On 20 October 1987 about 120 emergency detainees held at Johannesburg Prison, including at least 15 children under the age of 18, sent a strongly worded memorandum to the Minister of Law and Order Adriaan Vlok.
In this, their third memorandum to the Minister, the detainees insisted that they were not pleading for favours from the Minister, but were 'simply demanding to be treated on the basis of the principles of law and justice that are operative throughout the world'.(Letter from detainees to A Vlok, 15.10.87)
This demand was reinforced by Eric MOLOBI, co-ordinator of the National Education Crisis Committee (NECC) who was detained on 7 December 1987. In a letter smugged from his cell he wrote: 'I don't feel pity for myself nor do I think that my fellow detainees ask for mercy. What we want is for the civilised world to take heed and note. Even from the dungeons of apartheid shame and human degradation, we raise our voices for the world to know that we still believe in democratic rule, we still believe in human rights and human freedom, even for those who keep us in conditions such as we experience daily.'(GN 29.1.88)
Thozamile TAAI, one of 20 South African Railway and Harbour Workers Union (SARHWU) members held under Section 29 of the Internal Security Act who went on hunger strike, was admitted to hospital in January after fasting for 24 days. Taai, a diabetic and the first hunger striker known to have been hospitalised, was reported to have survived on water only. His family said that he had been feeling dizzy and complained of frequent headaches but was determined to continue the hunger strike until he was either charged or released. Police revealed that the docket on Taai's case had been referred to the Attorney-General for a decision on prosecution. Taai remained in detention after seven SARHWU members, including Justice Langa, the union president, were released on 11 January on the eve of a court challenge to their detention. Taai was subsequently charged with inciting an illegal strike but the charges were dropped and he was released on 25 January. Fourteen SARHWU members then remained in detention - 11 under the Internal Security Act and three under emergency regulations.(NN 7.1.88; Star 8.1.88; S 14/26/27.1.88)
International campaigns continued in support of demands by the detainees for their release. In Britain about 300,000 people, including the Archbishop of Canterbury and other church leaders, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress and Lynda Chalker, the deputy foreign minister, signed a petition which was due to be delivered to P W Botha on Human Rights Day. About 30,000 keys and 20,000 postcards addressed to Botha were dropped outside the South African Embassy's main doors in New York on 15 December as part of the 'Unlock apartheid jails' campaign. (CT 10/11.12.87; Star 16.12.87; Anti-Apartheid News-Release, December 1987)
DEATH ON ARREST
During the second half of 1987 and early 1988 more examples were reported of killings by police - in some cases these appeared to amount to summary execution.
- In at least two known incidents Casspir armoured vehicles were used to kill residents in houses where ANC guerrillas were said to be present. In Motherwell township near Port Elizabeth a man and a woman were killed on 7 July after police crushed their shack using a Casspir. Police alleged they had come under fire when they attempted to enter the home. They claimed that their call on the occupants to come out was met with renewed gunfire.(DD/ EPH 8.7.87)
In another incident on 10 December in the township of Soweto near Port Elizabeth police used a Casspir armoured vehicle to flatten a home. There was some initial confusion about the number of casualties but it seemed two trained combatants and an alleged collaborator were killed. At the time they were named as Mlungu SOKUPHA, reported as having 'skipped the country' early in 1987, a 29-year-old known only as 'MPUMI' and Thozama FIBI. Later reports announced a memorial service for one Michael Ntsikelelo MKHETHI said to have been killed in the action. Mkhethi came from the Transkei bantustan. The owner of the home, Viva OLIPHANT was seriously wounded in the incident and was held under guard at Livingstone Hospital. A neighbour Everly HLABATHI (50) was also injured - according to the police, she was wounded by fire from an automatic weapon.
Eye witnesses said that the operation appeared to have been a planned one involving many security police cars as well as the Casspir. Screams were heard from those in the shack. Police claimed, as in the earlier incident, to have seized weapons and a quantity of ammunition.(WM/Ind 11.12.87; EPH 12.12.87; DD 22.12.87)
- On 26 November in Mamafubedu township near Petrus Steyn in the Orange Free State, Josias TLAKI, 15, was shot dead in his home by police.
Police alleged they were refused entry to the house when they went to investigate charges of malicious damage to property and public violence. According to the police, they used tearsmoke to force the occupants out and then went in themselves. They said they found a bedroom locked and, in the words of a spokesman: 'When they entered the room a 15-year-old youth attacked them with an axe and he was fatally wounded by a police shot.' Tlaki's family said he was killed while police were ordering them to vacate the house. Some of them subsequently sought shelter in neighbouring townships.(NN 3.12.87)
- Sicelo Godfrey DHLOMO (18), a member of the Soweto Students Congress and a part-time volunteer with the Detainees Parents Support Committee (DPSC), was killed in Soweto on 24 January. His parents were given the news the following morning by police who claimed they had been tipped-off by an anonymous caller that the body of a youth was lying on open ground in Emdeni. They further claimed that they discovered his identity from a book in his pocket.
Dhlomo had experienced many forms of police harassment during his short life. Between June and December 1986 he was detained under the State of Emergency. He was then charged with murder and was acquitted. Later charges of public violence and arson were withdrawn. In October 1987 he was again detained for questioning: in an affidavit, his mother maintained that her son was kicked and beaten all over his body before being released the same day.
Dhlomo himself appeared in a television documentary made by CBS and broadcast in the United States in December 1987. It was filmed in South Africa without official permission in March 1987. In it Dhlomo told of his experience of torture in detention. Just days before his death, Dhlomo was questioned for four hours by 14 police after being picked up by them during a raid on the DPSC offices in Johannesburg. Police admitted that they had established Dhlomo's identity from the CBS video and that he was recognised by police who went to the offices. He was interrogated about his role in the CBS documentary.
Police claim that in a sworn affidavit, Dhlomo alleged that his interviewer 'instructed him to tell, into the camera, how and when he had been detained and to say that he was manhandled and beaten'. CBS strongly repudiated the allegation and Frank Chikane, general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, demanded that Dhlomo's alleged affidavit be made public.
In a press statement on 26 January the DPSC listed the names of 13 other political activists who had died or disappeared during the past six years in circumstances that suggest political murder or abduction. Most of the cases remain unsolved. Chikane attributed the failure to solve the cases to the fact that 'security forces are here to defend apartheid'.(S 17.1.88; Star 26/27/28/29/31.1.88)
INQUESTS
In November 1987 an inquest in the Boksburg Magistrates' Court into the death in detention in December 1986 of Simon Matanzima MARULE heard evidence of grossly inadequate medical care for detainees. Marule, a KwaThema student and former branch chairman of the Congress of South African Students, died of kidney disease twenty four hours after being taken to hospital from Modder Bee Prison. He had been in detention for six months. Lawyers for his family questioned whether his death was 'inevitable' or 'had been hastened by any act or omission' on the part of his captors.
According to Marule's fellow detainees, as well as medical records, he claimed to have been assaulted by police soon after his detention. Ezekiel 'Sakkie' Kekana, who shared a cell with Marule at Dunottar police station, said that his 'entire face was swollen and in particular his left eye was very swollen. The inside of that eye was very red'. He also had 'strip marks on the back of his arms.' Marule told Kekana that the police 'assaulted him by hitting and kicking him, and further hitting him with their rifle butts', but this was ruled as 'hearsay' by the court.
A medical expert said that Marule would have shown symptoms of his disease 'weeks not days' before he died. These were 'sleepiness, headaches, stomach pains, short breathing and oedema (swelling as a result of fluids overloading the body)'. Evidence from other detainees said that the prison authorities ignored Marule's complaints about his health. Lieutenant van der Westhuizen, the medical assistant responsible for deciding whether inmates should be referred to the district surgeon, was said to have told Marule 'you eat too much' when he complained of swelling to his face. During a sick parade he was also said to have passed on to the next person in the queue while Marule was still trying to report his ailments. Van der Westhuizen admitted that the 4,600 inmates at Modder Bee received 'unsatisfactory medical examinations, based on limited sessions worked by district surgeons.' However, he denied 'avoiding' Cell 8 where Marule was held after complaints from the inmates about Marule's lack of treatment. At one stage Kekana reported this to the head of the prison.
Washington Sithole, supported by other affidavits, told of Marule's worsening condition - he found breathing difficult and slept all day. Then Theophilus Mofokeng described Marule's last days: 'Marule collapsed in the toilet. Foam was coming from his mouth. He was pulled up and placed on the bed. The intercom to the reception was not on. The cells then made noise. When our cell did contact the reception and the warders were told that Marule was sick, the warders replied over the intercom words to the effect that "Julle lieg, julle kaffers, slaap (you lie, you kaffirs, sleep)". The detainees persisted and Marule was taken to hospital.
Earlier that day Marule had complained of a swollen face and ankles, a burning sensation when urinating and abdominal pain. After examining him a doctor named Dyson recommended he be checked at hospital. However, he carried out neither blood nor urine tests and did not mark the referral to hospital as 'Urgent'.
The inquest was due to resume on 25 January 1988. (Star 17/18/20.11.87; WM 20/27.11.87)
- No date has been announced for an inquest into the death of Nobandla Elda BANI (58) on 9 July 1987. However more details about her death have been publicised. Bani allegedly died of a heart attack while being held in the prison hospital at North End Prison in Port Elizabeth. Post-mortem results from a family pathologist revealed that she had 20 'wounds covered with scabs on her shoulders and upper arms'. Bedsores and large blisters were found on her buttocks and there were 'abrasions due to external pressure' on her ankles. According to fellow detainees Bani 'could not control her private functions' after returning from hospital where she spent a week undergoing treatment.(GG 18.8.87; FOCUS 73 p.6; South 17.9.87; NN 23.9.87)
CHILDREN IN DETENTION
A Detainees' Parents Support Committee report of 2 December 1987 revealed that contrary to government claims, there were at least 217 children in detention at the end of November. Many of those detained continued to suffer abuse and torture in the hands of the police.
The DPSC report maintained that about 25 per cent of all those detained during the State of Emergency had been charged and they included a 13-year-old, six 14-year-olds and eleven 15-year-olds. The charges varied from murder to 'terrorism' and subversion, intimidation and possession of banned literature. Ten children were known to be held under Section 29 of the Internal Security Act. A DPSC survey of 132 young people revealed that 57 per cent of the sample had been in detention for over one year. (DPSC 2.12.87; Star 10.12.87)
Linda Zama, an attorney whose clients are mostly children under 18, including those as young as 11, told of the pain and horror that these children have gone through. She has examined 'children whose wrists were bruised by handcuffs, observed children with lacerated tongues from electric wires pushed into their mouths during interrogations by the police ...
I have seen children with swollen eyes and gashed foreheads after they have been struck with rifle butts. I have had to get court orders restraining the police from assaulting my clients.' She concluded that detention is used to get at the children's parents, to brainwash the child, as psychological warfare to break a child and, most importantly, to gather information. 'Children are forced to talk against their will, if they refuse they are tortured.' She told of an incident when she accidentally 'walked into a room where children were being tortured. I saw a group of 20 uniformed policemen, all carrying rifles, forcing a group of children to engage in very strenuous exercises. Some were crying, others were in shock, just blindly obeying. Another group of children, including five 11-year-olds, were squatting against the wall waiting for their turn. They were also closely guarded by police carrying very huge guns. Not pistols, but rifles.'
Children have gone through some traumatic experiences in detention as evidence in the recently held Harare conference showed.
Children have been made to watch torture of others and listen to the screams of others being tortured in adjacent cells. They have been denied access to family, lawyers and friends. On the other hand the State of Emergency grants immunity from prosecution to police and military personnel. (New Africa February 1988; People's Daily World 28.10.87; FOCUS 73 p.11)
