TRC Final Report

Volume 3

Chapter 5

Subsection 12

Detention and torture following the 1980 protests

77 The August 1980 killing of Mr Jansen and Mr Beeton (see below) led to a marathon trial involving veteran activist Mr Oscar Mpetha and seventeen others and resulted in lengthy prison sentences for those charged, many of whom maintained that they were innocent. Among the trialists who made allegations of torture was Mr Christopher Sidlayiya [CT01348], who described being beaten and given electric shocks by Warrant Officer Benzien and others at the Bishop Lavis police station.

78 The 1980 South African Institute of Race Relations Survey reported that 123 school students, five teachers, seven lecturers, over ten trade unionists and several community workers were detained in 1980. Journalist Ms Zubeida Jaffer [CT00776], who had given substantial coverage to those killed in the 1980 violence, was detained and was subjected to mental, physical and possibly chemical torture and abuse during her interrogation and subsequent three-month period of solitary confinement.⁵

I was detained by Spyker van Wyk. He said that they were going to break my nose and they were going to beat me up. They started interrogating me virtually immediately and it went on for a good few days. The whole approach that they used was to surround me with all these men and constantly interrogate me for hours on end. At night when I thought I would be allowed to rest and sleep they would keep me awake. And this went on for two days and then they drove me up to Port Elizabeth and took me to the Sanlam Centre [Security Branch HQ]. When we got there, I thought now they’re going to let me sleep because I haven’t slept since I’ve been detained, but that didn’t happen. Another team of people came in and they started interrogating me again and by this stage I was getting completely affected. I couldn’t think any more and they didn’t really give me food, they gave me coffee and dry bread. They put two people in charge of me to make sure that I didn’t close my eyes. Because the whole thing was that I must not be allowed to sleep so that I could lose complete sense of what was going on around me, which was happening; I was beginning to feel very strange in my head.

Captain du Plessis was in charge of the interrogation, he kept on saying to me “your heart is going to give in, your heart is going to in, you haven’t slept for three days, you haven’t slept for three days, are you a member of the ANC, tell us who you know”.

At a certain point he took me to the window – we were on the 6th floor of the Sanlam Centre – and he said that he would throw me down there, because that’s where they kill people.

The next thing he came back and he beat me right across the room into the wall and he kept on beating me right into the wall and I felt – I felt myself just going down. And I just found myself lying there on the floor and you know being completely – completely terrified. At that stage another policeman came in and he said to the man, “just rape her, just rape her”, and this man came up to me and he … and he – he didn’t actually rape me, but – the threat of it was – I felt that I was going to die at that point. And then he called him away and he said, leave her alone and they obviously were trying to get me completely to a point where I couldn’t function any more.

Then he left me in this room with these two policemen and he said to them they must watch me. They made me stand in the middle of the room and I just had to stand there and then at some point they allowed me to sit. I was starting to get very hot and was getting these pains across my chest. But I didn’t really think then, I just felt I was getting really ill because I hadn’t slept for the few days. And then I started seeing all my veins in my hand dilating. And in my arms, my veins in my hands and my arms and I felt pains across my chest and suddenly I started feeling all my insides were going to come out. And I said to them, “I am going to get sick, I am going to get sick,” and the one guy ran with me to the toilet to take me to the toilet and the other guy ran to the phone and he said, “It’s starting”. Now at that point I didn’t think anything of it. I didn’t have any idea, I was just terrified. When I explained to the lawyer afterwards upon my release what had happened he said that I had obviously been drugged and that they were waiting to see what the reaction was going to be. I was just seeing all my veins dilating, it looked like worms – it looked like worms coming out of my hands. It was all standing up I thought my blood vessels were going to burst and I just felt this pains across my chest and I felt I was going to be very, very ill. Then Captain du Plessis came back, and he said “Zubeida you know you’re never going to make it, you going to have a heart attack you going to die. And so we going to give you some paper and we want you to write your life story. And you’ll spent the night writing your life story on this paper.”

So I started doing that and that went on for the whole night. I had to be awake then the whole night. They took a fan and they put the fan over my head and every time I wanted to sleep they said “Maak jou oë oop!” [Open your eyes!] You know, they would shout at me. They had strict instructions not to allow me to sleep. They took me back into the small little room, put me on the chair, gave me more paper and a pen and said I should write. And I sat there and I was unable to write, I was completely unable to do anything. I must have slipped into unconsciousness because I was vaguely aware that they were there and I knew I landed on the floor. I was lying on the floor for many hours unconscious.

79 During a terrorism trial of five young people in connection with school boycotts in Kimberley in 1982 and 1983, a number of witnesses and detainees gave evidence of alleged torture and mistreatment by the security police. They described assaults and the ‘helicopter’ form of torture. The magistrate dismissed these allegations.

80 The Commission noted that cases of torture were reported as having taken place in the Transvaal Road police station in Kimberley during the 1970s. Mr Matthews Teme [CT00650] described being assaulted there in 1979 by security police officers, including Mr Bennet Mochesane.