Human Rights Violation Hearings — Johannesburg — 1996-05-02

DR BORAINE: Before we call the next witness there are a few people we would like to greet, and as I indicated earlier, I'd be very grateful if you would stand just for a moment when I call your names so that we can identify you either up there or down below on to the right, on to the left.  Mrs Dos Santos from Mocambique, we're very glad to see you, Mrs Katalia, thank you very much, you're very welcome.  Ann Burroughs, has she gone already, sorry about that, and Ricco Hudson (Hartson).  Thank you very much indeed.
 We invite Mrs Catherine Mlangeni and Mrs Sepati Mlangeni to the witness stand please. You are the mother and you are the wife of Bheki Mlangeni and you are both coming to give evidence before the Commission, is that correct?  Let me welcome you both very warmly this afternoon, we are very pleased to see you, many of us remember very well what happened to Bheki and it's a very sad story that you have to tell and I know it's not easy but I hope that you will feel that you are amongst friends, that all we want you to tell is the story as you know it, but before you can do that I must ask you please stand, first Mrs Catherine Mlangeni for the oath please?

CATHERINE MLANGENI: (sworn states)

SEPATI MLANGENI: (sworn states)

DR BORAINE: Thank you very much. We will be starting with you Mrs Catherine Mlangeni, the mother of Bheki and my colleague Ms Jasmin Sooka is going to lead you as you tell your story.

YASMINE SOOKA: Hello Mama, hello Sepati, I greet you but before I ask you to  tell your story, I just want to give a little bit of the background about Bheki.  On the 17th of November 1989, prompted by the death row confessions of Butana Almond Nofemela, former police captain Johannes Dirk Coetzee made his own series of revelations about his activities as the commander of the SAP's Death Squad.  Following these confessions, CCB members were arrested and detained and F W de Klerk responded to public outcry, and on the 5th of March 1990, the Harms Commission of Inquiry began hearing testimony.  Dirk Coetzee gave key testimony to this Commission.  Fearing for his life following the Harms Commission, Dirk Coetzee fled to Lusaka.  In May 1990 a walkman cassette player with an explosive device contained in the headphones was sent to Coetzee in Zambia.  Coetzee never received the parcel and in February 1990 it was returned to the sender Bheki Mlangeni of the firm Cheadles, Thompson and Hayson.  Mama I'd like you to tell us about Bheki's life please, in your own words.  Please if you feel that you want to stop for a while, let me know, it's your moment.

MRS MLANGENI: I am Bheki Mlangeni's mother.  He was born on December the 28th, 1958 at Jabulani.  Bheki Mlangeni was my fourth child. One day he told me that he had applied for a job with Cheadles, Thompson and Hayson.  One day he called me and he said Mom, I'm going to be in work that's going to be a misery in my life, and he said he was in the Harms Commission and there was another side which was called the askari.  That was the time when I started seeing that he was not happy at all.  All these things happened while he worked. He wanted to get married and I said to him, yes if he thought that he was old enough to get married, he can.  I asked him why he doesn't stop working because it is clear that he was unhappy and I reminded him that he knew how poor we were at home and pinned our hopes on him for survival. But he said that there was nothing that he could do because he had been living to help people for his entire life and our people have been tortured. I pressured him to leave his job but he refused as it was the work that he wanted to do, to work with people.
 We led a very low life at home being poor, uneducated and unemployed, earning R3,00 but I prayed to God to help me with my children's education as this would help me to live luxuriously. Bheki promised me that he would receive education and take us out of this poverty. His older brother didn't study because, seeing we couldn't earn more than R5,00 he asked my permission for him to stop studying to go and earn some income in order to help educate the younger siblings.
 We together agreed with his older brother, Bheki went to study and we helped each other with the finances.  Bheki was brilliant and conscientious, he would ask things that we could never answer and he assured me that we would one day rise out of this state of poverty and become very wealthy.  He went on studying and in his letters to me he would sometimes tell me about the people out there who were really hurt, people that he wanted to help. When I asked how he proposed to help them he responded that he wanted to be a lawyer for human rights. Well he managed to become a lawyer.
 While he was in Form 1 he went to Mondhlo where he fell in love with a girl called Norazi and she gave birth.  That I accepted, as according to our tradition, if a son has a child with another person's he has to go and pay. I refused to let him leave school and vowed to try by all means and did my best not to take him out of school.  While things were on that note, in 1978 Bheki met another girl at Khatlehong called Diogo. I asked where he was heading to and he replied that he didn't know.  I was really amazed. 
 He left to go and study in Durban where another child called Xolani was born.  Now he had three children.  
 After this I told him that I was tired of him and I insisted that he got married.  In 1986 he met Sepati and in that year they had their first children, his fourth by now. He was very caring for his children not even minding to wash his daughter's underwear.
   He told me that he was now working with the askaris and that one day he met Dirk Coetzee and went to get some statement......(end of Side A of tape 16)
(continued on side B but gap in the recording) ....got hold of him and he clearly indicated to me how the procedures went.  During those days he applied for study leave in order to carry on with his studies in this field of law.  
 A telephone call arrived on a Wednesday while he was studying and he was told that the caller had asked where he was and that he had to come but he had refused as he was busy studying and didn't have time. The caller started shouting to the people at home telling them to chase Bheki to hurry up and he told us to tell the caller that he was not there.  I asked him why he was not receiving these extraordinary calls.  This particular call was about a parcel that he had to go and fetch from his place of employment.
 There was another call from his office where Harris said he must come and help and help set the dates for all the child cases on Monday and that's when he left to go to the office but on Thursday before he did this, he asked me to cook supper so that we could eat together around the table as a family.  After that he took the cake which had not yet been cut and I shouted why he cut this cake before going to his wife's family who were supposed to share this cake with us. He insisted that he was cutting it and I wondered what was so important about cutting the cake then.  His face looked very worried, he wasn't the same Bheki that I knew.
 On Friday when I was at work he got a telephone call from his office and he went there very smartly dressed on that day.  He stood before his other siblings...(witness very upset)

YASMINE SOOKA: Mama take your time.