Special Hearings — Trojan Horse Hearings — 1997-06-02

GLENDA WILDSCHUT: You said that there were two policemen inside the house who were talking to you, one was very nice and was reassuring you, the other one, the big one who had the gun, were they wearing the same kind of clothes?

MS ABRAHAMS: They were not wearing the same clothes, no. The big one with the machine gun, which was pointing at us with this gun was wearing a green floral clothing and the policeman who was looking at me and told me not to panic, that he would help me, was wearing a light blue short sleeve shirt and blue pants with very fine lines in the pants.

MAPULE RAMASHALA: Did you get a chance to see any of the policemen who were on the truck? I'm trying to see if the big policeman was wearing the same clothes that the ones who were shooting on the truck were wearing.

MS ABRAHAMS: I could not see the shooting. I was not outside, so I can't say who was on the truck. But what I can say is that the last one with the green floral clothing that came into the house, I was with my children in the house. I did not leave the house. The one that came into the house, with, or was standing in the house with the blue clothes, these are the two.
I could not get out of the house, they were shooting outside, I was inside the house. I can't tell you about the shooting from the truck.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you Dr Ramashala. I'm just wondering, Toyer, are there any things that you still don't understand about your experience in 1985, 15 October?

MR ABRAHAMS: Well there might be a few ja. What I don't understand is, why they used that much live ammunition on us for example, and why they actually forced their way into the house at that point in stage and why they treated us like that when we were already wounded. That was what I actually don't understand. I mean if they jumped out of that crates, like I understand, don't you think that if the kids on our section, if they threw stones, right, don't you think that, I mean that if I had to hold a gun and people throwing stones at me, I can just point and shoot but not watch in what direction that they are throwing the stones. I mean they had ample time to see where they were shooting and to whom they were shooting, and at what they were shooting.

CHAIRPERSON: So it's very difficult for you to understand how you were shot and how your friends died.

MR ABRAHAMS: And actually what I also want to know is, who was the person who gave them the permission to take the law into their own hands. I mean at that stage and at that age, I couldn't understand that. But now I'm old enough.

CHAIRPERSON: Toyer, what would you like the commission to do? How  would you like, what do you expect from the commission?

MR ABRAHAMS: Well, to be quite honest with you, I don't actually expect much because I mean this thing happened so long ago, there were so many court cases. Nothing ever happened about it. But if there is something you guys can do about it, I just hope they deserve, they get what comes to them. This police people that actually shot on us. And they must, it's a bit hard to explain,....

CHAIRPERSON: I was listening to both yourself and your mother earlier on when you were giving your testimony. And it's very hard not to imagine vividly what was happening in Mrs Ryklief's home. The blood on the children, the blood on yourself, the blood on the bed, children running for cover in a chicken shed and choking chickens to death, for sheer survival, just to try and avoid being hurt. The business, Mrs Ryklief said it was like a war situation in her own home. It's very hard not to see that just trying to picture, to figure out the picture that you're drawing, of what was happening on that day. And what I find very difficult again, going back to the idea of a Trojan Horse is what language do we use to explain and express pain and suffering and trauma. How do you describe it, there is no language really that you can use to explain the intensity of your feeling 12 years ago and how traumatised you have been as a result of that experience. So language becomes very important, how you explain, how you express your pain. Important not so much for yourselves because you know what pain is, but for us who are listening, I think often we see people come to the commission as people who bring on fragments of memory and so what that is how pain is remembered, as fragments of experience. It may not be exactly what you experience was like at that time. I think Ebrahim put it very succinctly when he said - hearings do not bring the true experience of what people went through at the time but so be it. We are delighted that at least we get glimpses of the experience, because we begin to understand what our history is about in this country. We thank you very much for coming to share with us, your pain because it helps us understand what the past is, what the history is like. I think when reality is too grim, the ordinary things like protecting your children become impossible, and you have made us understand how difficult it was for you in that bedroom when you held your two children in your hands, bleeding, blood all over yourselves, and guns shooting all around you and police bursting into the rooms. We are glad that you were able to come here today and to share with us your experience and thank you very much.

MS ABRAHAMS: I've got a single question to the truth commission. Do you in the Truth Commission think that those policemen, that they could look at our children, could they protect this generation now growing up, if then they did not have the heart, if they could shoot at six year old children in that day, how can they be an example today, how can they protect our children now?

CHAIRPERSON: I'm going to ask Mrs Mary Burton to respond to your question.

MARY BURTON: Mrs Abrahams, I'm not sure if I can answer it exactly. I think that the purpose of what we are all doing here is to try and work towards a society in which all members of out police services are seen as the protectors of the community. That we have a long way to go until we get to that time, and one of the ways of getting to that time is to understand what happened in the past, what kind of training people had, what kind of orders people had and to lay down a foundation for the future, where the training includes understanding of the public's needs, understanding of the role of the police person, the protector of society. And that's something that we can ask of the government, and that we can ask of the authorities, who create the police structures, but I also believe it's something we as a community have to work towards, and claim for ourselves that right for the police services to be the protectors and the upholders of society. That means we have to inspire good people to go into the police service. It means that we have to create good conditions for police people to work under. There's a whole role of change in our society that we still need. And in a way when we hear from people like you and your experience, it just reminds us all the time of how important that all is, for the kind of society that we all want to create.
 Now we will be hearing from the specific policemen, who were involved in this incident and that is going to be hard for them and hard for us, but it is part of that process that we have to work towards together and so I'd like to echo Pumla's words of thanking you and all the other people who have, today, put themselves through the pain of speaking again, because that is the goal that we have to work towards together. I'm not sure if I answered the question but I did my best.

MS ABRAHAMS: Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Mrs Abrahams, you can go to your seat and thank you very much again.