Human Rights Violation Hearings — Worcester — 1996-06-24

MR KARIEM: Yes, that is correct, during 1985 on the 20th March I turned 14 and I was in std 6 at the Esselen Park Senior Secondary - Senior High.  In August of that year we had a mass meeting during which political activists addressed us.  We were all scholars and students who attended the meeting and also other residents from Worcester who attended the meeting.  But it was just about the entire community involved in this mass meeting and decisions were taken at the meeting and we as students felt that we had to co-operate with the parents of the children to show that we in Worcester weren't just sitting still and doing nothing.  
We wanted to show solidarity because there was unrest and protest everywhere against the apartheid Government of the day and we were being repressed and we suffered and we felt we had to give expression to our emotions and that's how we became involved in the school's boycott.
And the mass meeting took place on the Sunday and on the Monday some of our students decided that all three High Schools would be involved and on the next Tuesday the students from these three schools all gathered together.  We were more or less 3,000 students and we then decided in the school hall that we would then march to the Songhe College - it was then situated in Gray Street.  This was going to be a peaceful march.  We left the school premises and we marched in body to the Songhe College.
Along the way we passed a discotheque.  Some of the students then left the march and started hammering on the doors and some of our students then went to speak to these students at the disco and these students then came back to the march.
In Gray Street we saw that the police were already busy patrolling the streets.  We moved past the police because we had no reason to get involved with them.   We then entered the premises of the college but were stopped but were stopped by the Rector and he told us that we couldn't see his students and we then asked to speak to the Students Council.  We asked for a representative of the Students Council to come and talk to us and two of the Students Council members came out with the Rector and we then had a discussion with them.
There was a police officer - I am not entirely sure of his name, but this officer told us that he would give us the opportunity to leave the premises - the college premises but we had already said previously that we wanted to involve all the students from the Songhe and the schools, we really wanted to involve the Songhe students - we wanted an answer from them.
But the police tried to prevent this and the officer told us by using a megaphone that they weren't going to give us very much time.  We just had to leave the premises and he'd hardly said this and put down his loud hailer when Constable Willis Smit started shooting tear gas and then they fired pellets at us, more tear gas was shot at us and police started using sjamboks and tried to disperse the students, they used birdshot as well.  And then about 100 students ran to the cemetery - because the cemetery - this is the Municipal cemetery I am talking about and closest to the college was a white cemetery - where they buried white people.
And we jumped over the fence there and police chased us with their sjamboks and they followed us into the cemetery and in the cemetery a girl stumbled and fell right in front of me and when I tried to help her up we were both whipped with the sjambok - there were two white policemen who were doing this.  But I don't know their names and some of the pupils then turned around and started stoning the police.  
And I could say that the reason was that they wanted us to escape from the police.  They wanted to give us a chance, so we continued running and I then told the students that we should try and reach our own high school, Esselen Park so we crossed the cemetery and arrived at the Nuwe Hoop Hostel for disabled children and we ran through the premises there as well.  And we started moving in the direction of the high school and when we arrived at the school our then school principal, Mr Abrahams, told us that he didn't want us at the school on the premises.
And when we asked him the reason for this, we told him the police were chasing us and they were already in the vicinity.  He told us that this was not our affair, it was not his affair, and we had started the trouble and we then told  him we had not started the trouble but some of the police members were already entered  the school and they used tear gas again against - fired tear gas at us and myself and one Henry Pekeur - we'd picked up some of these canisters and threw them back at the police.
And then we started moving towards the classrooms at the back of the school -  and the police started jumping over the fence and in the front they did the same.  Now at the school there was a hostel and the police started moving through the gates - the hostel gates as well to try and pin us down on the school premises so we moved towards the classrooms.  And then the school principal announced over the loud hailer that we - he wanted to have nothing to do with us, we had to solve our own problems and we had to leave the school.
We then stormed out of the classroom where we had gathered and the police were outside the school at that stage and they told us that they would give us a chance to move away to disperse and go to our homes.  So we then started moving up Buitenkant Street, most of us at that stage lived in Esselen Park and others like myself lived in Rhoodewal Flats.  We started moving towards our homes and when we reached Esselen Park Stadium a car approached from Lionel Street and there was a girl, Ursula Hermanus, she was a student, they called her and we told her Ursula don't go.
And then the police started shooting at us again and using tear gas and we started running again into Lionel Street and they then jumped into their cars and gave chase and this woman ran in the direction of her home and the police were following here and this one policeman, Tekkies van Rensburg, he and three other white policemen chased Ursula.  We stopped because we wanted to find out what was happening - we saw how they came out of the house with Ursula and she was crying and they were dragging her out of the house.
Whilst they were dragging her towards the car - well you must realise that our emotions were running so high when we saw Ursula in the hands of the policemen.  The police shot at us again - they shot birdshot at us as well and then they put Ursula in the car.  Then we all went to our homes via Lionel Street.
That afternoon when I arrived I just put down my books and then I went back to the streets because most of the students were in the streets at that stage and we decided we were just going to protest against the police - we were once again try and involve the students and the schools - we wanted to speak to the principals and tell them that we didn't  want to attend classes - we would go to school but we did not want to have normal classes because we wanted to solve this issue of the police assaults on us.
So we boycotted school for about three weeks and when the police - one morning about 330 in the morning  arrived at our home, they knocked on the door and my mother opened the door and a white man said to her that - he was Mr Niewoudt and he was looking for me and my mother then took him to my room and he asked me to identify myself and I did and he said I must get dressed to go with him.
When I got to our doors I realised that there was a whole army of policemen present there.  We lived on the third floor of the flats and the police were deployed on the steps there and there was - there were plenty of police vehicles from one corner of the flats to the next and there were lots of policemen with rifles and sjamboks etcetera. 
And they put me in the van and we then left there and picked up other students along the way at their homes and we then went to the CID offices in Hoogstraat.  And when we arrived at the CID offices they told us they picked up eleven students and they put us all in one room and then four policemen entered the room, one was Dicky van Rensburg, Oupa van Loggerenberg, Buck Jones and the other one was Mr Symington.
And they told us that they were investigating cases of public violence against us and we didn't say anything - we just sat quietly and they then took out a list of names.  The one detective Oupa van Loggerenberg told us that when he reads out the names that person must then get up and he started calling out the names and the people got up when they heard their names.  And they then moved all the people one by one from this particular office.  When he called my name I just remained sitting as I was the last one.   And he asked me are you Ridwaan Kariem and I said no, I'm not - I am not Ridwaan Kariem and he said who are you - and I said I don't know.  I can't say who is who, I don't know all the people and then he swore at me - he said I mustn't talk nonsense and that kind of thing and I said - there is nothing I can tell you - I can't even say who I am because I don't know what's going on.  
Then Mr van Rensburg got up, came towards me and he said I mustn't talk a lot of nonsense and slapped me through my face and I just sat there and looked at him.  He walked back to his desk and asked me once again whether I was this person and I said - no.  He once again got up stood behind me and started kicking me in my ribs and I then fell down on the floor and he then left me and went back to his desk.
After and hour and a half they brought the other students back into the room where I was and  they left us there.  They then began to read the names again and took the students out one by one.  Again, when my name was read I admitted to being  Ridwaan Kariem.  He then asked me what I expected.  And then I said he has to decide what he has to do and then he said that he would let me go and he would see me at a later stage.
I then walked out of the CID office and then I noted that all the students were waiting outside so we left together.  I was told by the others that they were also assaulted in the various offices where they were interrogated and I then told them that we must return to our homes.
And the next day when we returned to school we must warn the other students what would happen at the CID offices. We then returned to our homes and the next day we returned to school.  The school boycotts continued and a week after my first arrests there were people at my home again who knocked at my door and looked for me.
My mother again brought the police into my room and took me with them.  This was on a Friday morning.  I was locked up on the Friday morning without any interrogation and that afternoon I was called out, I was asked to give them my name, address, fingerprints and then I was returned to my cell.
Through the course of the Friday evening nothing occurred and then on the Saturday morning a police officer in uniform came to my cell and asked me whom I was and brought me a bag of food sent by my mother.  I then asked the policeman what exactly was happening since I had been in the cell since the previous morning and the officer then told me he can't  tell me what was happening since it was the people from the Security Branch who handled the matter and that they are normal officers did not know what was the state of affairs.  On the Monday morning we were released again since there had been a whole handful of us who had been arrested and there were no court appearances or anything.  I returned to school and things were calm for about two weeks.
Then one morning there was a knock at the door again and it was the same police officers.  My mother then asked them what exactly was happening since they were visiting me at home all the time and taking me away and then I simply come back without anything happening.  They then said to my mother that they would charge me for public violence so my mother told me to go with them again which I did.
That Friday morning they took my name again - they had a list of incidences where violence occurred, where stones were thrown, where company vehicles were overturned in the streets and I then told them I don't have any knowledge of these events, I was not involved with any of these events.  One of these officers then said that they had a video camera on which they made recordings and that it would be very clear that I was involved in these events.
They then told me to simply co-operate with them and I said I did not know what was going on.  So they then told me it was simply my problem and then I was locked up again.
On that Monday morning I appeared in court and then heard for the first time that the charge was public violence but I was not asked to plead.  I was then released on bail of R500,00 returned to school again.  
Three weeks after the third arrest, again on a Friday morning on the 1st November I was collected at my home along with other students in the flats.  In the charge office of the South African Police  I saw that yet again a whole number of students were arrested and we were then  placed in a garage where Mr van Rensburg, Mr van Loggerenberg, Mr Symington and one further detective, a Mr Herbert said  that they would take photographs of us.
They wrote our names on little boards which they hung around our necks they then called us out - they  wrote our names on these placards and took photographs of us.  They did a lot of writing that morning and then I was called after the photo session I asked Mr van Loggerenberg what all the notes that they take and then he told me that they want to know to which schools we go - what we do at school -  how we are involved in the violence on the streets and then I said to him I simply could not tell them anything.
And then he threatened me saying that I would see what the consequences would be.  We were then released that afternoon and just before two - or just before two - we were taken out of the garage and put in one of the larger police vans.  We were told to get into the vehicle and as we drove on we saw that we were taken out of Worcester and were taken through the du  Toit's Kloof Pass, we were becoming quite concerned asking ourselves exactly what was going on and  where they could be taking us.