HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS

SUBMISSIONS - QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

DATE: 08-05-1997

CHAIRPERSON: The next person who needs to come, I'd like to invite Shiko Ntsoko. Shiko Ntsoko to come to the front please.

Here is a nice announcement - an urgent announcement - Please announce that the school children are wanted in their classrooms. The school children have to return to their classrooms please. Children will be children. But please can the children return.

Can I, while I you are listening to me, just remind you that we do have statement takers at the back, if there are some of you sitting here thinking - I also have a story to tell, I also had an experience - if you want to use this time now, to go out outside at the, in the press room, in the communications room, Tseko will be there. He will avail you, he will help you to find statement takers, if you want to make a statement.

But now we have Mr Shiko Ntsoko at the table. You have somebody with you, please introduce him to us.

MR NTSOKO: This is Solomon Molete, one of our family members.

CHAIRPERSON: A very warm welcome to you too. Before I ask Dr Ally to help you with your testimony, Mr Ntsoko will you please stand and I will ask Ms Seroke to help with taking the oath. Please stand and raise your hand.

SHIKO J NTSOKO: (Sworn states)

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much and over to Dr Ally.

DR ALLY: Thank you and good day to you Mr Ntsoko .

MR NTSOKO: Good afternoon sir.

DR ALLY: Mr Ntsoko, in the program, the date of the violation, it says 1996, that's obviously incorrect. It was in the early 1960.

MR NTSOKO: It was early yes.

DR ALLY: You were one of the first people, I imagine, to be recruited into the ANC underground. This was just, I suppose, after the decisions that the ANC had to take in after the banning of the political organization, but you are going to speak to us about your arrest, detention and also the torture that you were subjected too. These were events in 1960, which was really when this commission itself begins its investigation, from 1960 to 1993, so your story is very important, unfortunately we don't get many accounts of the earlier period, so we would like to hear from you, what actually happened to you.

MR NTSOKO: During that time I was a student at Mamelodi High, I was doing a std 7 if I remember well. One day it was during Easter holidays, but that time our mathematics teacher said we should not go for holiday, we should continue with our studies for maths and physical science and chemistry. Those are the subjects which I chose, that I promised my parents that I will either be a doctor or a lawyer. During that time I remember it was Good Friday Eve, I was in, I was a member of the ANC Youth League, but it was not popular then. We were at the time which we should help other students. On that the police came with many vans, I was sleeping in the den room with my younger brother. Both of us were in that organization, then they entered, looked for me, they arrested me to Pretoria Central Prison, where life wasn't easy.

On Good Friday, there was Sergeant Magobe who was my father's friend. Those are the people who arrested me together with Sergeant Msemane and Brigadier Ferreira. We were few in that van, but in Good Friday they took me to Pretoria Central Prison where we were tortured and beaten. They put me in a certain room where I found Sergeant Magobe together with Brigadier Ferreira. Sergeant Magobe was my father's best friend, he knew all about us, we took as our father. What he asked me was,"Who are you, being a young person, who do you think you are to overthrow the government?" What I said to him was, "Who are you to ask me that kind of a question?"

I took it that he cannot ask that kind of a question because I regard him as a parent and no parent can ask me that kind of a stupid question.

They took me and hand-cuffed me and then they put my hands behind a pole, that is the pole was between me and my hands and they started beating me. I was hanging from above by then when they were beating me. Thereafter there was a desk like this one in front of me, it had eight holes in it, next to Ferreira there was something that looked like it would lock those holes. One did not know what was going to happen to him because your fingers were in those eight holes, you couldn't see them.

They took something like a wet blanket and then there was a switch next to Ferreira which he switched on and when he put it on you would feel some shock on your fingers. What helped me most was that I was bleeding after that interrogation.

CHAIRPERSON: Take your time, take your time Mr Ntsoko, when you are ready to continue you can continue. Maybe you would like to have a drink of water first.......

If you want to continue please do that.

MR NTSOKO: What hurt me most was when I saw my mother, when I was alighting the steps and I realized that she was my mother. They had hand-cuffed me from behind and they pushed me and I had fell through the steps and fell next to my mum. What is important now is that, by that time my future was really wasted, because I couldn't be what I had promised my parents.

What hurt me most is that when I had to return to school, even those teachers who supported those people didn't want us in school. What I am worried the most is that when I had made a promise to someone I want to fulfil it, and by now my father is dead.

Presently I have only my mother, who is paralysed, she is on a wheel-chair. I want to end by saying, I will ask the then government to come and ask for forgiveness from us because they really messed up our future. I want them to come and appear before you so that they can speak for themselves.

I did not want to work as an industrial worker, I wanted to help the community. I was intending to help the community with my profession, not to be a security or a guard to the community. I want the then government to come and appear before you and you should also call us that is the victims. I remember one was the secretary of the Bantu Education, he was Mr Brozidsky. If he is still alive I would like him to appear before you and before us to ask for forgiveness for what he did to us. (tape ends)

..... to ask for forgiveness and then I myself would also tell him that I forgive him, if he could that. Presently it is difficult, because Sergeant Mogobe is dead, maybe he hears me where he is, because he can't speak, but I forgive him if at all he can hear me, but the then government, I think has to appear before us and you to come and ask for forgiveness, then I think my wounds would be healed. I will end off there.

DR ALLY: Thank you very much. Mr Ntsoko your statement is very clear, so I'm not going to ask him any questions, just on your last point, people may remember that last year the political parties, including the National Party, which was the government that you are referring to, the former government, also made a submission on the role of the National Party during this period you are looking at 1960 to now 1994.

Next week starting on Monday all the political parties are being recalled. The present party that's in government, the ANC, also the National Party, also the PAC, maybe Inkatha and many questions are going to be put to these political parties and particularly to the former government, the National Party on it's role in gross human rights violations and the responsibility that it has to take for the whole system of apartheid and the consequences and, I'm sure that in the process many questions that people like yourselves want to ask, will be asked about it's role and the way in which people did have their lives destroyed and their futures destroyed, so hopefully there will be some of the answers which many people have posed. But what I'm interested in, is to understand how in 1960 somebody who was still very young at the time, who said you were in std 7, so I would imagine that you were what, 14, 15 years old, 18 years old at the time.

MR NTSOKO: I was about 17 or 18 .

DR ALLY: How is it that you became involved at that young age, especially at the time when it was in the 1960's. We know that it was very difficult times, people didn't just readily get involved in politics, unlike later in the 70's and 80's. What led to you becoming politically involved?

MR NTSOKO: I had no problems to involve myself in politics. Maybe it's your thinking that tells you that one couldn't join politics at that age at that time. Every person when he grows up has his aims. When I was a student I used to see some of the things that was not supposed to happen to me, that is why I said, when Mr Brozidsky came to us we showed him a student that there was a laboratory where they could conduct some practicals, their were no chemicals, we didn't know about chemicals like sodium chloride that is ordinary salt that you use at home. You wouldn't know, one didn't know how to use the sodium chloride to improve some of the things that you were supposed to improve and one other thing is that there was another room that as big as half of this hall and you wouldn't even find a book in that hall and it was regarded as a library, and as an intelligent person I could see that those things were wrong. Even when you had aims, even if you were small we had problems as parents that younger children can do anything for themselves. Even if you are young, you have aims.

If I can tell you the truth, when I promised my parents of being a doctor, I was 12 years old. What I'm happy about for is that part of what I wanted to do, one of my son is, one of my son followed what I wanted to do, he had a degree of what I wanted to study, that what makes me happy. Maybe he has fulfilled one of the promises that I made to my father, because one of my son has a degree of what I intended to become. So you can see that there is always a challenge in life, even if you are young.

It's not only that you have to listen to your parents, even a child has his own intentions or objectives in life.

DR ALLY: Thank you for that. In your statement and I'm going to read from your statement and maybe you can just elaborate on this if you want to. You say your detention happened at the time that the National Party was the ruling government. Then you go on to say we were planning to overthrow the ruling government by blowing up the main power station and other government buildings.

MR NTSOKO: Yes, that was our aim. At that time we were a youth organization that didn't belong to any party, we were just small children and we had an aim that we were going to blow up Pretoria Power Station. It was true. If those things didn't happen to us, we were really going to blow that power station.

CHAIRPERSON: Silence please, silence please,silence, thank you.

DR ALLY: And do you think that the police found out about this here and that's why they picked you and a few of your other people up with you?

MR NTSOKO: Yes, there is that possibility, because everywhere where there is progress there is always a bad element. Maybe one of us informed them of our intentions, because they arrested on the day when we were supposed to blow that police, power station. It is possible that the police knew.

DR ALLY: (indistinct)... were in detention, was that one of the questions when they were interrogating you, that they wanted an answer to.

MR NTSOKO: No, they didn't ask me anything, they just started to beat me up. At that time I was didn't do any wrong to them. I was telling them the truth.

At that time those police were not so intelligent because if you had better paper than them , they would hit you. They were not so intelligent, so as to question you and change maybe your aims, they thought we wanted to take the government from the boss and that's the kind of questions they used to ask, which I refer to as stupid questions.

They wouldn't ask you any question, they would just tell you that you want to overthrow the government. If they could have asked me questions before they hit me I would say yes, because that was our aim.

DR ALLY: And after this incident, did you continue to be visited by the police, was there any harassment or what happened after you were released?

MR NTSOKO: I don't think I was released because after that I got married and after getting married I was employed at Isando. I was supposed to report at Kempton Park police station after I was alighting from the train at Pretoria police station I had to go to Pretoria police station.

It was an everyday event or everyday routine until they were satisfied that I am not belonging to any organization, but at the present moment I belong to the organization, I only refrain to that everything can be normal again.

CHAIRPERSON: No applause is allowed in this hearing, please quiet and listen, enjoy what you hear, but no applause is allowed in the hearing. Thank you so much, continue please.

MR NTSOKO: After reporting to this police stations, I was accompanied by my wife, because we were working at one place. This caused me to be around at home, because they told me I that wasn't supposed to move where I wanted to and not be accompanied by more than 7 people. In the 5 years that I stayed with my wife she didn't enjoy her marriage years. She started enjoying her marriage life when all this stopped, when I stopped reporting to this police station and that is where we started having our first born.

DR ALLY: Was this for 5 years that this continued, these visits that you (indistinct).

MR NTSOKO: Yes, I was visiting this police station for those 5 years, because it was still the former government by then.

DR ALLY: Thank you very much Mr Ntsoko, I don't have any more questions Chairperson.

CHAIRPERSON: Mrs Seroke.

MRS SEROKE: When you intended to blow the power station, had you been trained on the explosives?

MR NTSOKO: Most of us were doing scientific subjects at school, our science subjects and there was some other things that we were going to use, that we discovered. I don't want to mention where we got those chemicals. We had them and we were going to blow that power station with those chemicals, because in politics if you are in the struggle you have to find means to use anything at your disposal to achieve your aims.

MRS SEROKE: You said that Mr Magobe who used to harass you was your fathers best friend.

MR NTSOKO: Yes he was.

MRS SEROKE: How did your father feel when Mr Magobe did these things to you, or didn't your father like what you were doing.

MR NTSOKO: My father took him as a betrayer. He wondered why didn't Mr Magobe, as a friend, come to him when his child had made something wrong and he asked him that by himself, "Why didn't you come to me and tell me that my son did something wrong, maybe you could have talked to him."

CHAIRPERSON: Dr Randera.

DR RANDERA: Mr Ntsoko you have taken us way back 30 years, more than 30 years in the past. This is one of the oldest pictures, one of the oldest photographs you pasted in our album today. Thank you for telling your story. You said at some stage that you felt guilty and that you felt bad because you did little to help the community.

I'm sure you have done many things to help the community and even coming today to the Truth Commission, bringing your statement as so many have been doing these months is helping the community. You are helping us to find a true picture of everything that happened in the country over many years. Thank you for doing that. We are happy with you that your son partially fulfilled your promise. Is he becoming a doctor or a lawyer?

MR NTSOKO: He is a lawyer.

DR RANDERA: Well we are very happy and when you go back home, will you please, will you please go to your mother who is paralysed, but please greet her from all of us and tell her that we are proud of her son. Thank you for being with us. Thank you very much.