Special Report Transcript Episode 31, Section 3, Time 23:18

Monica Wittenberg was recently commended for bravery by the TRC for her involvement with the Imbali support group. // We were sitting in the house, the Gabela house, that has experienced unspeakable terror, even from ’86 onwards because Sipho her son was a UDF member and a spokesperson for the youth. In ’89 Sipho was so severely injured by white policemen and Mama Gabela and Baba Gabela were not allowed to come out of the door. Sipho was in the outbuilding. He was injured so badly, he was out of action for a whole year. Now, when this happened to the Gabela family. That was the last and very severe incident. Graham Swan, an African Enterprise member said, well no family can endure so much suffering. We must do something about it as churches. Now there was the, either that was Graham Swan, he is a Canadian. There were two ideas, you could either evacuate the whole family to somewhere safe like African Enterprise which is a paradise of a place, or he had the idea to take a little suitcase and come stay here with the family. Now that, me I’m a South African, that idea never came up with me. I was at home in the township day time, but it never occurred to me to stay anywhere in a house at night, but Graham Swan the Canadian came up with this idea. And I remember when he put this idea to Baba Gabela, tears streamed down his cheeks. He said, is that possible that anybody can have such an idea, please rather come to stay with us than evacuate the whole family. And Graham Swan, when he came here to this house with his little suitcase, the house was sitting full of neighbours. Mama Gabela if I don’t remember correctly, help me. // In fact we were happy when they arrived because Inkatha had been harassing us and they were constantly attacking us. And when the support group came we were pleased. We had hope and we could have peace and even be able to sleep at night. // We had a good feeling it did help because we were able to give a lot of evidence, especially also to overseas people and that is what they hated that time. We had several incidents in the night with groups being very ‘vyandig’ [hostile], now the Afrikaans word comes to my mind, and standing the police there and I remember one shouting at me, get out of this area! And I said. I’m not getting out of this area until I see that this tension is diffused and they didn’t know how to cope with a person that wouldn’t obey orders. And … still I wasn’t a dangerous person, obviously not, and not being intimidated by them also unnerved them, they are used to people being scared of them. Anyway, they wanted to chase me out, all had pointed guns, often. Then they said, they said this crowd must be controlled. At one stage I said leave that to me. Sorry, it sounds like I’m conceited, but I said leave that to me. And they actually did leave it to me and I said to the people, can I ask you to quietly go home. I’ll stand here until I see all of you have gone home, and then I’ll leave. And it helped, people dispersed quietly and the police, grumbling, grudgingly stepped into their vehicle and I stepped into mine and everybody went their way.

Notes: Mama Gabela and Monica Wittenberg; Monica Wittenberg; Mama Gabela; Monica Wittenberg