Special Hearings — Women's Hearings — 1997-07-29

MS MATSHOBA: I greet you all.  I have brought, because this is not the first time that I come and stand in front of this type of group, today I will be much stronger, but suddenly I just saw a friend that I have not seen for years, an ex-prison mate, Jubie Mayet, and it almost, you know, shook my strength a bit.  However, as I say, one is to be very strong.  When people look at you walking up and down the streets or associating with them in social circles they see strength in some of us.  They do not know how much you have been shattered and broken in the past.
 Briefly, I do not think I am expected to go into deeper details today, except that one focus and one perspective that I would really like to focus on is the behaviour and attitudes of prison warderesses towards prisoners which is one are that has never really been picked up.  When I first went to prison it was in 1976 at the Johannesburg Fort.  I was very fortunate that at that stage it was Section Ten which is one could relatively call a better form of detention, because you are, you interact with your inmates and the group was very strong and we were very fortunate that we had a veteran amongst us in the person of Winnie Mandela, who had been to the Fort before and, having been familiar with the place, we drew a lot of knowledge and courage from her.  
 Among the other women who were with me at the Fort was Joyce Seroke, Fatima Meer, Sele Moklana, Wesper Smith, that was in 1976.  So it was quite a powerful group of women.  The kind of warderesses that we had at that stage, you know, like I say, they knew Winnie and she called them by name and we were also able to familiarise ourselves with.  Because this was a powerful group we were able, actually, to dictate terms to them.  In the first place we did not even, you know, know why we were in detention.  At that stage we were not interrogated or anything.  We were just put there and told that we are political prisoners and we are under Section Ten.
 The first mistake that they realised they made later was that they had allowed us to interact and to be together.  One of the notable changes I remember that we made did not just affect our stay at the Fort, it affected the common-law prisoners who were there.  We discovered that the women were not allowed to wear panties.  They worked with their overalls, with their blue overalls.  How we realised that, anyway, we started confronting and taking up with the prison authorities and it was one massive change that we made that women started being allowed, the common-law prisoners started being allowed to wear panties, but those were the Black prisoners.  The White prisoners were allowed to have the full regalia every women needs.
 We had interaction with both Black and White prison warderesses and I guess it was mainly because it was Section Ten and this is why we were able to bring the changes that we brought.  Like, for instance, clamouring for the release of young children who we heard screaming in the middle of the night.  I remember Winnie waking us up one night and saying, women, we are not going to sleep.  We started banging doors, banging doors and calling until the Adjudant came and wanted to know what was happening.  We said we want to see the Security Police, what are these children doing in prison?  The next day the children were released except those that were charged like Sibongile Mkabela and others. 
 Most of us were released in December.  In fact, all of us were released in December.  Six weeks later I was re-detained under Section Six of the Terrorism Act.  I was intercepted while on a mission to Durban in Vrede by three vehicles driven by Security Police.  Immediately after that they hand-cuffed me on to the car and drove me to the female prison in Pietermaritzburg.  I was taken to a small, tiny cell in the prison, the maximum section, which we called Gulagud.  The first night, in the middle of the night there was a woman next door and we started communicating.  I asked her who she was.  No, she told me, she was Thandiwe from Klaarwater in Pinetown.  I did not know why she was there and one had to be careful.  
 Now, she told me that she was in prison, because she had just murdered her husband.  There were moments of, you know, laughing at times under the circumstances.  She had murdered her husband and she got sentenced for 12 years, she got a 12 year sentence and that she had just, she had attempted to escape and got caught.  Now, she was there awaiting a retrial.  I just thought to myself, gosh, who am I sitting next to, you know.  Then she wanted to know why I was there.  I could sense that she, you know, you know, her level, her class in society, I could just sense how she was and I just had to tell her a story so that we could be friends and I did not know what to tell her.
 I started by saying politics, she said what is that?  I said, man, you know about the burnings of schools, I have been burning schools.  So this is why I am here.  I did not know what to say to her, you know, I just had to associate with her and have a sense of belonging.  I had to come with a very strong story of something terrible that I had done, but later at night I just thought of, you know, Judas Iscariot, Jesus Christ and Barrabus next to him, getting crucified along a murderer.  Anyway that was that and I was given over to White prison warderesses and I could see that they had been told stories.  
 No single one in Pietermaritzburg, I spent 12 months in Pietermaritzburg, I was never attended to by a single Black face and because I was in isolation there was no way, at all, of communicating with the outside world.  With the Black prison warderesses you would be able to conscientise them as time went on and to appeal to their senses and naturally, in a way, you would sensitise them to the point that they would realise that you are there, actually, for them and this is what the system realised and under Section Six there was no way in which they would allow you to be attended to by a Black warderess unless if they wanted to achieve certain results and certain objectives and goals.  
 These were warderesses who would allow Security Police to come and fetch you at any odd time of the night for torture purposes.  It would never be recorded in the books that you have been taken to the torture chambers.  The first time when they took me from the prison was a week later.  Actually after I had demanded that I wanted to see them, I still came with a Fort mentality.  I demanded to see them, because they had just dumped me there after taking me to the female prison and never came to me.  I just sat there stewing, you know, and thinking what could it be.  I remember the warderess, actually, the senior warderess there, saying to me, how can you, how dare you call the Security Police.  Do you not know what these people are going to do to you when they take you?  You are better off sitting here not knowing what it is that, why, the reason why you are here.  I said, no, I need, I have work to do, I have a child at home, I need to attend to so many things, I have studies to do, I cannot come and sit here and rot here and not knowing why I am here.
 They came on a Saturday afternoon, two of them, drunk.  Yes Deborah, so you are ready and took me away, left my clothes there and that is when the interrogation began.  I just want to interrupt something, Hlengiwe, do you want me to go into details of the interrogation so.  Okay.  That night I left all my clothing, because I was fortunate that I had clothing with me, because I was on another mission, I was not taken from home where they would tell you that you leave everything, come as you are.  The Security Police's name is Roy Otto.  They held a braai outside, it was at night in Pietermaritzburg at the police station.  They hand-cuffed me and put and manacled my ankle on a big iron ball.  
 They made me stand the whole night.  There was no chair, but I was given a pen to write a statement, tell them everything about myself and my involvement in SASO.  I was an executive member of SASO at that stage.  I wrote a brief history of myself.  It was Saturday.  Sunday I continued the same thing.  They kept on tearing the papers and telling me to write.  The third night I started becoming delirious and my legs were swelling.  I think that was on a Monday.  By Thursday, no, Tuesday, by the Tuesday I was counting nights and this man started beating me up.  He held a towel, strangelled me with a towel and started bashing my head against the wall.
 Obviously, I was very, very weak.  I was being given food, but I was not made to sit down.  I could not sit down and when I collapsed they kicked me.  Eventually I must have passed out.  I was bleeding.  I must have passed out, because when I came to I was lying on the floor, all wet.  They must have poured water over me and he threw a packet of sanitary pads at me, got to the bathroom and I could see that I was menstruating and I was just wondering how he realised that.  The beating up lasted for a week.  I was asthmatic and they refused to give me medication.  Ultimately, when they realised that they could not get anything out of me and, perhaps, not mainly because of strength as much as it was actually because of weakness, the way I was physically weak and I could not speak anymore.
 They took me to another police station which we later realised as one that they took people to to recuperate, because everybody who came there came in a state.  It was a filthy police station, swarming with lice, L I C E, and the blankets stinking and reeking of urine and I was thrown in there.  Actually the worst was that I did not even know where I was and I was screaming and shouting.  I did not even have strength, because I was running short of breath.  I remember somewhere along the line, I was very fortunate that these uniform policeman came, an Afrikaner.  I will never forget his name, Taljaard.  He told me that he thought I was mad, I was just a mad person.  I tried to explain to him and he listened carefully and understood that, no, I was actually a political prisoner and I had just been tortured. 
 He smuggled an asthma spray and tablets for me and helped me hide them in the cell.  We hid them behind the toilets.  I was not allowed to see a doctor, but ultimately Taljaard calls a doctor called, took me out, smuggled me.  The doctor use to come to the police station, but they would not take me to the doctor.  Instead there was this van Rooyen who kept on coming and saying to me, we are waiting for you to die, we have realised your weak point and we do not have to torture you anymore.  With your asthma, you will go naturally and we cannot be held liable for that.  After seeing the doctor, Taljaard must have spoken strongly to the doctor.  In fact, he even said to the doctor we do not want her dying here.  If they want her to die they must ...