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Human Rights Violation Hearings

Type HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS, SUBMISSIONS QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Starting Date 22 July 1996

Location QUEENSTOWN

Day 1

Names ANDREW PETER VAN WYK

Case Number QUEENSTOWN

REVD XUNDU: You life your right hand and say so help me God. I'll begin with you, I'll begin with Shane.

SHANE RYAN BRODY: (sworn states)

REVD XUNDU: Thank you. I'll call upon Michelle Brody-Malherbe.

MICHELLE BRODY-MALHERBE: (sworn states)

REVD XUNDU: I call upon Andrew van Wyk.

ANDREW PETER VAN WYK: (sworn states)

REVD XUNDU: Your first name Ma'am?

H BRODY: Heila. Heila.

HEILA VAN WYK: (sworn states)

REVD XUNDU: Thank you. Mr Chairman the people have been properly sworn in.

REVD FINCA: We welcome you. We remember as if it is yesterday the shock waves that were sent throughout this region, indeed throughout this country when that bomb blast happened here in Queenstown and how innocent people who were there to enjoy their meal had their lives devastated by that act.

We remember how that particular event moved hundreds of thousands if not millions to ask themselves what is happening to this country. Both Black and White, Indian, Coloured were suddenly shocked to realise how down the drain QUEENSTOWN HEARING TRC/EASTERN CAPE

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we seemed to be travelling as a country.

Your story has been told several times, but you are here to tell it to the Commission so that it forms part of the wider picture of Human Rights Violations which have taken place in the region that we are investigating.

We thank your for your courage, for coming up to tell the story again.

To remind South Africans what South Africans have done to fellow South Africans in the past. And also to ensure that the people of this country do not repeat what has happened to you, ever again.

We are going to be taking your story and try to built it holistically. Adv Denzil Potgieter is going to try and lead each one of you in giving his or her evidence and at the end of the story we will then raise questions as Commissioners if there are issues of clarity which we require.

Let me immediately convey our thanks as a Commission for this dossier that you have supplied which contains the graphics, the stories, the newspaper cuttings and everything that I think we require to have before us as we try and reconstruct what happened.

This will indeed be useful and we wish to thank your lawyer for preparing it for us. Relax and know that you are telling your story to people who want to hear it sympathetically and understand what suffering that event has cost you and your families.

Over to you Adv Potgieter.

ADV POTGIETER: Thank you Chairperson for those words of introduction. I intend to lead the evidence of Mr Van Wyk first, who is the owner of the business premises involved

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and who was not personally present at the time when the incident happened, followed by the evidence of his wife, Mrs Van Wyk, who was at the premises when the incident happened and then we'll take the evidence of Mr Brody, who is one of several victims of the incident.

I am advised that his sister does not necessarily want to testify, but we will hear about that when we come to the evidence of Mr Brody. So with your permission Chairperson, I shall proceed to deal with the evidence of Mr Van Wyk. We are just trying to position the microphone, or do you want to, perhaps is it easier to do that.

Thank you very much. Good morning Mr Van Wyk. I have noted that you have taken the oath, if I heard you correctly in Afrikaans.

AP VAN WYK: Dit is korrek.

ADV POTGIETER: Sal u verkies om u getuienis in Afrikaans af te lê?

AP VAN WYK: Ja.

ADV POTGIETER: Dit is nie 'n probleem nie.

AP VAN WYK: Baie dankie.

ADV POTGIETER: So good morning and welcome here. The Chairman has already introduced you and has already mentioned the circumstances surrounding the event. The incident took place at your business premises, which is the local Spur Restaurant and it happened on the 3rd of December 1992.

Now according to your statement, this took place between 9.30 in the evening and 10.30 that evening.

AP AN WYK: It actually took place a little bit later than that.

ADV POTGIETER: I also understand that at the time of the

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explosion, that you were not present - you were not on the premises?

AP VAN WYK: That's quite right.

ADV POTGIETER: We will therefor first take your evidence and then we will talk to Mrs Van Wyk.

Please can you now proceed and tell us what the consequences were pertaining to your business.

AP VAN WYK: Thank you very much. Just to give you some background as to where I come from and as to why I am present today.

In August of 1989 we moved from the Northern Province. Everything we have ever acquired we brought with us to Queenstown, this was in order to start a business, and I mean everything.

I had a very good job in Pietersburg, I had a very bright future ahead of me. They were very disappointed when I advised them that I was now going to open a business in Queenstown.

It was most certainly not easy. It was equivalent to moving countries, we did not know anybody in Queenstown, it was our first time ever in Queenstown.

The business that we took over was about six months old, it was financially on a very stable footing. My wife and my two children accompanied me, I warned them beforehand that we were going to work very hard, that we're working for ourselves, that the hours are going to very long.

So the first three months which was August, September and October of 1981, I planned to work in this business all by myself.

And I was now going to attempt to make a great success of this business. My daughter at that stage was in standard QUEENSTOWN HEARING TRC/EASTERN CAPE

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1, my son was in standard 4.

And we put in a great deal of effort into this project, it was hard work, the hours were long, we worked day in and day out.

At that stage myself and my family had given work opportunities to approximately 24 to 25 workers, we employed quite a few students and scholars who worked over weekends and who worked during the school holidays.

And there was approximately about 25 of them as well. So at that stage and even today, we have always created a lot of job opportunities, particularly in this town. In those years and even today still, things are tough in Queenstown.

We realise that myself and my family were not able to look after the business ourselves, and therefor we realised that we needed the scholars, we needed the students. We realised that a whole lot of people have to work together for a common cause.

And initially we battled, it was difficult and I can remember very clearly that within the first three months, we never ever thought we'd make it.

There were just no clients. If we had 10 of 15 customers for lunch, we were lucky. So I started doubting myself, I started wondering whether I actually made the right decision. I said to myself that I had a bright future ahead and I had everything going for me at the time, and I wondered if I ever did make the right decision.

But we persevered and three months later my wife and children joined me. And this is how we gradually built the business.

And subsequently the bond between the students, the

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scholars and all of us became tighter, closer and in a very short time, we as a team found that we were held in very high esteem in this town of Queenstown.

And at all times we had opened our business to all races. Any person was welcome, nobody was ever turned away on the basis of colour or sex or skin. And I think that on the grounds of this, we have had a very successful business.

And so that fatal day happened. It was in December and we were preparing for a very good festive season.

We were preparing for a record season in December. At the end of November and beginning of December, it is known to be a time of festivities and people often would book well ahead of time to celebrate the festive season.

On that fateful day in December it changed the life of me and of many other people at Spur. It was a very, very traumatic time for me.

And as you can gather I wasn't personally present on the day that the explosion occurred. My wife together with the manager of the Spur at the time, and was also accompanied by a whole lot of customers. It was a busy time, it was Christmas time.

You know, it was a festive time, everyone was in a festive mood, because it was the build up to Christmas, the schools closed and children were all looking forward to their vacations.

On that specific night we actually had children from local schools present.

ADV POTGIETER: What night was that?

AP VAN WYK: It was a Thursday night, because the school was about to close the next day. There were about 25 or 30 children present.

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At about ten past eleven that evening, we had registered the last transaction of the day, that is now on the cash register, that is when the bomb exploded.

And I think it must have just been God sent that the children that was present that night, had already left.

We were very busy on that night. There were approximately 30 to 35 people present in the restaurant on that night.

I can think of no reason whatsoever and it is now nearly three and a half years later, and I still up till today am battling with the idea as to why something like this had to happen to me and had to happen to my business.

I have never, ever done harm to anybody or anybody's business.

And the last thing that anybody thinks about is that a bomb would go off, or that there would be a terrorist attack and the next minute 21 people were severely injured.

One person died, you would also notice that in the reports that I brought along, and short of trying to shock you or to impress you, but all 21 people have sustained very serious injuries.

On page 4 there is photo 1 and 4. You cannot believe that this person is still alive today. The person will more than likely give evidence in front of the Commission tomorrow.

When I was woken up that night, after working for many hours and preparing myself for this festivities, so at around quarter past eleven, I was woken up. On that specific day I had worked for 16 hours, I was now woken up and I was told that a bomb has exploded in my business.

It was like a dream, I got into my manager's car and it QUEENSTOWN HEARING TRC/EASTERN CAPE

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looked like a battle field.

The first person I came across that night, was the person Les Barnes, the person I referred to on page 4. I said to him, hang in there, the ambulance is on their way.

On the next page, on page 5, I've got more photo's of Les with him in hospital where he was treated , the local hospital and you can see that the wounds that he sustained, because of the bomb, is quite visible.

And Your Honour, I guess I could have brought along photo's of 21 more people. Heidi Cunningham, she today lives in England, she does not want to live in South Africa, she teaches in England. I would very much have liked Heidi to have been present here with us today.

She looked equally bad. She was standing at the table and Les and the person with Les, Jerome, who died on the Sunday subsequent to the Thursday, she stood there.

And she bent, lent forward. She was busy taking an order and the entire impact of the bomb, had hit her. Her photo's and even her body looks just as bad and even today they still have to undergo surgery because of these injuries that they have sustained.

And even still to remove the shrapnel. And so I can continue and I can go through this entire file and that is how the Spur looked that day.

Photo number 8 the same, the ninth photo is where the bomb was planted and that is how it looked. The whole in the ground, well it was a very big bomb.

I think the main reason why not more people died in this attack, is that the type of tables that we make use of in Spur or in the Spurs, is of such a quality of high standard and I think that must have prevented more people

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from being killed.

Also the fact that the person responsible for planting this bomb, perhaps placed it in such a way that it exploded into the ground and did not explode into the air.

And that is probably why not all of those people had died.

Photo number 10 is the corner where the bomb was actually detonated and you can see that very clearly. The same on photo 11. And on the eleventh photo, you can, if you look at that, you can just imagine yourself that people were sitting there eating and just imagine how many of those flying objects have ended up being lodged into people's bodies.

And then page 12, photo number 8, there we can look at evidence which proves that it was a limpet type of bomb. Photo number 9 is a photo of what the scene looked like the next morning.

Page 14, the same, page 15, the same, 16, the same. Also on page 17 and then again on page 17, there is a photo which shows the impact of the bomb and what type of damages were sustained.

And then there is also various newspaper cuttings and I will now specifically refer you to page 20, where there is a photo of Michelle while she is in hospital and of course with the clothes on that she wore on the day of the bombing and then at the bottom, we have a photo of Cheryl Edwards and there we can very clearly see the flames and how that burnt people's hair and their clothes.

It singed their clothes and then of course the photo of Jerome Goos who died on the Sunday. On page 25, also a newspaper cutting and there I see Shane in hospital. Also

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of course with hardly any hair on his head.

I would also just like to point out to the Commission

that this is not where it all ended.

The next day when we had to put together the pieces and when we had to ask ourselves what really happened, and how are we going to assist people, quite a few things happened that even up to today, where myself and my family and the whole Spur family sit together, it really had quite an amazing effect on us.

We sat at Maverick Spur and the reason why we were there is that the next day when the assessor came, we established that my insurance weren't in order and I would refer back to that a little later.

So what in fact happened is that we were not insured against the damage that was caused by this bomb. We had no income for myself, my family, my managers, the workers, the students and those who were looking forward to earning an extra salary or pocket money for the holidays.

My managers went as far as Durban, well because they were transferred there. My manager, Garth, went to Maverick Spur where we were training people. They came to me and asked me Andrew, now what should we do?

Everybody was looking for jobs and unfortunately there was no business around. The hospitality industry, the restaurant business, all suffered.

21 Families were effected by this. I couldn't tell people when we would resume business, I didn't know when we would open our doors again, because we were bankrupt.

I didn't have the resources to rebuild my business. I made a desperate attempt by phoning my head office and very kindly they advanced me some money which I then later had to QUEENSTOWN HEARING TRC/EASTERN CAPE

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pay back.

And the rest I acquired by handing in some insurance policies. I went as far as for the next three months, whilst the business was closed, this is now from the 3rd of December till the 18th of March of 1983, I each and every Wednesday, I took all 21 of my staff members, this is now the permanent staff, I still paid them.

I still provided them with their salaries. And this is not where my financial situation or crisis ended.

My children still had to be educated, accounts had to be paid and although life proceeded in its normal fashion, there was no income.

I went to the company and said that I was forced now to cancel my Provident Fund that I need this, that I am in need of money, so I cancelled this.

I was advised by my auditors to talk to the Receiver and ask to be exempted from paying tax. Of course this didn't help.

The R20 000-00 that I was meant to get, never came and so one thing led to the next. And because of this, we were not able to advance, our business was hampered.

I think my wife, Heila would be able to tell you a little bit more about the happenings of that night. What scars it left her with and also to tell you about the scars it left on our marriage.

REVD FINCA: Excuse me please, may I interrupt you. I would like to appeal to the audience and I know that it is frustrating that you are not being able to hear what is being said, because you do not have these sets which are doing interpretation. But I want to ask you to bear with us, we are tackling a very important matter.

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We are following through this translation which you are not able to do at the present moment, it is not the fault of the witnesses, it is the fact that these are limited. So not everybody has it.

So we ask you to give this witness the benefit of your patience - I know that you have patience and that you are able to exercise it and I want to appeal again to you for that discipline.

We are talking about a very painful event where people died ruthlessly and we would like to give this event the dignity and the reverence which it deserves.

And I am sure that the people of Queenstown will not want to spoil our hearing by behaving in a manner that will cast negative reflection on our hearings here.

Throughout this province we have had crowds and crowds of people who have behaved themselves excellently. And I hope that you would want to maintain that tradition.

Thank you very much.

ADV POTGIETER: Thank you Chairperson. Mr Van Wyk, you can now proceed. You've mentioned that your wife will explain to us what happened that night and also refer to us about the personal or emotional scars.

Did you ever managed to build the business up again?

AP VAN WYK: Yes, Mr Potgieter, I would lie to you if I had to say that things weren't going well in the business, it is going fairly well.

But before we reopened the Spur, there were people like my bankers who were obviously involved with my business because of the fact that I had to loan money from them, also organisations like the Small Business Development organisations and it was our duty now to convince these

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people. If you refer to the last page of the file, you would have confirmation of this, and that my Close Corporation is insolvent.

The CC, the Close Corporation is up until today still insolvent. We are still insolvent, and I am able to provide the Commission with balance sheets if you so wish.

And before we reopened, I had to go and convince the relevant people to provide us with a second chance. I had to negotiate very seriously with the Small Business Development Corporation and finally we managed to persuade them that we as a family, very, very dearly would like to have the opportunity to rebuild our business.

And I can tell you we succeeded, one hundred percent in this. The bank did not disappoint us, the people who loaned money to us, did not disappoint us and all the money that was advanced to us in order to pay salaries, we were able to repay that within a year, but it still had a very serious impact on our cash flow.

Up until today I do still owe the bank a couple of thousand rand, the interest rates that we are paying is very high. The day we reopened the Spur, we realised that we have to do a lot more.

There is going to be a lot more we have to do in order to save this business from insolvency. We went to the ends of the earth and that is when we decided that in future, we will serve breakfast in Queenstown and for two and a half years, we would each morning open at seven in order to serve breakfast and that extra income assisted us at the end of the day.

And due to the pressure we had in the business and in particular myself who was the leader, I can say to you that

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it has been an incredible time for me and it has been exceptionally difficult for me.

And for me to rise out of this financial setback caused me to neglect my marriage and my wife and children and due to the fact that we had so little time to spend with each other, our marriage nearly ended in a divorce.

You know on the one hand I was required to look after my family, spend time with them and at times I was not able to do this.

But the people who worked for me, those people who before the bomb explosion had a certain standard were just not good enough any more. Sometimes if I think back a bit now in the last three years, I couldn't have been one of the easiest people to get along with or to work with, not that it was my fault, the person who planted the bomb in my business, is the person who should be held responsible for this.

I must say that I didn't just expect the best from my staff, I wanted more than the best. I wanted exceptional service to my clients, so that that would ensure them coming back.

ADV POTGIETER: Mr Van Wyk, did any organisation ever accept responsibility for this bomb explosion?

AP VAN WYK: There are two people who accepted responsibility and I can just refer you to the page - on page 25 and I will quote "a woman Lolita, claiming to be from the Azanion People Liberation Army, claimed responsibility."

The last paragraph "the man claiming to be Conrad de Bill, who is the Commander of APLA Intelligence in the Eastern Transvaal, also phoned SAPA in Johannesburg last

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night, and said that six APLA members were involved in the Queenstown attack.

So I think that it is fairly widely accepted and known to us that that was the organisation who claimed responsibility.

Later during the police investigation, my wife - and Heidi on an occasion, showed or pointed out the people who sat at the people at the Spur that night.

I find it unacceptable that the people involved up till today have not been arrested. I find this totally unacceptable.

ADV POTGIETER: You also mentioned that your insurance policy did not cover the damage that your business suffered. Were you able to claim from any other source for the damages caused?

AP VAN WYK: I went all out and I will refer you to an article here. I went to Adv Eksteen and according to evidence or information I had given him, he wanted to know where I was insured. I was insured with SANTAM and it is not that there was no insurance.

I have some evidence here to show you that I did have insurance. I was only able to get this document recently. The one is an ordinary type of insurance which cover you for those sort of things and then there is another type of insurance which covers you during political unrest.

My responsibility was towards them because of the money that I loaned from them. Every year I would send this document through to them, but on a technicality I was penalised and therefor the insurance refused to pay out.

I took these documents and I consulted with Adv Eksteen. At that stage he thought that I might have a

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slight chance of gaining anything out of this. My auditor also was prepared to go to court and according to both of them, I stood a better chance of suing APLA, but we needed funds.

The Advocate mentioned a fee of between R50 000-00 and R60 000-00, my business of course at that point was bankrupt and I had no reserves.

So I closed the book and told myself that it is impossible for me to afford this. I also wanted a form of guarantee that if I was able to lay my hands on these funds and therefor give him, instruct him to sue APLA, that we would then continue.

I simply advised the Advocate that I did not have the financial means. So we left it there. We did not receive any help from any organisation or any person.

ADV POTGIETER: We, as the Chairman pointed out already, we do have your file. We have all the documents that you have pointed out or referred to and we've also given to our representatives, your request and you've also asked that the perpetrators should be prosecuted. You've also asked for compensation and we have all this information in front of us and I would very much like to listen to your wife.

Is there anything else that you'd like to add to your statement?

AP VAN WYK: Yes, I think if I can in conclusion, maybe just highlight one or two things. Three Black men walked into the Spur. They for no apparent reason planted a bomb, there is no reason I can think of why they should have done that.

There wasn't just White people or just Black people, there were a mixture of races and to the contrary, there

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were more Black people in the Spur that particular night that there were Whites.

How can those people plant a bomb, I ask why? It is a silhouette, it is a Black person, I see the line ... (tape ends)

(Tape starts) ... very much like those people to come forward to the Commission and to me and the people here Michelle, Heila and all the people who were injured as to come forward and say, we are sorry. And I think that up until such time that this happens, I would simply not be able to forgive those people.

I am not able to forgive a faceless person and I cannot accept and forgive without that. I have never gone for help to anybody, I think today is the first time I have been given or granted the opportunity to really say how I feel inside of me, because I am not generally the kind of person who open up.

I have not gone for any counselling, the day after the explosion a very good client of ours, came to us and myself and my wife were standing outside the Spur and it wasn't a very good picture, and this friend of us Themba, came to us, he is a big Black man and he came and he said Andrew, don't worry, those people who did this, will be caught.

And I think that already then, the healing process started. The fact that a Black man could come to me the very next day and say to me, don't worry, we're with you and he said, I'm taking you right now to Clarence Mqwetu and I want to know why his people did this to you.

And I think this gesture of Themba personally helped me so very much. I would also like to ask the Commission that the reparation committee, perhaps contact me at a later

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stage and you know, we can discuss things, because I don't want to be sitting here all day, I would therefor just like to thank you very much for the opportunity.

I would also like to thank my lawyer for his advice and support and I now forgot the lady, Dr Maya, she came to the Spur the other day just to have a cup of coffee, and two hours later I already felt better and thank you very much for listening.

I already feel better. I would also like to listen to my wife and for her it was also a very traumatic story.

The last three months have been particularly hard for her. You know some people are able to suppress things and others can't.

But she was able to do this. And now, for the last four months, she has had to go for counselling, she's had to go for psychiatric help. It is due to the stress, the financial setback we've suffered. I was not even aware of the fact that they were undergoing counselling.

Up until the other day when she asked me to accompany them. It was a great shock for me and I would like the Commission to be aware of this, because it has not been easy for us. Thank you.

ADV POTGIETER: Thank you very much Mr Van Wyk and thank you very much for your evidence. We take note of everything you've said and we are now going to listen to the evidence of your wife and after that my colleagues might have a question or two for you and perhaps you just want to change places. Good day Mrs Van Wyk and welcome to you. We listened to your husband's evidence and we have a fairly good picture of what happened there.

We also have pictures.

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REVD FINCA: There continues to be a disturbance in the hall. It is coming from a particular section of this hall.

And I want to appeal again that let us not have that disturbance. There are those who are waiting to interpret our handling of this particular hearing and of this particular case, who are waiting desperately for us to do something amiss and carry it on the headlines.

And we definitely are not going to be dragged into that. So we are again appealing for total silence, for the respect to the witnesses which were given to other witnesses before.

And if there are people who are finding it difficult to honour, we are requesting those people to please requise themselves. Thank you very much.

ADV POTGIETER: Thank you Chairperson for the assistance. We come back to you Mrs Van Wyk. I'd like to give you the opportunity to add to the evidence of your husband so feel welcome and relax.

H VAN WYK: When I think back of that day of the 3rd of December which is quite a while back now, when I close my eyes, I hear words that stick in my mind.

I hear can you give us a Hunters to take away. And I said, I'm sorry sir, but it is against the law, you are not allowed to take this from the premises. And he said but we want this, because we want to celebrate.

Needless to say that a couple of days later, the celebration would actually be a celebration of the fact that customers and our workers that within an hour, that they would celebrate because they want to dispose of us all.

I didn't really at that moment realise what exactly they were asking me. Because it was somebody that looked me QUEENSTOWN HEARING TRC/EASTERN CAPE

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straight in the eyes and somebody that I treated the way I would treat anybody else.

The person looked me in the eye when he paid me and he smiled at me when he walked out.

And an hour later everything, everything was chaos. I didn't know what was going on. I thought that one of our gas bottles, because we work with gas bottles, I thought that one of those exploded.

And two of the customers sat at the bar, I screamed to the griller, "Peter, what happened" and the person said that it is a bomb, and I said no, but it can't be a bomb.

The moment that the police came and instructed us to come out, the deceased who was laying on the pavement and who was burnt, he was black from the way he was burnt, we could only see the white of his eyes and he, he actually asked you "are you okay?"

And that is when I realised that I have to go and look for the people who worked for us and I went and I established that they were all there.

And I am talking about the Black person who was washing the dishes and all of them. We missed one lady, but she was already being taken to the hospital.

And that is basically all I can remember. And each one of us that were working there, the moment we see each other, you know, that at least we survived, we were there.

And I said to someone the other day if I could have taken upon myself the pain, the burn, the suffering that everyone endured, if I could have taken it upon myself, I would have, but unfortunately it doesn't work like that.

Fortunately I wasn't injured at all and as I said if I could have taken that upon myself, if I could rather have

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burnt and suffered the way everyone did, I would have done that.

ADV POTGIETER: But although you physically did not, weren't injured, what other effect did this have on you? Your husband referred to the fact that you go for counselling and you've been for counselling and you are now attending psychological treatment.

H VAN WYK: I think it is the fact that I myself did not sustain any injuries that it is difficult for me to fathom because you cannot feel anyone's pain physically, but there was a stage where, of remorse. People said you are going to Port Elizabeth while my daughter has to lie in hospital.

And I think that that touches you, you don't want that because those are people that come to you everyday. I can give you an example about the Brody's who have come in and I think he is the oldest son and I can't remember which one of the two it was, who said to me. Do you want to close early tonight and I said, no why?

And they said no, we want to party a bit and I said well fine, party. Little did we know what was waiting for us.

And it is little things like these that you try and get out of your mind, you try and - you keep it out of your memory, but every time you think back about what could we have done? Could we not have done anything to prevent it?

Why did they do it? I mean, I come in to our shop and I hug my staff. They call me their Mama because they all give me hugs.

Whether they're pink, blue, purple or red, it is my family and we treat each other like family. I just cannot understand who made a mistake, why did they choose us?

QUEENSTOWN HEARING TRC/EASTERN CAPE

22 H VAN WYK

And it is still difficult for me to understand that. I had to send my children to my mother the whole of the December holidays. For the whole Christmas holidays, because we had to find work again in order to send them to school the following year - small children standards 1 and 4 respectively, who couldn't understand why their parents weren't with them Christmas day.

And it took me a little while unfortunately I tried to come to terms with it, but the last few months I just couldn't handle it any more.

And that is why in conclusion I would like to say that I think that in everyone's hearts, we have to have the ability to forgive, but one doesn't forget.

And I just want those people to say we are sorry. And I think then, although we may not be able to forget, we will be able to forgive, thank you very much.

ADV POTGIETER: Thank you Ma'am. Thank you for your evidence. We realise that it is a very difficult situation, but we have taken cognisance and we thank you. I am now going to give our next witness, Mr Brody a chance to give his evidence.

And after that, a few of my colleagues might want to put a few questions to you. So for now, I would like you to sit back and let Mr Brody give his evidence. Thank you, very much.

 
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