CHAIRPERSON: Finally, we would like to call Lendiso Richard Ndumo Galela.
REV XUNDU: Chairperson, I would like to swear the witness in. Could you please rise Mr Galela.
LENDISO RICHARD NDUMO GALELA: (Duly sworn in, states).
REV XUNDU: Thank you. The Chairperson has asked me to request you to come closer to the microphone. Could you, could I please request you to be as brief as possible. We are not going to go into much detail, because it is quite clear from your statement what happened to you, but there is a part here that I think we, is not necessary to mention right now and that is about the behaviour of the police, because it does not exactly fit into the political context of what we are dealing with at this point. You are one of the people who were in the PAC at the time of this hearing. Could you please just be very brief. Could you please, very briefly, just tell us what the situation was under which you lived at the time?
MR GALELA: I have a fear, because it seems as though I have too little time to tell my story which is very long and it is a painful story which affects anyone who was oppressed. You have given me a very short time.
REV XUNDU: I agree, Sir. If we look at what is in this paper. Let us agree that we will adhere to what is being said in the statement without going into too much detail.
MR GALELA: When you say that I should not deal with my detention, it disturbs me because that was where I was treated the worst. It is no secret for people to know what happened to us at Robben Island.
REV XUNDU: You are telling another person's story. We would just like to know what happened to you.
MR GALELA: That person is me and I am that person.
REV XUNDU: Please proceed with your story, Sir.
MR GALELA: I was arrested in Cape Town on the 28th of November 1960 and was released on bail on the 13th of December 1960. Upon our release we were, one of our bail conditions was that we report to the police station at all times at seven in the morning every day and in doing so the police found that they could humiliate me and humiliate my humanity. Even though I am not a psychologist there are certain things that happened in this meeting which cannot happen here.
REV XUNDU: Why were you arrested?
MR GALELA: We were arrested on two charges. The first one was for furthering the aims of an unlawful organisation. The second one was for public violence. The first one, for which I was arrested on the 28th of November 1960, was for furthering the aims of an unlawful organisation. I was released on bail and the trial was conducted, but all along the police used members of the PAC. They said that I, by getting me to report to the police station every day, the police created the impression in the community that I was a police informer. We did not live in one place so we would get to the police station at different times to report and the police tried to humiliate you by betraying you as an informer in the community. The organisation was banned at the time and the police tried to portray me as an informer of the PAC.
REV XUNDU: Did you people have cells where you met underground.
MR GALELA: Yes and we discussed it there and I even wanted to leave the country, but they said that I should not. On the 18th of August 1961 I was found guilty and then the whites on the outside, then an appeal was lodged. I was sentenced to prison while my appeal was being lodged. I was then placed in solitary confinement up until I was taken to court upon a second charge of public violence.
REV XUNDU: So you are saying what we have to investigate is who was in charge in that year so that we can ask him, the police or where?
MR GALELA: The person who slandered me was Roux and another black policeman known as Nyedakokela.
REV XUNDU: You may proceed.
MR GALELA: I was convicted on the fourth of November 1961 on the second charge of public violence and on the fifth of November I went to Robben Island. When I got to Robben Island I stood in front of the chief's office from nine in the morning, at two pm when they came back from lunch. I was then taken into a segregation cell. I slept in the segregation cell and then I was taken, put in solitary confinement.
REV XUNDU: How many of you were there?
MR GALELA: I was by myself. I was in isolation. In isolation we would be taken out at nine in the morning, but where another PAC member was brought in, where a member by the name of Makwetu was brought in, we were taken to segregation cell and with what was happening between the long, the prisoners serving longer sentences than us others, we were then sent to the quarantines with these guards who waited for us at the door. As time went by you found that all these prisoners suffered from runny tummies. Everyone had diarrhoea. At that stage if, it seemed as if someone fell out of the queue to go and relieve themselves they would assault the person with their rifle butts and say carry on walking. Coming back to your question, there was a doctor available, Drs van Zyl and someone by the name of Tiza and they did what you asked me not to mention here. That was the first time we had encountered that and it disturbed us, because other members of the ANC came, Masondo was a lecturer at Fort Hare and Rex Mbonwane and Mdinghy and two others from Port Elizabeth, George Nsikankantla. We were all together in the segregation cell, but what happened was while we were all there together we as political prisoners would be released with the convicts.
On the 22nd of October 1963 we were released. My appeal was successful, but and I was supposed to have been released in April 1962, but I was only released in October 1963. I then decided to go to Lesotho and go and give a report where our organisation was legal. I then went to Lesotho where I submitted my report and it was realised there and then that it was dangerous, that it would surface at the United Nations in 1963, if I am not mistaken. I was then sent abroad to Congo, which is Zaire today, and then I went to Egypt.
REV XUNDU: Did you go and submit your report at the United Nations?
MR GALELA: It was sent by the organisation from Lesotho to the United Nations.
REV XUNDU: How were your human rights violated abroad, these places you have mentioned, Congo and so forth?
MR GALELA: What I would like to say is that I did not live peacefully because what the police did then was that they had a, they conducted an operation known as Hot Pursuit and even then they said that there were many ways to skin a cat. This is what the Boers said. Thereafter they killed the people who were assisting us in everything. The first person who saw within our organisation was Shake Roman, realised that there were people who were co-operating with the police and he said that there are some of us who are working with the police. What the police did was to buy over those people and they killed Shake.
REV XUNDU: Was your name one of these names of the people, mentioned as one of the people who sold him out?
MR GALELA: No, it did not.
REV XUNDU: What human rights violations did you encounter while you were abroad? Which gross human rights violations did you experience while you were abroad?
MR GALELA: I was assaulted and stabbed by Fezile Ntlalhi.
REV XUNDU: Who is Fezile Ntlalhi? Is he in the organisation? Which organisation?
MR GALELA: He stabbed me with a knife on the 25th of December.
REV XUNDU: What was the problem?
MR GALELA: Firstly, he said that I had to leave Robben Island because I was a traitor. Secondly, I was made a homosexual at Robben Island. Thirdly, I was asking his wife for cigarettes.
REV XUNDU: Was this discussed in your organisation?
MR GALELA: On the outside in all three countries, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Lesotho, assisted. The reference to asking his wife for cigarettes was where it was said I need a cigarette and that refers to homosexual intercourse in prison. The police would then say to us you should not do your things that you use to do out in Botswana here.
REV XUNDU: These violations which you referred to as being within your organisation, is this Ntlathi still alive?
MR GALELA: He was still alive when last I heard about him. He was in Botswana. The last I heard he was still alive.
REV XUNDU: Was he still outside the country?
MR GALELA: No, they had come back.
REV XUNDU: Would you like Ntlathi to come to you and ask you for forgiveness?
MR GALELA: You are cutting me short.
REV XUNDU: I am trying to keep your story as brief as possible, because of time constraints. I am not trying to undermine your suffering, but we would like to be very clear on what the objective is. We are a Truth and Reconciliation Commission so we would like to know where you were, your human rights were violated. You mentioned that Ntlathi also treated you badly. What would you like the Commission to do about that?
MR GALELA: It was not the same as other people. With other people they told their stories, completed what they wanted to say and then you would put questions to them. With what you are saying, you said that time is running out. What I am going to say is that a person is not valued. There is no amount of money that can pay for a person's dignity. That is a fact. I am the equivalent of a corpse, I do not have any dignity left, I have been stripped of my dignity and that is what I wanted to say and I would just like to say that even though my physical appearance seems like that of a man I have been stripped of my manhood and a specialist told me that it would give, it would take three months for me to be treated and if nothing happens, I should know that I would be condemned sexually. So, I am just here to say that there are so many things that I suffered and there is even something else I would like to say here. When people were eating in the other room I was not called to come and get something to eat. I do not know what the reason is for that. That is why I say I have been stripped of my human dignity. I was not called in, but that does not surprise me. What I am saying is that I do not see what the Commission can do for me, because so many of them were unsuccessful.
REV XUNDU: So you say that with the things you could be assisted was that you came back to Grahamstown and found that you did not have a house anymore.
MR GALELA: You did not want me to tell you about that, but now you are taking me back to that. I do not have a home, yet we were promised homes upon our return. I got back only to find that the people who lived in my house were all deceased and even my parental home was no longer there and I do not have a place to stay and if, perhaps, I or the matter for which I was charged for high treason is, was finalised, I do not know about that. The fact that I cannot use my private parts anymore is like a chronic disease.
REV XUNDU: Thank you very much, Sir. I would like to hand you back to the Chairperson.
CHAIRPERSON: Mr Galela, it is not very clear to me whether the loss of your manhood occurred at which stage.
MR GALELA: The loss of my manhood occurred when I was taken to Harare Central Hospital and the doctor said that I had, there was something wrong with my prostate gland. It had already been treated, but I was going back for follow-up treatment and that is where they killed me instead of healing me, because they conducted that small operation on my prostrate gland and when I got home I was bleeding profusely and when I got home I urinated blood all night. The following day my penis was ice cold, it was just limp and it is still the same today. It is still the same today.
CHAIRPERSON: I do not want to go into detail, but what we are looking into here, as a Commission, is looking at gross human rights violations in a political context. Were you violated at the hospital or who do you blame.
MR GALELA: I blame Drs Sigoni, the specialist. He has a local name. Hence, I am saying that he is a South African person and also Mkolisi from Umtata. They are the persons who were treating me.
CHAIRPERSON: Did they do this because they were furthering political motives or because they had a personal grudge against you?
MR GALELA: I do not know. All I know is that after they had treated me my manhood was never the same. However, in Botswana after I had undergone a major operation, Magwas who was a specialist, said to me that there was nothing left, there was nothing wrong with my manhood, that I was still fine, but in Zimbabwe the damage was done. Firstly, my hospital files disappeared and secondly, my medical certificates were stolen where I was staying.
CHAIRPERSON: And you say that the damage of your property back home, you say that your house was taken back home, your house was taken away from you? Who do you think is to blame for taking your house away, back here?
MR GALELA: I got back here on the ninth of September 1991 and I lived at 684 Joza, which was my wife's house, her maiden name was Mapufo. When I got back she had children from another man and after her mother had spoken to me I accepted those children and after I had forgiven her and taken her back she would still bring in another man in spite of me being there. I then went to speak to the priest and he said what I could do, all I could say to my wife was that she should respect me and that that man should respect me, that my wife should go to him and it appeared as if my wife intended for me to assault either her or her lover so that I could be arrested, but I did not do that, but what she did instead was to divorce me in 1993.
At FAMSA, FAMSA then said that I should not leave my house, because it was my house. That did not happen. What then happened was that her man would come into the house and they would leave. What I then did was to go to FAMSA and, Anna was there, said that I cannot force my wife to divorce me, that she would divorce me when she was ready to. All she could do was to go to her lover and I saw it as a sign of disrespect, because she was white and I was black.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much, Sir. I think that you are right in saying that your story is fairly long. If we could count or to have a look at the time which we granted you it is longer than any of the other witnesses times, but there are certain issues which we will be unable to cover. We promise you, however, that what we probably could do is to set a day aside where we can invite you to, perhaps, our office and sit down and set a day aside for this story which you are telling, because it is quite clear that we should vacate this hall by six o' clock. They need the hall for something else. We apologise for the fact that you did not receive anything to eat. We apologise for that, it was probably a mistake or an oversight. We would like to officially close off our days proceedings now. We would like to show respect to this witness. We would like to ask you to excuse yourself while they are still seated, Sir. Thank you very much. We will be back here tomorrow at nine o' clock.
