Human Rights Violation Hearings — Grahamstown — 1997-04-08

CHAIRPERSON: Finally, we would like to call Lendiso Richard Ndumo Galela.

REV XUNDU: Chairperson, I would like to swear the witness in.  Could you please rise Mr Galela.

LENDISO RICHARD NDUMO GALELA: (Duly sworn in, states).

REV XUNDU: Thank you.  The Chairperson has asked me to request you to come closer to the microphone.  Could you, could I please request you to be as brief as possible.  We are not going to go into much detail, because it is quite clear from your statement what happened to you, but there is a part here that I think we, is not necessary to mention right now and that is about the behaviour of the police, because it does not exactly fit into the political context of what we are dealing with at this point.  You are one of the people who were in the PAC at the time of this hearing.  Could you please just be very brief.  Could you please, very briefly, just tell us what the situation was under which you lived at the time?

LENDISO RICHARD NDUMO GALELA: I have a fear, because it seems as though I have too little time to tell my story which is very long and it is a painful story which affects anyone who was oppressed.  You have given me a very short time.

REV XUNDU: I agree, Sir.  If we look at what is in this paper.  Let us agree that we will adhere to what is being said in the statement without going into too much detail.

LENDISO RICHARD NDUMO GALELA: When you say that I should not deal with my detention, it disturbs me because that was where I was treated the worst. It is no secret for people to know what happened to us at Robben Island.

REV XUNDU: You are telling another person's story.  We would just like to know what happened to you.

LENDISO RICHARD NDUMO GALELA: That person is me and I am that person.

REV XUNDU: Please proceed with your story, Sir.

LENDISO RICHARD NDUMO GALELA: I was arrested in Cape Town on the 28th of November 1960 and was released on bail on the 13th of December 1960.  Upon our release we were, one of our bail conditions was that we report to the police station at all times at seven in the morning every day and in doing so the police found that they could humiliate me and humiliate my humanity.  Even though I am not a psychologist there are certain things that happened in this meeting which cannot happen here.

REV XUNDU: Why were you arrested?

LENDISO RICHARD NDUMO GALELA: We were arrested on two charges.  The first one was for furthering the aims of an unlawful organisation.  The second one was for public violence.  The first one, for which I was arrested on the 28th of November 1960, was for furthering the aims of an unlawful organisation.  I was released on bail and the trial was conducted, but all along the police used members of the PAC.  They said that I, by getting me to report to the police station every day, the police created the impression in the community that I was a police informer.  We did not live in one place so we would get to the police station at different times to report and the police tried to humiliate you by betraying you as an informer in the community.  The organisation was banned at the time and the police tried to portray me as an informer of the PAC.

REV XUNDU: Did you people have cells where you met underground.

LENDISO RICHARD NDUMO GALELA: Yes and we discussed it there and I even wanted to leave the country, but they said that I should not.  On the 18th of August 1961 I was found guilty and then the whites on the outside, then an appeal was lodged.  I was sentenced to prison while my appeal was being lodged.  I was then placed in solitary confinement up until I was taken to court upon a second charge of public violence.

REV XUNDU: So you are saying what we have to investigate is who was in charge in that year so that we can ask him, the police or where?

LENDISO RICHARD NDUMO GALELA: The person who slandered me was Roux and another black policeman known as Nyedakokela.

REV XUNDU: You may proceed.

LENDISO RICHARD NDUMO GALELA: I was convicted on the fourth of November 1961 on the second charge of public violence and on the fifth of November I went to Robben Island.  When I got to Robben Island I stood in front of the chief's office from nine in the morning, at two pm when they came back from lunch.  I was then taken into a segregation cell.  I slept in the segregation cell and then I was taken, put in solitary confinement.

REV XUNDU: How many of you were there?

LENDISO RICHARD NDUMO GALELA: I was by myself.  I was in isolation.  In isolation we would be taken out at nine in the morning, but where another PAC member was brought in, where a member by the name of Makwetu was brought in, we were taken to segregation cell and with what was happening between the long, the prisoners serving longer sentences than us others, we were then sent to the quarantines with these guards who waited for us at the door.  As time went by you found that all these prisoners suffered from runny tummies.  Everyone had diarrhoea.  At that stage if, it seemed as if someone fell out of the queue to go and relieve themselves they would assault the person with their rifle butts and say carry on walking.   Coming back to your question, there was a doctor available, Drs van Zyl and someone by the name of Tiza and they did what you asked me not to mention here.  That was the first time we had encountered that and it disturbed us, because other members of the ANC came, Masondo was a lecturer at Fort Hare and Rex Mbonwane and Mdinghy and two others from Port Elizabeth, George Nsikankantla.  We were all together in the segregation cell, but what happened was while we were all there together we as political prisoners would be released with the convicts.
 On the 22nd of October 1963 we were released.  My appeal was successful, but and I was supposed to have been released in April 1962, but I was only released in October 1963.  I then decided to go to Lesotho and go and give a report where our organisation was legal.  I then went to Lesotho where I submitted my report and it was realised there and then that it was dangerous, that it would surface at the United Nations in 1963, if I am not mistaken.  I was then sent abroad to Congo, which is Zaire today, and then I went to Egypt.

REV XUNDU: Did you go and submit your report at the United Nations?

LENDISO RICHARD NDUMO GALELA: It was sent by the organisation from Lesotho to the United Nations.

REV XUNDU: How were your human rights violated abroad, these places you have mentioned, Congo and so forth?

LENDISO RICHARD NDUMO GALELA: What I would like to say is that I did not live peacefully because what the police did then was that they had a, they conducted an operation known as Hot Pursuit and even then they said that there were many ways to skin a cat.  This is what the Boers said.  Thereafter they killed the people who were assisting us in everything.  The first person who saw within our organisation was Shake Roman, realised that there were people who were co-operating with the police and he said that there are some of us who are working with the police.  What the police did was to buy over those people and they killed Shake.

REV XUNDU: Was your name one of these names of the people, mentioned as one of the people who sold him out?

LENDISO RICHARD NDUMO GALELA: No, it did not.

REV XUNDU: What human rights violations did you encounter while you were abroad?  Which gross human rights violations did you experience while you were abroad?

LENDISO RICHARD NDUMO GALELA: I was assaulted and stabbed by Fezile Ntlalhi.

REV XUNDU: Who is Fezile Ntlalhi?  Is he in the organisation?  Which organisation?

LENDISO RICHARD NDUMO GALELA: He stabbed me with a knife on the 25th of December.

REV XUNDU: What was the problem?