TRC Final Report

Volume 5

Chapter 4

Subsection 14

Family killings

108 In some families more than one family member died, with tremendous implications for the survivors. The Manyika family was awakened on the night of the 17 June 1992 by a vigilante attack in Sebokeng. Although the children managed to escape, both parents were killed:

We have lost our parents. As I’m talking, we are only the kids at home. My sisters and my brothers, especially the two boys, had to quit school because there was no breadwinner at home. We had to go and look for some jobs.

109 Their survival became a terrible struggle:

The ones who were still going to school were four. One of them was Mavis but she has completed standard ten. The other one is Anna, she’s in standard ten and Elizabeth, she’s in standard four and Godfrey, he’s in standard three. And Godfrey hardly ever passes at school. Especially after this event he’s not performing well at school.

110 Also in Sebokeng, Mr Ernst Sotsu spoke of a triple family killing. After surviving years in the underground, Sotsu finally settled in the Vaal area and joined the Vaal Civic Association which was vehemently opposed to black councillors. When the IFP emerged on the political scene, the conflict escalated. He and his wife were both intimidated by the police and the IFP:

On the 3 July 1991, whilst attending an African National Congress meeting in Durban, my family was attacked. My wife Constance, my daughter Margaret and grandson Sabatha were shot dead with AK47’s at close range ... Two of my grandchildren, Vuyani and Vusi narrowly escaped death but were seriously injured with bullet wounds.

111 This attack affected the entire family, resulting in the deaths of family members across three generations.

The burden of death

112 The death of family members has many negative consequences. The effects of the loss are exacerbated by the responsibility of having to inform other family members of the loss as well as by the financial burden of funeral expenses. At the Heideveld hearing, Mr Kama described the anguish of his family after the police killed his brother-in-law:

Who would contribute to his funeral, where would his funeral be held and how would we take the body home? ... And even then, we were still left with the burden of informing the mother plus the burden of knowing what to do with the body.

113 The low value many police officers placed on black people’s lives was evident in the death of Ms Nobeki Mbalula, who was shot and killed in a random police shooting in Cradock. When the family confronted the police and told them that they had shot a woman who was breast feeding a baby, the police response was, “the corpse can breast feed the baby.”

114 After killing Nobeki, the police continued to harass the family.

On the Monday, they came to the house. They kicked down the door; they ate food; they took food from the fridge and ate.

115 The death led to additional burdens on the extended family.

I had this baby to look after. Because I had no help, I had to take these children to my sister-in-law’s ex-husband.

116 The distress caused by the death of a family member was, in some cases, exacerbated by a sense of betrayal by trusted forces, such as the liberation movements. At the hearing on prisons, Mr Joseph Seremane gave testimony about the execution of his brother, Chief Timothy, in the ANC camp known as Quatro.

I come here on behalf of my family. I come here to express my feeling of betrayal by compatriots and comrades. I come here to express our disappointment and the way we feel cheated of a dear little brother, a promising young man, a brilliant young man.

117 For other families, the pain of the loss of a loved one was perpetuated because the opportunity for appropriate rituals for grieving was denied. Mr Tshabalala (see above) described the indignity suffered after his cousin’s death. “Amongst all other things when he was being buried, he was buried by the police. I believe they just buried him like a dog or a puppy.”

118 In other cases, uncertainty about the fact of death itself - as where victims simply disappeared - led to long-term psychological and practical problems. Ms Susan van der Merwe’s husband disappeared on 1 November 1978. It was established much later that he had been murdered by a group of MK soldiers, to whom he had offered a lift.

The uncertainty and the utter feeling of helplessness that was caused by the disappearance of my husband was probably worse than receiving news of his death, one time. If I could put it this way, it would have been better for me just to hear that he had an accident with a gun or he had a car accident. It would have been better for me to digest the news. But the fact that there was no body even to bury led to the fact that there was no official evidence of his death.

This led to me not being able to conduct financial transactions such as buying a house. The Transvaal Education Department, which I was working for, and the financial institutions did not regard me as a breadwinner as such. My whole life was then an uncertainty ...

My story ... is but a story of a woman who could not bury her husband because there was no corpse.

119 Many who were able to bury their family members had the funeral terms dictated by those who had killed them. Ms Tony Lillian Mazwai’s son died in 1988 while he was in exile. She described the atmosphere at his funeral.

I was informed that my son was a well-trained guerrilla and that the people who attend the funeral have to be limited to 200 in number ... They insisted there should be no speeches, no freedom songs, nothing. It was like a war. It seemed as if it was a battle. There’s a big gate next to Josa. There was a convoy, police, soldiers, hippos, everybody.

120 The lack of respect for traditional rituals around death caused many people a great deal of pain. Not only were funerals disrupted, graves were also not respected. At the Nelspruit hearing, Mr Mtsorombane Carlson Ngwenyama described events that took place in 1964 when his community was being forcibly removed:

In 1964, the message came to us that the graves were to be exhumed. The owners of these graves were not even informed ... As I am a parent today, I am having twelve children but they don’t know the grave of my mother ... As blacks this is a problem to us because it is our tradition that they must know; they must worship their elders.

121 Thus, there was a lack of respect not only for the living but also for the dead, with repercussions for generations to come.