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

DR RANDERA: Gloria we are going back to May 1993 and really what you are going to be talking about is what happened, I presume not many yards outside this hall, at the University itself.   I am actually going to be leading you in helping you tell your story - before we do that could you just stand and take the oath.

GLORIA SEKAMOENG: (sworn states)

DR RANDERA: Gloria, is you can just in your words and time tell us what happened in May 1993 at the campus of the University of North West, at the time I presume it was still called the University of Bophuthatswana, or Unibo, as it was known.   Thank you.

GLORIA SEKAMOENG: In May, 1993 I was assaulted by the police, because there was going to be a student march, the students of this university, the University of Bophuthatswana.  When the students were still next to the great hall, the police came and they started throwing teargas to disperse the students.
 We took different directions, we wanted to hide ourselves, because of the teargas and the police were now chasing us.  While running away, two policemen came to me.  They were very close and then we were also tired of running.  The one policeman, and I tried to ask for forgiveness, but he didn't understand, he shot me with a rubber bullet on the MMABATHO HEARING TRC/NORTH WEST
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head and I fell.  
 While on the ground one came and he had a batton and he started assaulting me with this batton.  My thighs were really affected, because even now even one of my thighs are not working very well.  I still have the bruises, that I have been assaulted - the two are not equal.
 After that the police said we were arrested, even if I didn't understand why I was arrested.   A person tried to take me to the hospital with his care and they pulled me and said I was arrested I have to go to the prison.  
 And they sacrificed to pick me up with the police vans and they took me to the hospital, because they said I was under arrest.  I was guarded at the hospital because I was under arrest.   
 Some of the students came to visit me at the hospital and they requested that I should be removed from the Bapelong Hospital, because the hospital didn't have enough equipment to treat me. 
 I was then sent to Victoria.  I spent a day and the following morning I was sent to the Seding Clinic, that is where I stayed for three weeks.
 While in hospital I couldn't speak, I lost my speech. I couldn't walk, I was just like a baby.  I couldn't eat 
myself, I was fed.  I was even taken to the toilet, because I couldn't do anything on my own.
 I would request my mother to carry on, because I can't carry on anymore.  She might give a better explanation.

DR RANDERA: Gloria I would love for your mother to speak but I am afraid that we don't have a statement from your mother so we have to stay with your statement.  Is that ok?

GLORIA SEKAMOENG: Yes, that is ok.  Because even if she didn't MMABATHO HEARING TRC/NORTH WEST
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give a statement in, she knows about what happened to me.  Because by the time I was in the hospital she was always with me.

DR RANDERA: If we need to take any additional information we will go back to your mother and take a statement from her at a later stage.
 Are you ok to answer some questions?

GLORIA SEKAMOENG: Yes, I will be able to.

DR RANDERA: Gloria, I want us again to go back.   1993 was a period of intense activity in Bophuthatswana as it was then called.  We had a situation of members of an opposition party, challenging Mr Cronje, one of the Ministers at that time.  We had a situation where we had an international monitoring group, coming into the country and at times being refused entry into Bophuthatswana.
 We also had at the Medical School in Garankua a mass uprising by the students where they hijacked buses and in fact burn the buses.  
 And then, of course, what happened at your own University, you were one of the victims of that and several other students also ended up in hospital, as you 
will remember.
 I am just wondering if you could just, to me and to everybody else, give us a picture of what was actualy happening on that campus, on that day.  Was it that the police just came on and started attacking people without any provocation, or was there something else going that made the police came on to the campus in the first place.

GLORIA SEKAMOENG: Yes, the police attacked us for a reason, because on that day there was going to be a student march to take the memorandum to the parliament.  And the students MMABATHO HEARING TRC/NORTH WEST
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were gathered, preparing themselves to leave for the parliament so they could hand in the memorandum.  They were waiting, singing the freedom songs and that was when the police came to stop.   Because they were against the march.  They didn't want the march to take place.
 They said they students do not have to leave the campus to hand in the memorandum at the parliament offices.
 That is the reason that make the police attack the students.  The students wanted to go out of the campus, but the police didn't allow them to.
 I don't really know what was written in the memorandum, because by that time I wasn't very active in the students' movements.  
 I only got the injuries, because in 1993 it was my first year here at the University.  By then I didn't know much about the events here at school.  Therefore, I would say I didn't know what was in the memorandum.

DR RANDERA: Thank you, I have no other questions Chairperson.

MR MALAN: Just to confirm, did you say it was on the 7th of May?  What date did this take place?

GLORIA SEKAMOENG: Yes, it was on the 7th of May.

MR MALAN: Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Gloria and your mother, we thank you for being here today and we really shared the experience that you have been through.  You know, when you go to school and try to study in your first year and meet such problems you ask yourself, is this really a school?  Well that is the situation we found ourselves in, because of the past laws.
 We want to say the problems that you had or that the problems that you still have as you mentioned, that your MMABATHO HEARING TRC/NORTH WEST
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thighs are not equal and that you were shocked, we will try and see what shall we do to help you Gloria Sekamoeng, so that you can further your studies like anybody else.
 We want to thank you that you were today.