MS MKHIZE: We welcome you.
KOKANE ISAAC DITSHEGO: (s.s.)
MS MKHIZE: I will ask one of my colleagues to help you give your evidence and Mr Tom Manthata will help you give your evidence.
MR MANTHATA: Mr Ditshego please relax but I trust that everything will be in order. Can you tell us about yourself so that we should be able to know where are you working, your family situation. I was just asking you to give us a brief statement about yourself.
MR DITSHEGO: My name is Isaac Ditshego. I am living at number 5 Flat E, Phase 1 here in Alexandra at the moment and I am working for Pick 'n Pay. When I was first arrested I was living at 137 14th Avenue but the activities that caused my arrest are basically in Mutsi, formerly Kwandabele. I was the secretary of Mutsi Civic Association which was of course formed from here in Gauteng, due to the fact that Mutsi community was being terrorised into joining the so-called Kwandabele homeland, which was being formed at the time. I want to make it clear that as Mutsi is a rural place the people there are and were very much innocent politically and we who are working in Gauteng, which everyone knows there are many of us working here from the rural areas felt that something should be done mainly because the government was causing something that would have ALEXANDRA HEARING TRC/GAUTENG
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led to a very terrible war between Ndebele speaking people and Sotho speaking people. We had to do something about that to let these people understand that it is not of their making, it is not Ndabeles who want to fight Sothos. No, it is Sothos who want to fight Ndabeles. But whoever wants to fight who, it is sent by Pretoria. Hence we formed Mutsi Civic Association from here. I became the first secretary and I would travel or we would travel from here almost on a daily basis, we never slept then, to make house meetings. Street committees were formed in Kwandabele in Mutsi to try and explain to the people that fighting among themselves was going to destruct themselves and the boers will still be peacefully living in Pretoria. We succeeded but as it was the norm of the boers once one succeeds in bringing peace to the communities, to the black communities, that particular person was the target of the boers. I was one. They travelled, the boers, the police of Kwandabele came all the way from Kwandabele to arrest me at 14th Avenue. They didn't even bother to report at the Alexandra police station that they were coming to pick up someone here. Their mistake, something that of course rescued me because the police here didn't know anything and that is why I was able to be released in two months yet I am arrested under the state of emergency which, if they reported this and Alexandra police knew, I would perhaps still be in jail. All that said. These guys picked me up after picking my two cousins at 6th Avenue. It was about one o'clock at night. They put me in a cage, in a dog cage, as you know the police cars have this dog kennels at the back where they put two dogs. They had one dog in the other kennel and they put the two of us, me and my cousin in one sitting with our knees up from one
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o'clock. They drove with us to Hillbrow and parked their car there, locked with us being in one little - where they put on dog we were two in there for the whole night and they went around on foot playing machines, drinking, doing whatever they want and they came back round about five o'clock and started. At the time I did not even know that these people were Kwandabele police because they never introduced themselves anyway. I could only realise that they were Kwandabele police when we were approached in Pretoria. I realised we are getting Kwandabele, we are going to Kwandabele. And I was even more scared because I knew that those were not only police but they were - I am sorry - thugs. When we got to Mhlanga I expected that we would be put in a police station but we were driven to a bush where we found that I would say an abandoned house, a house which looks like it used to belong to a farmer or whatever there. We were put there and left there for almost the whole day. But before I continue that whole night that I was in the car we were actually handcuffed with the cousin of mine. When they tried to unlock the handcuffs in Mhlanga when we arrived there my side of the handcuff didn't open, the key didn't work and they left the handcuffs on my hand the whole day. My wrist was swollen in the afternoon when they came to take us from that house to just across a certain road, across a road where there was another house turned into a church office like. It was not a police station, it was just a house also but it was turned into a church office because there were few policemen who were in uniform, not South African Police uniforms mind you because they had their own created you know a colour that I wouldn't even know how - I wouldn't even call it, I don't know how it
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looked like but we could see that that was what they meant to be a charge office. Behind that there was a strong shed with two doors, two entrances. That was meant to be cells for us. Now when we got there it was only - mind you it is late in the afternoon - when we got there it was only then that we were put in the books sort of written in what they called OB, given forms to fill in, not really to fill in but just to tell them who you are and stuff like that. We wouldn't even be asked what organisation you belong to. They write it for you, the ANC. Or the next one will be UDF. Just like that. We were then taken to that shack, very hot, very low roofing, all corrugated around and just a bucket to help ourselves in there. It was terrible. But it was not all. After two days the torture started. They took my cousin to that house where we first go to. That is where people were tortured. They took him there for almost half a day and when he came back his mouth was white. He couldn't speak properly and he couldn't sit. Unfortunately that cousin of mine is late. He couldn't sit properly and that was it. The next day it was my turn. I was taken to that house but at least strengthened because I already knew what was going to happen to me. I was first handcuffed, my hands at the back, both hands of mine handcuffed on my back. There were many of them, black and white policemen so to say because one wouldn't even know if they were real policemen or what, and three of them had sjamboks and they let me stand there and started lashing me and not even asking me questions but just saying to me talk. The only question that would be understood was pointing out names, asking me where those people are and those names were of the young men who were members of the Youth Congress in Mutsi. And
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another person that they wanted me to tell them where he is was Peter Mogabu. And Ephraim Mogali. And of course many of them, many of the Mutsi youth. I was asked where those people are, I must talk. These guys continued lashing me and I was screaming, as you know the sjamboks inflict such a pain that you know it is not easy just to keep quiet. I was screaming there, they sjamboked me. When they tired, whether they were tired or whether they were just changing their strategy because I couldn't tell them, and I knew I was not going to tell them where those guys were anyway, I just saw the number of white police increasing there. And all of a sudden I saw one of them with a car tube, a piece of a car tube about that size. These guys, bearing in mind that they were almost all of them heavily built, to me they looked quite a bit abnormal, they were too big and I didn't even - I didn't see such big policemen around here, I mean they were very fat people. They let me lie on my back, yet still handcuffed. One of them sat on my legs and one of them sat on my chest. On my stomach here and the other one comes in front of me and put that tube on my face to suffocate me. That was the worst thing they could do to me. I get suffocated only when windows are not open but what more then, when a tube of a car is pressed on my face and all what they are saying is that "Nou gaan jy waar praat". They did that to me three times. I cannot count how many seconds or how long they kept pressing the tube on one's face or how long did they do it on me but it was only when I felt I was about to die when they could remove the tube. Every time they are doing it to me. Well, they still got nothing out of me. At last in the afternoon, because they were doing that taking their own time and in the afternoon
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they left me. In fact they sent one of their policemen to take me back to the cells which then it was their way of doing things that when one goes to the torturing house he is signed out of that charge office and when coming back you have got to sign in again. When I stood there to be signed in back from torture I felt dizzy and there was a tap at the corner of that house, as I said that charge office was just like a house. There was a tap of water there. I tried to get water out of that tap, I fell and I couldn't even get that water. The policeman fortunately who was supposed to sign me in, saw me and helped me up into the cell. When I got into the cell I fell, I didn't sit, I fell. And when I fell fortunately there was my cousin there and another few boys who were brought the previous day and thrown in our cell there and I must say at that moment we were fortunate enough because the scoop that we used to keep water with in that cell, in that hot cell because there wasn't permanent water in there, there was just a small scoop that we keep water in there for us to drink. When it is finished we would hit the door for such a long time for one of the police to come and open so that we can get water and I still say I was fortunate because there was a little water in that scoop which the guys could help me with. They poured water on me, they let me drink water and I woke up. But I must say I felt unconscious and when I woke up there the pains I had I really wished I shouldn't come back from unconsciousness. I should have died, it was better, it was comfortable you know when I didn't feel anything when I was unconscious and the pains that I felt after they had given me water and poured water on my face and head and things like that so that I can wake up were terrible. There wasn't medical
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attention, we weren't taken to the doctor, we were left in there for about two weeks and then I was again tortured because of the fact that these guys picked up my passport. Of course I had a passport but at the time they were searching my house they did not find it. It was in a jacket which when I got out of the house I did put that jacket on. And this passport was all the time in my inner pocket. But the way these guys were aggressive and threatening on the day of our arrival in Mhlanga I felt that with a passport with so many stamps in it and of very recent stamps I would be in trouble. I would be expected to explain what I was doing there and I didn't want them to ask me such questions. I didn't want to answer any question related to what was I doing outside the country and I did not even want them to know that I have ever been outside the country. Because I already know that they know that I am the secretary of this organisation and they shouldn't even have a clue of the fact that I ever crossed. So I took that passport and asked to go the toilet. Fortunately the toilet was outside and I tear it, well it was hard but then when I put it in the toilet trying to flush it it didn't go. I opened the top, I put it in there hoping that the water will work on it but it didn't work, it blocked that toilet one of the days and they got it. That was another terrible day of mine. They took me back to the house but then that day I must say fortunately they did something so quick to me that they themselves were scared I was going to die and didn't continue because one of the biggest of them all when I just entered the door there hit me with his fist under the ear and I fell and died a little bit. I don't know, you know I didn't even know how long did I lie there and when I woke up ALEXANDRA HEARING TRC/GAUTENG
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I found that those policemen who were around me looked upset, looked frightened themselves and they let me stand there, just stand there doing nothing to me and not letting me sit down, just stand there the whole day until in the evening when they took me back to the cells. That was the first story of my arrest. The second arrest, if I may perhaps complete - say as to when was I released from Kwandabele, that was after two months, after the lawyers could manage to say that I was not arrested in Kwandabele, I was arrested in Gauteng. Stuff like that. But at the same time when they released me there they banned me, they gave me a banning order that was so vague I didn't understand it because they took me from Verena police station where I was transferred after a month and drove me in a van to Witbank to meet my lawyer there so that I cannot put my foot on Kwandabele soil and my lawyer must meet me in Witbank and take me back to Johannesburg and I am restricted in Johannesburg, I shouldn't go to Kwandabele. Well that I didn't you know sort of understand or I can say I didn't obey because I didn't even know where the border of Kwandabele was. I had to go home and it is my home. There wasn't a border, there wasn't anything. I didn't know from where shouldn't I be or whatever. And I wasn't unbanned until today. It would mean that I would still be here and not even putting my foot at home. So I didn't go along with that. But again in 1990 before that, since then the Alexandra security police started harassing me, started coming to my house, picking me up like at four o'clock and you know questioning me, giving me a lot of questions about United Democratic Front and the activists here in Alexandra like Aubrey Mabela and all of them but then I did not know -ALEXANDRA HEARING TRC/GAUTENG
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I knew them, I did not work with them because here I kept a low profile and I just kept telling them that I only know these people on the press and that is it, I don't know them. But what made them then to stop harassing me, because they picked me up many times, what made them to stop was that one of the days after they picked me up here they tried to recruit me saying to me that they will give me a house at Eastbank and since I am a baker by trade they will build a bakery for me, I must just attend meetings of UDF with Peter Mugaba and all, they knew I was attending such meetings and I must just report back to them. That was a good thing they could do to try and recruit me. So I went to my lawyers, Bell Dewar and Wall and made a statement to that effect, that they wanted to recruit me. I don't know what the lawyers did, I think they phoned them and told them hands off me because they never came, since that day they never came back but 1990, come 1990 when - at that time as you know that being a member or especially being a leader of an organisation you automatically - we used to be automatically (indistinct) to cadres. That was our whole thinking. So by that time our cadres were already in a big number. There were many in Mutsi and surrounding areas and the whole of Northern Transvaal, Warmbaths and to an extent that some of them ... (nothing further on tape) ... because of the fact that he is being caught by the people he trained with and the people that were friends of his in exile and whatever they will be saying to him, especially being alone, by that time and they being few of them he unfortunately believed them and started telling them about the whole thing about me that I am the one who brought himself here and many, many others and I am the one who knows everything. That was my ALEXANDRA HEARING TRC/GAUTENG
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most terrible time. When I found out afterwards the guy even you know sort of gave plans as to how they should go about because he was arrested like I was arrested two days after him because he just told the police that they shouldn't pick me up. You know he sort of led the police to ....
MS MKHIZE: Sorry, Mr Ditshego. Will you excuse me. Could you just tell us what they did to you in 1990.
MR DITSHEGO: What they did when they came that night there were so many, they kicked my door. I could hear that the kind of knock that is at the door it is not the right knock. But by that time I was already in bed. My wife opened. When she opened I just heard her screaming. When I woke up quickly to see what was happening I met a lot of them coming in but the one who came first had a - what is it - a bullet- proof jacket on ammunition on him and a big gun which I couldn't see whether it is an R1 or an AK and he hit me with the butt of it on my ear and he hit me hard. I fell on the sofa and he continued. By the time, after he hit me with the butt of that gun and I fell on the sofa he continued hitting me. Now I couldn't even know whether he is hitting me with his fist at the time or with the very same butt of the gun and I fell unconscious and they searched the house. They searched the house for about, I think two hours. After that they just handcuffed me and threw me in the car and we went to the police station here in Alexandra. They spent about an hour questioning me but there they didn't torture me. At about one o'clock at night again, half past 12 they took me to Sandton police station where then they started torturing me. They kicked me, they punched me. I never slept the whole night. They could always go and have a rest
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and maybe another two come where I am and just start
questioning me, start punching me, start kicking me. But it was very, very bad that day because when I went to a toilet I saw myself, I saw my head in a mirror that it was swollen, it was bigger - double the size it is now. It was very bad. In the morning round about six in the room I was sitting the door was open, I could see many of my colleagues moving past the door. I could say that now everyone was now arrested. Then after that I was taken alone to Newlands police station. I was locked in one very cold cell and every morning they would come and pick me up there to Sandton to interrogate me. They even made me to sniff a liquid in a very small bottle which at first I thought it was tear-gas but the smell of it, it wasn't. I still don't know what it is. At times I think my memory was taken by that thing which I don't know what it is because tear-gas wouldn't do that to me. They would let me then afterwards because that was a daily thing now, that I am picked up from Newlands police station to Sandton to be interrogated, most of the days even tortured and then taken back to Newlands and what these guys did was that if they torture me hard today then they know that it is going to be 14 days before we will go to the district surgeon. If today, because they had this thing that now every 14 days we must see a district surgeon so if they know that now we are from - we even knew - I even knew that I am from the doctor today the next few days I might just get it because now I have still got many days to rest. But one other day which I don't remember the date, exact date, I was taken to Sandton and put on an armchair, my arms were tied with a rope and my chest was tied on a chair and a balaclava was put on my head. By then I was
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naked. A bucket of water was poured on my body and all of
a sudden not even knowing what was it that they were using because I had a balaclava on, I was electrocuted. My legs all over my body I was electrocuted and I was screaming there. By the time they finished I couldn't stand right up, I couldn't stand up, I couldn't walk properly. When I walked I was bending and I had to put my legs apart so that I can balance myself, I couldn't walk properly and I was taken back to the cell where I couldn't, because it was winter we were given blankets, many of them, I couldn't even pick them up to put them on myself. I would struggle to pick up a few blankets to cover myself, for almost a week. And after that 14 days when they took me to the district surgeon and when I tell him about this he just said yes they mustn't do that, you know your heart will stop but I can't say anything. Right. And there was a brigadier who used to come to me to ask me questions whether they are treating me well, whether they are giving me the right food. When I told him about this he sort of took a statement but after a while I received a piece of letter saying there is no one who is responsible for that, from him. That very brigadier whom I don't even remember the name. After six months in that solitary confinement I was taken to Pretoria court where I was released by an amnesty of 1994.
MR MANTHATA: Thank you Mr Ditshego. Who was the district surgeon that you were taken to?
MR DITSHEGO: I don't know his name, sir. He was next to the traffic department down in Johannesburg.
MR MANTHATA: Mr Ditshego can you tell us what effect on your body right now that torture has had on you.
MR DITSHEGO: I have constant pains that I didn't have
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before and my memory is lacking. It is not like the one I
know because I used to do recitations. I know at school I would recite something from the book that I read yesterday but I can't any more.
MR MANTHATA: Thank you. No further questions.
MS MKHIZE: Thank you very much. I will ask the other commissioners to ask you to clarify whatever might still need to be clarified. Yasmin Sooka.
MS SOOKA: Mr Ditshego, in your statement you say that you were an MK internal contact. What exactly do you mean by that? Do you want to clarify that for me please.
MR DITSHEGO: Can you repeat your question please.
MS SOOKA: In your statement you talk about being an MK internal contact. Do you want to tell us what that involved.
MR DITSHEGO: Did you say what was it that I was involved with? My involvement arises from the harassment of the young men and women in Mutsi Kwandabele whereby they would come here in Johannesburg where I am staying and seek refuge and I wasn't able to hide them for long because as I said the first arrest was from the Kwandabele police came here and arrested me. They would have just been killed like I was arrested here so I had to make contact outside with MK to help them to get these young men out.
MS SOOKA: Also you talked about the fact that you were not well known in this area but that your activities were in Mutsi. Besides being a conduit for people to get out what other activities were you involved in in Mutsi itself?
MR DITSHEGO: Out activities in Mutsi Civic Association was mainly to highlight, as I have said before - because the Ndebele people and the Sotho speaking people there were at
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loggerheads, they were fighting and our work was to tell
both groups to go to Kwandabele and organise meetings and tell them about Civic and tell them about the fact that Sothos are not fighting them, they must not fight Sothos. Actually it is the work of the government that they are now fighting because of creating that homeland there and that was our main activities.
MS SOOKA: You also say that after you were tortured for the third time your lawyers acted on your behalf. Do you know the name of those lawyers?
MR DITSHEGO: Of the lawyers?
MS SOOKA: Yes.
MR DITSHEGO: Yes, Bell Dewar and Wall. Mr Nort was my lawyer.
MS SOOKA: Thank you. No further questions.
MS MKHIZE: Mr Ditshego, when you made your statement, partly I suppose you were assisting us to get a clear picture of what has happened but are there any specific things which you had in mind which you think when you made a statement you would like the Commission to be of help with?
MR DITSHEGO: Nothing in particular for myself because what I was fighting for I got. Freedom. But I have got a problem as to whether those people who were perpetrating these things have repented. That is my problem because I may sit here and say well I have got freedom. Who knows. Miracles happen. The National Party wins the government tomorrow and these people do exactly the same, not to me now, to other people then I did nothing. So I want those people to come forward here, not only to say sorry but to say to us we will do that any more to anyone. Not even it is
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not in this country. What stopped them, from at least one of them. Because they know our addresses, they were arresting us. What is stopping one of them to come to my house to show that they have repented. That is exactly what shows me that those people they still think the same way. I don't know where they stay because I didn't arrest them. They know where I stay because they know where they picked me up. If they repented and they are in the fold, living in nowadays democratic life I would one day just see one of them popping up, even at work. They know where I am working. And say to me man how do you see things today. Then I say to him look come to my house, let's have pap and (indistinct). Symbol. Then I know he has repented but till then, no I doubt it.
MS MKHIZE: Thank you. Hugh Lewin.
MR LEWIN: Just one question please Mr Ditshego. Can you identify any of these people? You were in the hands of a large number of people. Can you identify any of them?
MR DITSHEGO: Yes. Brigadier Badenhorst at Sandton security police was my handler. He was the one who electrocuted me, tortured me and all that. But in as far as that group in Kwandabele is concerned, Brigadier Lerm was their controller so the rest of them as I say they were not normal police, that we knew, I wouldn't really identify them.
MS SOOKA: Mr Ditshego, I think, I am not sure if you are aware of the fact that in November we will be doing a special hearing in the Mutsi Kwandabele area to focus on the problems that people had and the interference I think of the government in the problems of both Mutsi and Kwandabele and one of the people that we are going to issue a subpoena to is Brigadier Lerm.
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MR DITSHEGO: I am not aware but if you subpoena Brigadier Lerm well done. I gave my statement here in Alexandra because both arrests were taking place here, one. Two, because I am still staying here and the Truth Commission offices are nearer me, I am staying here. But I would still be pleased and that is why I made the statement about myself and not about the situation there, but I would still be pleased if I am allowed to appear particularly to give statement on the situation in Mutsi and Kwandabele in those days and what was happening, what did we do at Civics, what have we failed to do and what did the police do to the people. That, if I am given that opportunity I would gladly accept it.
MS SOOKA: Well our statement takers are in the process of taking statements for the Mutsi area and what could possibly happen is once you have completed your evidence we could find out from the office who the statement taker is who is doing that for Mutsi.
MS MKHIZE: Thank you very much Isaac. You have shared with us your difficult experiences of being beaten up and tortured at different times. As you have said that at least you are pleased that you achieved what you wanted. We are also pleased that you survived it, you are alive. You have raised a difficult question for the Commission as to what should be done to make sure that these things are not part of our history again. The Commission partly is expected to be able to advise the government at the end regarding institutional rehabilitation so that is the challenge that is facing all of us and we will continue calling people who have gone through similar experiences like yours to make whatever recommendations which they think will be of help in
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making sure that this country is run in a different manner compared to what was done in the past. We thank you very much.
