Special Report Transcript Episode 3, Section 4, Time 26:17

Sicelo Dhlomo was a bright young activist well known in Gauteng in the 1980s. Police were hunting for him, long before his death in January 1988. // His mother, Sylvia Dhlomo-Jele, began to fear for his life, but is seems as if Sicelo too had a premonition about his fate. // …referring to his father. He said, ‘my father is strong, it may happen that I will die. I’d want you to know that whatever happens to me you must be strong, pick up my spear and continue my struggle.’ I was very sad, I was very upset. When he told me about his lack of security I said, ‘just tonight, sleep here at home,’ and he said, ‘you won’t like to see the police killing me in front of you, so it will be better for me to go somewhere else so that you can only find my corpse but not see them killing me.’ And he left home, and the following day a police arrived at home. I could feel it, I could just sense it that my child was gone, because the police came with his pocket book. I said to him, ‘have you killed my son?’ The police said ‘why are saying such painful things. I didn’t kill him. I just heard people saying there’s a young boy who’s dead under a tree. I went to see this boy and I found this pocket book on him.’ This police asked me to accompany him to see where the body was. I didn’t agree, I didn’t want to go with this policeman, I knew they’d killed him. There’s a gentleman whose our neighbour, he took me by his van, he took me to where my child was lying. He was full of blood on the one side of his head, he was lying there. I told myself that was it; that was the end. He told me, this is what he was telling me that I must always expect.

Notes: Sicelo Dhlomo (1988); TRC testimony: Sylvia Dhlomo-Jele (mother)