Human Rights Violation Hearings — Durban — 1996-10-25

MAPULE RAMASHALA: ... my mother came rushing down when she realised it was me and so we just had to go into the kitchen and have a cup of tea, and then drive away again, and Maboya still asking when are we going to see the cows, because I promised him he would see the cows on the farm.   I think my mother suffered terribly emotionally in that whole situation.   When Maboya was about 10 months old, Pax came out of gaol on bail pending an appeal.   At that time from when he was three months old I was living with friends, Anita Kromberg and Richard Steele, and they were involved in the end conscription campaign and conscientious objector support group.   They were on the run from security branch at that time.   So, I was working, I was running a winter school for the career information centre at the time and the security branch and the police came at night just before the winter school was due to start.  Richard and Anita were not there.   And I was not cooperative with them, but they went away again.  After two weeks Pax had just come out of gaol, it was our first evening of being together again, because his first two evenings he spent at home in Lamontville with his parents, and then he came to the house in Bellair.   And we were sitting in the lounge and he heard the sound of an engine and he said, "That's the cops", because his ear was tuned, he could recognise it.   So, I quickly phoned a friend and then they arrived and it was the military intelligence and the security police.   And they came on the pretext of searching the house for drugs, because they said the next door neighbours had complained about drugs.   And it was very ironic because the next door neighbour used to smoke dagga with the police in the garden and here were they coming to our house.   So, I remember at that time we had Nusa education charter campaign pamphlets and we had ECC pamphlets and we hid them quickly under the mattress, the baby's mattress.   So, when the police came in, I was very uncooperative to them and they decided to detain me and I know that they did it merely out of spite because they spoke to each other in Afrikaans, maybe thinking that I could not understand them, but I understood them and they were just taking me in to cool me off.   So, I was held in solitary confinement at Westville Prison for 10 days under state of emergency.   There was only one other woman in the whole block of cells at the other end of the corridor.  When the warders realised that we were communicating with each other, they moved her away, and I was left alone in that cell block.  I was not physically ill-treated and I was only subjected to one mild interrogation by the person who detained me, his name was Erasmus.   I was reminded of that by Jeremy Radledge(?) because he was detained and questioned by the same man.  I am not sure of his rank, whether he was captain or what.   But he said to Jeremy he complained about me after the first visit to the house, that I had been cheeky and if it had not been for the baby he would have detained me, and then on the second visit he did detain me.   So, the only thing I was worried about, I didn't know how long they would keep me and Maboya was supposed to be receiving medication and he had to visit the hospital for a check up on his foot.   So, I didn't know really how long I would be kept there.   And then Pax succeeded in obtaining a visit and he brought Maboya and just 10 minutes after I saw them I was then called from my cell and told to get my things together and then I was driver of the vicinity of my home and released.   So, after about a year of Pax being out on bail and reporting regularly to the police station, he then lost his appeal.  I was devastated by that, and I will never forget having to drive him back to gaol in ... (inaudible) ... driving him myself.   I was really alone again without him, but knowing that I didn't really know the real truth about the terrible experiences that he was being subjected to in gaol.   Then I was very shocked one evening when the lawyer phoned me and told me that he had been granted a second appeal because the first one was in the Bloemfontein Supreme Court and the second one was going to be in Pietermaritzburg, or vice versa, I am a bit confused about it now.   The one was national and the other was Natal.   So, then he was released on bail again after about a year and in that time we moved up to Pietermaritzburg and he had to commute to Durban three times a week to report to the police station, which was very costly.   The prosecutor would not condone an application for him to report in Pietermaritzburg.   He could not get work under those conditions and we struggled to survive financially.   In September 1989 I received a phone call from my mother, she sounded terrible.   I thought my father had died, but she told me that my oldest brother had been killed.   She never recovered from this grief, she was very very bitter about it afterwards.  He had been murdered by two African men.   The defence claimed in court that he had accosted the men for climbing through a farm fence and threatened them with a rifle and that they had acted in self-defence when they attacked him with an axe.   When I recall his attitudes to black people, I think I can have some idea of how this confrontation might have come about.   And maybe those men hated white men for the treatment they had received at their hands.   I had only seen this brother once, Willem, in the four years since Maboya was born, and that was by accident, because he didn't want to have anything to do with me at all.  My father had been very ill in hospital with diarrhoea and a psychologist told me that it was depression causing the diarrhoea.   And I had bumped into my brother at the hospital there.   And at his funeral it was also the first time that I saw his children, who were my nieces, of whom I had been very very fond, and it was the first time they knew that I had a child.  It was the first time that they got an idea of why I had become the invisible member of the family.   Even recently, a month or so ago, their mother told me that my oldest niece doesn't want to come to a family reunion if we try to have one, because I am married to a black man and it was black people who killed her father and then later her grandparents.   So, of course Pax could not go with me to my brother's funeral, because this would have been like a red rag to a bull.   After my brother's death, we decided to have another child and to get married.   Up until then I had not wanted to get married, because - or I didn't want to have another child, because I didn't want to risk being all on my own again if he lost his appeal, but it seemed as if we were just at the mercy of the State, we were just waiting for the State to decide our lives, and we didn't want to live that way.   So, we got married in March 1990, in Lamontville, and I was five months pregnant at the time with my second baby.   Nobody from my family came to our wedding.   Four months later, on July 7th, 1990, my parents were murdered on their farm at Hella Hella.   I was visiting Pax' family in Lamontville when I received a phone call from my landlady.   I can remember very clearly that that was a lovely sunny winter's day, and in the morning I had thought it was a beautiful day, I wish I could visit my parents on the farm, but I knew that I couldn't do that, especially not being pregnant.  And I remember we talked about my parents in the car going down to Durban.   So, the next day a friend drove me to the farm and I saw the bloodstains in the road and on the farm house floor where my parents had been battered to death.   I also saw my sister and my second brother, Piet, for the first time since Willem's funeral.   Although I had visited my parents once or twice with Maboya, after I was pregnant with Nsigeya I had not been free to visit them.  It was as if this pregnancy and our marriage were rubbing salt in their wounds.   It signalled that our relationship was permanent, it wasn't just some kind of a bad mistake.   So, my parents and I were not reconciled before they died.  In their will they disinherited me from any share in the bulk of their estate, although they left me, and I believe it is my mother who left it to me, some money and a share of furniture and the piano I had when I was a child.   It is still a source of pain to me that we were not reconciled.   I also see that the apartheid system contributed in many ways to the situation which made them a target for attack and vulnerable victims.  Their attackers stole weapons from the house.   At the time there was conflict between the ANC and the IFP in the Pateni area, and I think maybe that is what the weapons were taken for.   My parents were amongst the first of the farming community in the midlands area to be killed.   The farming community, especially elderly people, have become a target for those people who want to continue with violence.   The day after my parents were murdered, our second child was born by caesarian section.   We named our baby Nsikelelo, which means blessing or comfort.   As with my brother's funeral, I could not go to my parents' funeral with my husband and children at my side.   The situation in Richmond was very tense, the local farmers were meeting, so we heard, and Pax might not have been safe to set foot there.   So, I left Nsigi in hospital and I went to my parents' funeral with friends.    In December 1990 Pax heard that he had lost his final appeal, and he decided to go into exile in the Transkei rather than going back to prison.   I was alone again looking after two children and a baby and I found it difficult to be a good parent.   The children were negatively affected by the whole situation, especially Maboya.   I had to tel him not to talk about daddy to other people, because I was afraid that Pax could be caught.   Although the police did not come and question me about his whereabouts, I was aware that they might be watching me.  This feeling was reinforced by an odd burglary of our home one day, when a burglar guard was forced and a gift of liquor and glasses removed from the lounge coffee table.   The hi-fi speakers thrown on the floor, but nothing else taken.  It did not seem like a real burglary.   While Pax was in exile two men were brought to trial for my parents' murder and I attended the case.   The police investigation, which was handled by the Pietermaritzburg Murder and Robbery Squad was very poorly conducted.   For instance, although the suspects were arrested very early, there were long delays before ID parades were held.   Also, the freshly cut log with which my parents were beaten to death was not weighed and measured at the time.   This was told to me just the other day by Captain du Plessis, who was the station commander at Richmond at the time.  When the case came to court many months later, that log was just a dried up stick that was not heavy enough or not considered heavy enough to inflict a fatal injury on a human skull.  The induna on my father's farm, who was the chief witness, Mr Willie Shezi, had told Pax and me that he had been beaten up by the police who suspected him of being involved in the murder.  Mr Shezi also died before the case came to court, so the chief witness was gone.   The two accused men were found not guilty.  It seems to me that that was merely on technical grounds.   But I accept that the verdict was fair if there was not sufficient evidence to prove that they were guilty, and to this day I don't know who murdered my parents, and whether they did so because they hated my parents specifically or they hated white people in general, or just because they wanted those weapons.   I know that my parents were old and defenceless and did not deserve to die in that brutal way.  In the meantime, I continued to try to fight for Pax to be granted indemnity while he remained in the Transkei, in exile.   In this we were assisted by Advocate P... (inaudible) ... Maduna of the ANC.   Advocate Maduna informed us that he was able to obtain a gentleman's agreement with the State that if Pax would hand himself over he would have to serve 30 days in gaol, after which he would be released and his case closed.   We did not know whether to accept this deal, because we did not feel we could trust the State and it was like asking Pax to walk into the lion's den, to go back into gaol.   But it seemed untenable for him just to remain on the run indefinitely, so he surrendered himself after nine months in exile, and he was put in Westville Gaol, and released at the end of 30 days.   As far as we are aware he was never formally granted amnesty and he still has a criminal record to his name.   It would make a difference to all of us if we could know that he has formally been granted indemnity.   Since 1992 we have tried to establish a normal family life.   This has not been easy.  Pax suffered from post traumatic stress disorder.   He began drinking a lot and he could not get a sense of direction, and I also had to work through a lot of trauma.  But we have been very fortunate to have access to a psychologist.  Maboya also, at one stage, had to have treatment for depression.   In October last year, Pax succeeded with the help of Sanca in stopping drinking and he is now doing a training course in arts administration, which may lead to job prospects for him.   Although I am reconciled with my sister, Fransie and her family, I have not seen my brother Piet or any of his family since my parents' funeral.   I do not feel bitter towards any of them, least of all my parents, whom I believe were the best parents it was in their power to be to me when I was growing up, they were loving parents.   I don't know, I don't have an inside picture of what kind of a policeman my father was, I don't know how he treated black people, I don't know about the many things he had to do to uphold the system of apartheid.   But I have a sense that I have made my peace with him, especially after I viewed this series about De Kok on TV this past week and I thought about my father and I saw that my father was really, I mean, I could not even begin to make a comparison between these two men when I see how policemen in this country have been subjected to the propaganda of the Nationalist Government and structures like the Dutch Reformed Church, not only policemen, but Afrikaans people in general, everyone.  I think we all have been victims, everyone in my family, the people who murdered my brother, the people who murdered my parents.   Despite Pax and my hardships, we have been very fortunate in many ways, we have received support from many people and I think this would be a very one sided testimony if I did not really emphasize that that is the hope for our country that so many people reach other to each other and reject the system and have shown love and have rejected racism.   And that would be my appeal to my fellow South Africans, black and white, and especially to my fellow Afrikaners, is to reject racism, to reject any ideology which tells you that other people are less human than you are, but to see yourself in that other person when you look at that other person, and to see that other person within you.   So, we are hopeful now as a family that our lives will begin to take a turn for the better and that we will be able to make a contribution to the building of a more peaceful, tolerant and just society. Thank you.