like to know what happened to her son.  Would you kindly go and tell her what happened to her son?  She said she would think about it.  
 A year later I asked her, I said you told me about this and could you please, you know, go and talk to Mrs Makoebo.  She said she is going to ask her family to ask for advice if she can do that.  I asked her later and she said, no, her family is against, advising against doing so.  Then I went to a social worker in Soweto, a friend of mine, Madi Kolomotenie and I said to her, I think we had better talk to this woman and assist her and actually accompany her to Mrs Makoebo, but she still refused to go and talk to Mrs Makoebo.  At that point I then picked up the phone and I called Mrs Makoebo and said in case you do not know, I have a lead to what happened to your son.  This is the address of the lady who says she was the last to see your son and you can talk to her because it is obvious that she does not want to talk about it.  That is where I left the matter at.

YASMINE SOOKA: Thank you.

NOMAVENDA MASHIYANE: You are welcome.

CHAIRPERSON: Nomavenda, you mentioned Machaning Shopping Complex.  Can you tell us a little bit more about what exactly happened around those shops which might have led to
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the fact that today we do not see anyone of them and also, maybe, if you can say are there any photos which were taken around those Machaning shops?

NOMAVENDA MASHIYANE: Machaning, as I said earlier on, was a group of shops where Jewish people and Indian people were trading at.  I am not a phycologist, but I guess it is the animosity, the anger of the residents around Soweto where they found that people who were outside their community were able to trade, to do business in an area where they were supposed to be trading in.  You had traders from Soweto who were quite capable to run those shops, but because of the colour of their skins, because of the laws of this country, they were not allowed to conduct certain trading businesses even in the vicinity of, in their own localities.  So, I guess what happened on that morning was their anger to say here are people who are making money out of us and we cannot make, we cannot do business, but they are able to do business in our own localities, but as I say, I am not a phycologist.  What I am saying is what I think might have happened.  Their anger, their anger that has been building up, the animosity.

CHAIRPERSON: Hugh Lewin.

MR LEWIN: Thank you Madam Chair.  Nomavenda I would just like to say thank you very much for telling us those stories and ask your advice because we as a Commission have the responsibility of making a report at the end of the whole process and it is very important for us to put into that report recommendations which arise out of the people's experience.  You have for, as you say, for 22 odd years been a working journalist.  So you are both an observer and someone who can express yourself.  There are two questions
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that I would like to ask about specifically relating to what we might recommend.  The first thing is the police.  The way police handle people.  Now the experiences of 1976, do they give you any reflection on how a police force should function?

NOMAVENDA MASHIYANE: I mean, I stand corrected, but I do not find the average policeman, particularly the black policeman, feeling that they are part of us.  I still find that distance between us and the police.  Today, maybe, they are forced to, they are today forced to give us information, but you still do not find that even when they are, even if we are in an era of transparency, you still find that we still have that distance between us and the police.  I do not think any legislation can change that distance.  It is something that has to come from the police themselves.  Until the police realise that they are one with us.  No legislation can change them because as journalists, I do not feel myself as outside my community.  What happens when I report, I report as a member of that community, but you do not find that with the policemen.
 One example.  I was at John Vorster Square recently when they were thinking of changing the name of John Vorster Square.  I was trying to write a story of what has now happened to John Vorster Square.  I went onto the ninth floor and the tenth floor and I found the whole place having so transformed.  There were no cells, now it was a police archive and the police who were there claimed that they had not been there.  You find that we have a police that want to distance themselves.  They are not there.  So it is not legislature that is going to change.  It has got to come from them.  
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MR LEWIN: And secondly, what about journalists, thinking back to the events of 1976.  The way you covered them, the difficulties that you had in getting the stories out.  Did that give you any insights into how you think journalists should function or should be allowed to function in a democracy?

NOMAVENDA MASHIYANE: I am sure it is difficult to say how we can because if you look back to how we performed then, at times you were not performing as a journalist.  You were performing as a mother, as a sister, as a brother, you know.  So while there was information we could not access, but the fact that we were within the community, we were in touch all the time, but today in a democracy, the very people that we were writing about, today they want to remind us that, no, there is a way, there is another way you should be reporting, you know.  They are now trying to say to us, no, there is, you have to adhere to certain rules.  I mean these are the people whom we put our heads on the block for.  So today they have forgotten where they come from, but not all of them.  I mean we are supposed to have this beautiful transparency, but sometimes some of the people that we were writing about have forgotten that.  So today we have to, we are operating within a certain set of rules whereas at the time when we were performing as journalists and we were all harassed, we were adhering to a different set of rules.

MR LEWIN: Thank you.  Joyce Seroke.

MS SEROKE: Nomavenda, you said a while ago that when those kids came to Dr Asfat's surgery you, and you asked them, you know, what had happened to them when you removed the pellets they said nothing had, they had not done anything wrong, but I would like to ask you as a journalist would you not know,
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were you not aware of incidents where the police would march into schools when the children were at assembly praying and start shooting?