Special Hearings — Health Sector Hearings — 1997-06-17

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: Thank you very much Betty.  I understand you are rushing for time, but I just want to say that the rupture of silence is often a very painful experience and it is obvious that there are ruins all over your memory as you have shown us this afternoon.  Betty, I just need to ask one question.  In relation to the management who decreed that you should cooperate with the police, who was management?  Can you just explain to us who management was?

BETTY NCANYWA: It was the matrons and medical superintendent.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: The matron and medical superintendent at Livingstone Hospital.

BETTY NCANYWA: Yes, yes.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: So was there a meeting to inform you on this rule?  How was this information communicated to you?

BETTY NCANYWA: They usually have a matrons' meeting and then our supervisors would come every morning, every morning there were staff meetings and it's where these things were communicated to us.  And then they would also go directly to the units that were directly involved, like the casualty unit, also the medical wards.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: Thank you very much Betty.   I do not want to delay you any further.

WENDY ORR: From the Chair thank you very much.  Certainly what you have said about PE in those days has brought back memories for me too.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: Leslie can you proceed please.

LESLIE LONDON: If I could just really say that the examples that Betty gave were not isolated to one particular area.  I think we have heard from Mark this morning
and we've had many other stories of other hospitals where similar events took place, and it wasn't an isolated event.  
 Just to summarise many hospitals saw situations where medical records were seized as a result of which people might be detained or information was used in interrogation.  People who arrived at hospitals were routinely arrested, and we know that in Cape Town for instance, one of our teaching hospitals, Groote Schuur Hospital, the situation was such that medical students set up their own safe house in Observatory.  They were subsequently reported by the hospital authorities to the University and their house was placed under Security surveillance afterwards.
 We've had many reports of detainees being shackled, being examined in the presence of security forces, and that clinical decisions, as Betty described, were often dictated by security interests.  
 But we want to make the point that it wasn't only public sector services, that the fabric, well apartheid permeated the whole fabric of the health services and it was also in the private sector, particularly in rural areas where many of the GPs also worked as part-time district surgeons.   Some of the stories that the TRC has heard have often involved GPs who were part-time district surgeons, often working in situations where practices were racist and separate, that's why we've asked Mr Nel, who has kindly come through from Zilani to talk about his experiences.  It's a small rural town about two hours from Cape Town and he's going to describe his experience in relation to a private general practitioner in the town.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: We greet you Sir.

JACOB NEL: I would also like to greet the Truth Commission.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: We thank you for coming forward.

JACOB NEL: I would also like to thank you for the opportunity to come before the Commission.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: Can you please tell us your story as it was already said.

JACOB NEL: I will start in 1986, although I cannot remember the date.  There was a funeral in Ashton then and on the evening of that day all these casspirs arrived full of policemen with doctors and everyone and they went to stop at my house.  The police had balaclavas over their heads, all of them.  They came into my house and when they came in they were looking for vigilantes.  They were looking for one particular person amongst - one particular child of mine.  This child that came into my house said look dad here are the police, and when I went to the side where the police were the police came in in police uniform and balaclavas on and one doctor came in with them.  A doctor from Ashton.
 There were eight of them altogether with two vigilantes.  The one vigilante was behind the door.  At the same time this child had in the meantime slipped out on the other side of the house, and then when they came in they decided to take this child that was at home, that had just been discharged from hospital, that was still ill, and I refused.  These four Boers who were standing to my left, the others were standing there, one threatened to shoot me with his gun.  I then went to him and took his gun away from him.  When I did that another policeman assaulted me, hit me on the head.  He was standing next to this doctor who was there.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: Could you please explain this doctor, is it a practising doctor there in your area?

JACOB NEL: Yes it was a doctor who had his own surgery who would treat us all for whatever our ailments were, be it high blood pressure or sugar diabetes, or whatever, us as workers of Langeberg factory, and he came in in police uniform as well with a balaclava over his head as well.  He is present now that I am talking to you.  He is right here.  Although he has since left us there he is in Paarl.  I am just mentioning that he is here.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: You may proceed.

JACOB NEL: Thereafter the police assaulted me there in the house and threw me to the ground and my wife picked me up.  When she did they took her and pushed her through one of the doors in my house and closed her up in a room there and then they dragged me outside.
 When I got outside there was a policeman who did not have a balaclava on.  His face was clearly visible, and I asked him what are you doing now, and they said no, he should go as well, and he said you did not say you were here to fetch him, you said that you were here to fetch the child, but now you are taking him as well.  Leave him.  And then they left me.  
 I was full of blood on the one side of my body and I opened my garage to come out, to bring my car out so that I could go to the doctor, and when I was going to leave this policeman who had said to me that I should stop everything, said to me that I should just stop everything, leave everything and I left the car.  And he said to me there were no doctors.  And I could see that there was this one who was amongst them.   I do not know how many others there were because there weren't that many of them.   That's all I have to say.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: Thank you very much Sir.  The essence of your version here today is that amongst those people who came to threaten you and terrorise you there was a doctor in their midst?

JACOB NEL: Yes.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: I just want us to ascertain do we agree that you said that you were not going to mention his name because there is a problem with people being implicated here today, but I would like you to explain to us, did you see this doctor with a balaclava on?

JACOB NEL: The balaclava slipped off his face and I saw his face.  I know him since 1980 - I haven't seen him since 1987/88, but I've seen him here today and I still recognise him.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: Did you ever speak to him after this incident?

JACOB NEL: No I have never spoken to him since.  I never ever went to him again.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: The people in the area in Zulani, do they know him?

JACOB NEL: They all know him.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: Do they know him as being someone who worked with the police from time-to-time?

JACOB NEL: Yes there were those who knew that he was one of them on that night.