DR BORAINE: Lerutla. Good afternoon Mrs Lerutla. Mrs Lerutla, can you hear me. Okay. I am very big and you are very small so you are going to have to come as close to the microphone as possible so that we can hear you. You see I have to bend down and you have to bend up. We want to welcome you very warmly and apologise to you for the delay. There just seems to have a two people of the same surname, but so I can make absolutely sure. Have you come to tell us about your son Matthews Lerutla.
MRS LERUTLA: Yes.
DR BORAINE: Okay, thank you very much. We want to welcome you very warmly and you, too, have brought somebody with you. Can you introduce that person to us please? Who is the person sitting next to you?
MRS LERUTLA: It is Johanna Mamoriri Lerutla.
DR BORAINE: No, wait a minute. You are Johanna, right?
MRS LERUTLA: Lerutla.
DR BORAINE: And who is with you, sitting next to you?
MRS LERUTLA: Rebecca. She is my sister. The person seated next to me is my sister, Rebecca. It is Rebecca Lerutla.
DR BORAINE: And she is your sister?
MRS LERUTLA: Yes, she is my sister.
DR BORAINE: Thank you very much. Rebecca, we want to welcome you too and let, while I am about it, let me also
PRETORIA HEARING TRC/GAUTENG
2 J M LERUTLA
welcome the briefer and let me say that the person who accompanies the witness is there to assist the witness in any way possible and we have are always very pleased to have that person alongside as someone who can be of assistance. Now ...
CHAIRPERSON: And just check the surname.
DR BORAINE: ... Mrs Lerutla could , it is L E R U T L A? Is that correct?
MRS LERUTLA: Yes, the name is correct.
DR BORAINE: Thank you very much. The Archbishop keeps telling me to check all these things, but now we have got it all right. Can you please stand to take the oath.
JOHANNA MAMORIRI LERUTLA: (Duly sworn in, states).
DR BORAINE: Order please. Can you settle down please. Alright, I am assuming that you have now taken the oath, that you have promised to tell the truth and nothing, but the truth. Thank you very much. Mrs Lerutla, as you know, we always ask one of the Commissioners to help a person telling that story. Today it is my turn and I am going to ask you just a few questions. You are going to tell us the story of Matthews Lerutla who was a young man living in Mamelodi and will you not please tell us what happened to him.
MRS LERUTLA: May I start? Matthews Lerutla, when we were at Lerutla he use to study at Mamelodi. I want to tell of you that this child he had nothing to eat at school on that day. Now he decided to eat with his friends at school. When I came back from work on that day, as I approached the corner I saw him standing at the gate. Now, I wondered why he looks at me in that manner. He said people that I was eating with at school, they are no longer at school. So I
PRETORIA HEARING TRC/GAUTENG
3 J M LERUTLA
said, I borrowed money from my employees. My employers, then he left to buy food, but I was informed that he is hanging around at the shops. The time passed by until we slept.
The following morning I went to the Principal and asked, I cannot see my son. The Principal now said we must go and find out from his class teacher, maybe from the classroom. I even went to the policemen and informed them that my child is missing. Then when they asked I said it was yesterday when this happened. Even today the police never came to me. Since 1987 until 1996 my child has not yet come home.
DR BORAINE: Thank you very much. Just a few questions please. First, how old was your son when he disappeared.
MRS LERUTLA: He was born in 1970 and disappeared in 1987.
DR BORAINE: So he was 17 years old and you have never seen him since that day.
MRS LERUTLA: Yes, that is so.
DR BORAINE: Did you talk to any of his friends to find out if they knew where he was?
MRS LERUTLA: I asked everybody, but they did not know where he was.
DR BORAINE: You said you went to the Mamelodi Police Station to ask them to please help you to find your son, but you heard nothing?
MRS LERUTLA: Yes, I went to Mamelodi Police Station, but I found nothing up to, so far they have never informed me.
DR BORAINE: Can you tell me, you know, we have listened to many people all over the country whose sons or daughters disappeared. Did you visit a hospital or did you go to the mortuary, did you look, I am sure you must have searched to
PRETORIA HEARING TRC/GAUTENG
4 J M LERUTLA
find him?
MRS LERUTLA: I did look for him. Even to his friends in Johannesburg, I asked them to look for my son. He said to me when I failed my test, you must not work. Actually when I finish my studies you must not work, I must work for you because today I am struggling, but his friends have finished their studies. They are working at the moment.
DR BORAINE: Was your son linked with any political party?
MRS LERUTLA: He was one of the Comrades.
DR BORAINE: So he, I assume you mean he was a member of the ANC?
MRS LERUTLA: Because of my age I cannot tell.
DR BORAINE: Did you check with the ANC office, at all, to find out if they knew where he was?
MRS LERUTLA: No, I did not.
DR BORAINE: You are not sure whether he left the country or you just simply do not know what happened to him?
MRS LERUTLA: At the moment I do not know where he is. I cannot tell whether he skipped the country or not. I still have his memory even at the moment. Even at the wardrobe I sometimes look through his clothes. It is difficult to forget him. One day I even took this clothing to wash them. When I tried to iron them I found people in my yard. I did not know what they were doing.
DR BORAINE: Please do not worry Mrs Lerutla, take your time. It is a very sad, sad thing to remember. Could I ask you, finally, is there anything that you would ask the Commission to do for you? As the Chairperson has explained, we cannot do everything, but there are certain things that we might be able to do. Is there anything that you would like to ask the Commission to do?
PRETORIA HEARING TRC/GAUTENG
5 J M LERUTLA
MRS LERUTLA: I would like the Commission to assist me because I have a difficult time at the moment.
DR BORAINE: I would be grateful if people using flash photographs should not do that again please. Do not take photographs. I can see that you are very upset and you have finished your story, but I am going to ask the Chairperson if there are any others who would like to ask a question.
CHAIRPERSON: Mam, we want to direct our sympathies to you. Do not think that even now whilst you are telling us about what happened, we have heard that you, when you look at his clothes you imagine people around at home and you imagine him to be in the home. We can see that you are going through a difficult time. People usually say that sometimes it is always easy for a person who is living nice to tell others about the difficult times they went through. We sympathise with you even though we have not directly been touched or experienced what happened to you. We also thank you for still being among those people who did these bad things to you especially because most of us come from families that had difficult times because of the pressure of the past regime.
We would like you to please accept from us that we sympathise with you and we send our condolences to you. We say unto you may the Almighty God please bless you and comfort you. As a Commission we have been put here to investigate or to do everything in our means to trace the whereabouts of those who went missing. We will try in whatever way we can to trace Matthews if at all he is still alive. It is always bad even if he had died that you get informed of what happened to him because maybe your pain is being brought about by the fact that you do not know whether PRETORIA HEARING TRC/GAUTENG
6 J M LERUTLA
he is still alive or not. We as a Commission, we are going to try to help you to trace Matthews or to establish whether he is still alive or not.
I think one of the things that this Commission is doing, as we listen to the harrowing stories that we have heard here, we hear in other places, is to remind us that we are not talking about statistics. You know, sometimes when you read in a newspaper, you hear two children disappeared and maybe as a kind of defence mechanism, they are just numbers, but now and again when we come to hear testimony of this kind, we are reminded that we are talking about people of flesh and blood. That they are not just numbers. They are the son of, they are the daughter of, they are the mother of, they are the father of. It is people of flesh and blood. It is a Matthews who had a mother who loved him, who still washes his clothes and when she looks at clothes in a shop window that would have fitted her son, breaks down. That is part of the hurt and the anguish, the pain of what has happened in this land and it is part of that pain that we are asked to assist in healing.
It also just keeps reminding us that young people in this land paid a very heavy price for the freedom that we are now enjoying and that it was so called "ordinary people". There are no "ordinary people". Everybody is a very special person, but we often speak of "ordinary people". Often and often it was they who have had to bear the brunt of all of this awfulness and maybe we will all keep bearing in mind, we got this freedom and the price that was paid was a very high price and that, for goodness sake, we will not want to devalue it and we are asked to remember this past because we want to commit ourselves to saying that PRETORIA HEARING TRC/GAUTENG
7 J M LERUTLA
things of this kind never happen again in our land.
I think we should adjourn for lunch. Will you please stand. Please, yes, can you. Order please. Nobody should move around. Thank you. We will resume at two.
PRETORIA HEARING TRC/GAUTENG
