Human Rights Violation Hearings — Soweto — 1996-07-22

YASMINE SOOKA: Ellen we would like to welcome you to the proceedings of the Truth Commission today.  We are very grateful that you have consented to share your own experiences of that day with us.  I would now like to ask you to stand to take the oath please.

ELLEN KUZWAYO: (sworn states)

YASMINE SOOKA: Thank you.  As is customary with our proceedings we have assigned a Commissioner to assist you with the telling of your evidence and Commissioner Hlengiwe Mkhize will assist you.

MS MKHIZE: Mrs Kuzwayo we thank you, you are the heroine that today you have seen fit to come forward and support us as a Commission in our work of reconciling and looking back at June 16.  I would ask you to first of all tell the audience and the Commission a little bit about yourself, especially those activities which relate to community involvement.

ELLEN KUZWAYO: I am Ellen Kuzwayo.  I was trained in my youth as a teacher, but I was compelled to leave that position after the introduction of the Bantu Education Act.  I did not have the strength nor the courage to get into the classroom and teach the children of my community what appeared to be very poisonous to their minds.  Being a mother of three at that time I decided to go back to school for three years to train as a social worker.
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 At some time in my work I worked with women in the deprived communities in the Transvaal.  I worked from Vereeniging with the women in the movement called Young Women's Christian Association right up beyond Pietersburg, and this was my area where I worked with women in disadvantaged communities.  
 In later years when I left the job where I was earning I worked with women and I still do so, in helping women to develop their skills to be able to meet the needs of everyday life.  Well today, even as I sit here, I find great pleasure in the Parliamentary Constituency offices, to work with communities who need homes, who need to promote their businesses to be much more rewarding to them.  In addition to that there is, not very far from where we are now, a centre that was built by women and officially opened in 1986 by ordinary grassroots women of this country.  I worked with them to build that centre where women come five days a week to come and do their work.  I think this is enough to tell who I am.  I happen now to be in Parliament.

MS MKHIZE: Maybe before we ask you to talk specifically about your involvement around June 16 you have said a lot about your involvement with different communities, can you just tell the Commission as to what you have observed in terms of community life?  Have communities been deteriorating over the years?  The community structures are they strong enough to keep families and young people going?

ELLEN KUZWAYO: Could you repeat your question and speak a little louder please Madam Commissioner.

MS MKHIZE: Okay.  I would like you to share your observations of community, particularly the quality of community life, what's happening within families,
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relationships between children and families, young people and schoolteachers.

ELLEN KUZWAYO: Well I would like to start with something that I believe is very close to everybody's heart, the homelessness that is almost all over South Africa, particularly where we seen endless, endless makeshift homes which have got to be occupied by thousands and thousands of families all over South Africa.  One often wonders particularly in weather like this, you are sleeping in your maybe comfortable warm bed and for some reason or other you wake up in the night and you think of those people with children, young children, living in what is known today in our language, they call it "Mekuku", just makeshift houses, where people have died from carbon monoxide because they have had to make fire in them.  And where many of such homes have been destroyed by fire, killing people.  And where there is absolutely no privacy where people live, where you realise that today people talk so much about abuse of children and it would be surprising if this abuse did not take place because there is absolutely no privacy in many, many homes in South Africa.  People are open just to be in there, sleeping with children in the same house and these children end up being abused.  And I think this is something that has been created in South Africa to happen.  I am thinking particularly of children who we brought up in this country in youth clubs, where we worked with children and children of 17, 18, 19 and 20 years would be very willing to go to a camp at Christmas time, would either go to Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Swaziland, take these kids out, but all those things are no more.  Many children, after the introduction of Bantu education in South Africa the
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school-going population just lost interest in education and they became very wayward.  When you ask them, we are arranging a trip to go to the seaside many of them have looked into my eyes and say you talk of going to the seaside when the country is on fire, and some of them are very young children.  And all those things have passed by.  They are no more there.
 Unemployment is another issue in this country where jobs have been preferred for certain communities and not for others.  Where people had to live in the country that was barren, where they could not find jobs and they were very much denied an opportunity to come and sell their labour because of the laws of this country.  The influx control regulations were so stringent that many, many families have missed many opportunities that could have made their families be presentable and also make a contribution to the development of South Africa.  I can go on and on, on and on, but the misery that has been here has been brought about by racism and the racism that was in the country and in the government of this country prior to 27 April 1994.

MS MKHIZE: Thank you very much for exposing the Commission to some of the realities of this country.  I have noted that you have highlighted some practices which I would say are against the Children's Rights Charter.  You know you have spoken about children who are still being raped today.  You have spoken about children without a shelter, children without food, and those without proper education.  Having given us this exposure I will ask you to embark on a difficult route to try and recollect your involvement around 1976.  What I  have said to recollect automatic memory what you observed on that day and around those days and after.
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Thank you.