Special Hearings — Prison Hearings — 1997-07-21

DR BORAINE: We call now Zahrah Narkedien please.  Thank you very much indeed for coming, you are most welcome and we're very glad to see you.  Could I ask who's with you today?

ZAHRAH NARKEDIEN: My father.

DR BORAINE: We're very, very pleased to see you and you know I think it's so important to have somebody with one at a time like this and you are both very welcome indeed. Mrs Narkedien will you stand for the oath.

ZAHRAH NARKEDIEN: (sworn states)

DR BORAINE: Thank you very much please be seated.  Just before I hand over to Mr Mdu Dlamini, there will be a guided tour a short guided tour at 1 o'clock before lunch so that everyone is still together and not scattered and anyone who wishes to join that short guided tour is most welcome.  Mr Dlamini I hand over to you.

MR DLAMINI: Thank you Mr Chairman.  Good day Mrs Narkedien and good day Mr Appelgreen.  Zahrah by way of introduction we've got plus minus twenty to twenty five minutes at our disposal to give allowance for other questions, can I just take you from the time when you were arrested which, according to you statement was in Nigel.  Was that after the so called Magoo bomb in Durban?

ZAHRAH NARKEDIEN: Yes it was long after that.  We were trying to leave to go to Botswana and that morning they arrested us.

MR DLAMINI: After that you were taken back to Durban under very ... conditions with balaclavas pulled over your faces, is that right?

ZAHRAH NARKEDIEN: Yes.

MR DLAMINI: Can you tell us what happened from the time you arrived in Durban?

ZAHRAH NARKEDIEN: You mean at the Seerswart Square police station?

MR DLAMINI: Yes.

ZAHRAH NARKEDIEN: I don't think I'll give too much detail because then it will take too long but maybe if I can go straight on by saying that the Nigel police handed us over to the Seerswart Square security police at Harrismith and from Harrismith we were taken down to Westville prison just for a few hours and then we went to Seerswart Square on the 13th floor.  The 11th, 12th and 13th floors were the interrogation rooms.
 For the first seven days they did torture me quite a bit because I felt that I didn't have to cooperate in terms of what my other comrades were doing, even in terms of what I did.  I was proud of who I was as an MK comrade and I was proud of the fact that I joined the struggle, that I was a revolutionary and I was willing to just suffer the consequences.  They wanted me to say certain things so they tortured me for these seven days and the only thing that really made me break in the end was when they threatened to go back to my house where my sister was staying with me and kidnap my four year old nephew Christopher, bring him to the 13th floor and drop him out of the window.
 At that point I really at my weakest because I felt I could risk my life and I could let my body just be handed over to these men to do what they liked but I couldn't hand over someone else's body so at that point I fully cooperated.  By then I was becoming weaker and weaker because what they had done was swear at me a great deal and say for instance they would take me out of my cell after breakfast at about half past 7 or 8 o'clock and interrogate me the whole day, the whole night right through until 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning.  I'd be standing all the time and whole groups of them would be swearing and screaming at me but that was bearable because I could pray silently while they were doing that and not even hear the abuse.  
 They started to realise that I was enduring that kind of abuse so they started to take a plastic bag, I need to show you for you to get an idea.  They took a plastic bag, a dark blue one which I couldn't get, then one person held both my hands down and the other one put it on my head and then they sealed it so that I wouldn't be able to breath and kept it on for at least two minutes, by which time the plastic was clinging to my eyelids, my nostrils, my mouth and my whole body was going into spasms because I really couldn't breathe.  They'd do it to me for about three times but I still wasn't prepared to surrender to them, I was willing to just suffer it out and then they decided I had to do physical exercises.  
 They always had a woman present when they were torturing me and they asked her if she would like to leave because they were going to intensify the treatment.  All these days I was wearing the same clothing, just a dress and I was also menstruating at that time which I told them so I couldn't stand so long and I was bleeding a lot.  They made me lay on the floor and do all kinds of physical exercises lifting my body with my hands, what they call press-ups then reducing the fingers until I had to pick myself up with just two fingers.  By then I couldn't because my body was tired, it was sore and I had to drop it and lift it up and I was hurting my knees every time I dropped it.  While I was down they would kick me and tramp on me.
 All this time it didn't really matter but it was beginning to hurt physically.  They did this for hours on end.  Even Inspector de Beer who was the investigating officer, even he came in and started hitting me with a clothes brush.  As I said any physical pain didn't matter because I just sort of transported myself out of there. 
 After a while he kept intensifying the physical treatment and he would use both his hands to strangle me, strangle me so hard that when he let go the ... became so painful, he would strangle me and lift me right off the ground and then just drop me like that, grab me by the hair and throw me down and pick me up.  After a good few hours, I think that's when they realised, after the seventh day that they would have to use psychological treatment because I was just like a person who was physically there but spiritually and mentally I wasn't there.  After he threatened me with my nephew I said I would do anything you want.

MR DLAMINI: Can you take us to your experience when you were actually in prison?