CHAIRPERSON: This Commission has been organised by the Johannesburg office and they are part of the Human Rights Violations Hearings. We will be having witnesses from many parts of the West Rand during the next four days. Today all the witnesses come from Carletonville and Khutsong and we would like to extend a warm welcome to them and their families. Before I go on any further, I just want to introduce the rest of my colleagues on the panel here today. On my right-hand side there is Ms Joyce Seroke who is a member of the Human Rights Violations Committee and on the left-hand side I have Dr Russel Ally who is also a member of the Human Rights Violations Committee and my name is Dr Fazel Randera. We all come from the Johannesburg office of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and today all the members on the panel are members of the Human Rights Violations Committee. There will be changes over the next three days and we will introduce the new members of the panel as they come along.
I want to also thank the Principal of this Nursing College for allowing us to use these premises and also all the other people both from the Commission and many of the communities that we have spoken to who have participated and helped us over the last ten week period as we have collected statements. I know there are some people who have come here KRUGERSDORP HEARING TRC/GAUTENG
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today from Bekkersdal and I want to extend a warm welcome to you. Your statements will be heard on another day and it seems like there has been some confusion in terms of us communicating with you, but we hope that you will stay with us and listen to the statements from the people of Khutsong, Carletonville.
I want to just spend a few minutes explaining the process of how we have got to these hearings and any Human Rights Violations Hearing, because there are, again, a number of people within the audience who have come along thinking that they will also be speaking today. Whenever we decide on a hearing in a particular area, we make links with community structures within those areas, with other role players and through that process we start collecting statements from those people. Once the statements come into our office they are processed through our system and there is a big information gathering process that takes place within our system. Let me say that in this area we have taken approximately 200 statements. Unless we are going to have hearings that go on for ten or 15 days, it will be impossible for every person who has made a statement and we hope our statement takers, when they are taking the statements, have explained this to people. That not every person who makes a statement comes to a hearing, to a public hearing. Every statement that comes into the Truth and Reconciliation Commission office will be considered and given the same weight in terms of investigation and acknowledgement so that where you have asked for information relating to a loved one, we will try our utmost to give that information to you. The hearings, we have always said, provide a window on what happened in our country and we as
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Commissioners decide who will appear at a particular hearing. So, if there are people within the audience today who felt that they were going to appear at this hearing, we apologise and any of us will be very happy to speak to you afterwards and take any queries and questions that you may have.
I would like us to start our programme and today we have 11 statements. There is one person who has decided, for his own reasons, not to come today and that is Ms M J J Engakila who is not going to be coming. There is a change in the programme. Dr Russel Ally will be starting with the first witness and I will call that witness in a minute.
I just want to make a few more announcements. As far as the interpretation service goes, if you want to use these boxes you are most welcome to use them. There are members of the Commission and of the interpretation unit handing these boxes out at the back. The numbers on your right-hand side are for the different languages. Number one is for Afrikaans, number two is for English, number three is for Zulu or Xhosa and number four is for Swana or Soetho. My appeal on these boxes is please at the end of the day leave them behind as you go out. They are very sensitive units so just put them on the chairs very carefully please.
Alright, thank you very much. Ms Joyce Seroke will be taking the oath as people come to the table and, as I said earlier on, every morning as witnesses arrive we will stand and as we break for tea or lunch we allow the witnesses to go out first before we go out ourselves. So if we can just respect that procedure. Thank you very much.
I would like to first of all call W S Goliath. Good morning Mr Goliath. Welcome.
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MR GOLIATH: Thank you very much.
CHAIRPERSON: Can you please introduce the young lady who has come with you this morning.
MR GOLIATH: Next to me? This is my sister, the last born at home. Her name is Bella Goliath.
CHAIRPERSON: Welcome, Bella as well. Mr Goliath, Dr Russel Ally who is sitting here on my left-hand side is going to help you in your telling of your story, but before I do that will you please take the oath and I would just like to hand over to Joyce Seroke.
MR GOLIATH: (Duly sworn in, states).
CHAIRPERSON: Dr Ally.
DR ALLY: Good morning to you Mr Goliath and welcome to your sister. You are following me clearly enough? The translation is coming through.
MR GOLIATH: Yes, I can hear clearly.
DR ALLY: Mr Goliath, you are coming to speak to us about many events that happened to your family, to yourself, in your community and, in particular, about your brother, events that happened in the mid-1980's. In fact from January 1986 onwards. I am going to ask you now if you will actually take us through those events in your own words and tell us what happened.
MR GOLIATH: It was on the 7th January 1986. The police arrived and took my brother, his name was Moozie. Moozie was a youth member in the ANC. They took him on the 7th. He was taken by the police. On the 8th I got a call at work. My manager, Mr Nel, told me that I am needed at the police station. I got to the police station and when I got there my siblings were there waiting for me. They then took us to the mortuary. My brother had been shot on his neck. KRUGERSDORP HEARING TRC/GAUTENG
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They told us that they are going dedicate a day that they were going to bury him. He was in the mortuary for three weeks. They transferred him from Avbob to Saffers, from Saffers to the Government mortuary. Eventually we found him after three weeks. They told us that my brother would be buried the following week on the Monday. We tried to talk to them. They said they would bring the corpse on the Sunday and on the Monday we would bury my brother. We buried my brother. When we got to the graveyard they told us they would give us 15 minutes and after 15 minutes we must be through with the ritual. After 15 minutes indeed the police came. They beat people up. A lot of people were injured. They did not eat the food that was prepared for the funeral. My mother was ill from that day onwards to this day. We have a lawyer, Priscilla Jana. He wanted to see the wound. They wanted to take him out of the grave to see the wound, to examine him. My mother refused.
DR ALLY: Are you okay to go on, Sir. Take a break maybe and then if you ...
MR GOLIATH: If my sister could talk as well, please. I cannot carry on. Is it possible for my sister to carry on for me?
DR ALLY: Sir, what we will do is we will give you a little break if you want to, just to gather your thoughts. If you would not mind, then I would just like to ask you a few questions to try and assist you. Unfortunately, we cannot really have your sister talk because we do not have a statement from your sister and it is very important when people actually speak in front of the Commission, that we have a statement and as it happened before you started, you actually took an oath, if you remember, on the basis of your KRUGERSDORP HEARING TRC/GAUTENG
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statement, so for that reason. What I would suggest, though, is that your sister make a statement. We do not have statement takers here, we have people who can actually organise for a statement to be taken from your sister and, as Dr Randera explained in the beginning, that statement will be looked at as we will look at all other statements.
MR GOLIATH: That is alright.
DR ALLY: I will just give you a few minutes to gather your thoughts and then if you do not mind I would like to ask you a few questions, just going through your statement, just to help us with our enquiries.
... been a member of the ANC. Now, we know that the ANC was only unbanned in 1990. Now, do you just want to clarify that. When you say ANC, do you mean more broadly the United Democratic Front. In other words organisations which were sympathetic to the ANC or are you actually saying that your brother was a member of the ANC's underground structures, because remember it was not a legal organisation in the 1980's.
MR GOLIATH: Yes, it was banned at the time, but the youth was active even though it was banned.
DR ALLY: And your brother, he was an active member? Can you just tell us a little about the kind of political involvement of your brother?
MR GOLIATH: He was very politically active. Everything he did he did in the name of the struggle. He was a full-on member even from the beginning. He was not into sports, he just liked his organisation, he lived for it.
DR ALLY: Do you know what political structures in the community he was involved in or that he was a member of.
MR GOLIATH: No, there are not many organisations where we
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stay, we just have one. The ANC.
DR ALLY: Mr Goliath, you are speaking in your statement about a person called Gerry and it seems as if a lot of what happened to your brother has some connection with what happened to Gerry. Can you just tell us a little bit about Gerry and about the connection between Jerry and your brother.
MR GOLIATH: Gerry and my brother, Shadrick, were big friends. They did everything together. Gerry and Shadrick were the leaders at the time, but he is also deceased.
DR ALLY: Can you tell us what happened to Gerry? How did he died?
MR GOLIATH: Gerry was shot by the police. He was shot before my brother. My brother told me that he will also, probably, be killed. I asked him to stop his political activities. He said there is no turning back, one must only go forward.
DR ALLY: Can you tell us how Gerry was shot.
MR GOLIATH: Gerry was on his way to a funeral. Perhaps it was also an ANC member that was being buried. I do not remember who it was that was being buried, but Gerry was shot at the funeral.
DR ALLY: Was your brother a witness to this shooting?
MR GOLIATH: He did witness the murder.
DR ALLY: Did he witness it in the sense that he actually saw the people who did the shooting or did he witness it in a sense that he saw Gerry fall down? Could you just clarify for us?
MR GOLIATH: What he said to me was that they killed Gerry. How Gerry was killed, the details, I do not know, but he did see Gerry being killed by the police.
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DR ALLY: Sir, I do not want to press you on this, but if you could just help me. You say your brother said to you they killed Gerry. Did he put any names to the they or did it just remain at that level, that they?
MR GOLIATH: He did not name anyone. He just said it was the police. He did not mention anybodies name.
DR ALLY: Sir, in your statement, you say after Gerry's death and I am going to read to you from your statement and I want you just to, perhaps, speak a little bit to this point because I think it is a very important point. Shadrick, and I am reading from your statement that you submitted to us now. Shadrick told me that a group of people including himself were planning to avenge Gerry's death. He said they were planning to attack the police station in Khutsong. Do you just want to speak a little bit to that point?
MR GOLIATH: After he told me, he said he and the youth will revenge, because they had killed his best friend. They said they would bomb the office. I tried to convince him not to do it. He then responded and said that he would not listen to me because they have already killed his friend. That particular night he said they would bomb the office.
DR ALLY: Did that ever happen? Was Gerry taken away before anything happened or do you know if anything actually did happen?
MR GOLIATH: Is this about Gerry's death?
DR ALLY: No, about the bombing. You said that Shadrick said to you that they would bomb the police station. Did that ever happen?
MR GOLIATH: That is the last time we saw him, on the 7th. The evening of the 7th is when they were supposed to bomb
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the police station.
DR ALLY: So, you have no knowledge that it did happen. Are you saying that the bombing did not take place or you do not know. I am sorry, because I seem to have missed some of the interpretation.
MR GOLIATH: What I know is that the day they said they were going to bomb down the police station, they did not succeed because he was arrested by the police on that day.
DR ALLY: I wonder if you could just tell us a little about what was happening in Khutsong around that time just so that we can have some understanding of the background because clearly a lot seems to have been happening. There were funerals and police attacking funerals and people being killed, youth organising counter-attacks on police stations. Can you just tell us a little bit about what has happening and just your own perceptions of why you think these things were taking place.
MR GOLIATH: What I know is that there was a lot of fighting in the township. The police was fighting the youth. It was terrible. Everyday there were fights.
DR ALLY: Sir, do you have any idea what this fighting was about? Could you tell us.
MR GOLIATH: There is only one reason. At the time you could not form certain groups. The police wanted to break down the ANC. It was just fighting. The group was fighting the police as well.
DR ALLY: Sir, just to go back to the death of your brother. You mentioned two names who you believe know something. The one name you mention is a black policeman, Lewaai, but you also say that Lewaai is no longer living. How is is that you come to these two names? Why do you mention these two?
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Lewaai is the one sorry, the black policeman and then you mention a white policeman by the name of Skeepers.
MR GOLIATH: The reason why I mentioned Lewaai is that after two days Lewaai was not aware that where he drinks, the people there know Shadrick. He then said there he killed the dogs. Therefore Skeepers, he was the one that told us that the dog at the mortuary, we are going to get him on the day that we want him. Skeepers is the one who instructed the police to shoot the people at the funeral with rubber bullets.
DR ALLY: Sir, you do say that your mother would not allow them to exhume the body after the burial to perform an autopsy, but you say that there was a wound under the neck of your brother. Just tell us a little bit about that.
MR GOLIATH: The wound was there. Priscilla Jana is the one who did not see the wound, because they would not allow him to go to the mortuary. Everytime he got to the mortuary they would refer him to the police station, from the police station to Saffers. This is why he did not see the wound. We saw the wound, we tried to explain to him about the wound. We could see that when he was shot he was being held back, because it is on his neck and underneath.
DR ALLY: Sir, I know this is pain for you, but was that the only wound on his body? Were there other wounds, any evidence of any other kind of torture, maybe, or anything? Can you recall?
MR GOLIATH: I do not remember. His body was very dry, but there was only one wound. There were no other wounds. Even the post-mortem did not reveal much. This is why Priscilla decided that the corpse should be taken to the doctor for a post-mortem.
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DR ALLY: Was there ever a court enquiry, an inquest into your brothers death.
MR GOLIATH: No, there was done. There was no court case, no statement was taken to this day. We do not know what happened.
DR ALLY: Sir, I will stop soon. Lewaai, he was killed in 1989. Do you know anything about his death, how he died and whether anything happened about his death, because that is the one policeman who you mentioned who would have known something about your brothers death.
MR GOLIATH: Lewaai was stabbed with the knife in a house where he had been drinking. I heard the next day. Somebody came to our home telling us that Lewaai had been killed. My mother then said that even if Lewaai was killed it would not return her son.
DR ALLY: And this Skeepers who you mentioned, have you had any contact with him subsequently? Do you know anything about him now, where he is presently or anything like that?
MR GOLIATH: The last I heard was that Skeepers in Potchefstroom. He is still a policeman.
DR ALLY: Do you know his full name or an initial or do you just know him as Skeepers?
MR GOLIATH: I just know that he is Skeepers. I do not know his initials.
DR ALLY: Thank you very much Sir. I am going to hand you back to the Chairperson to see if there are any other questions that my colleagues would perhaps like to ask you. Thank you very much.
MS SEROKE: Mr Goliath, you said the wound, Shadrick's wound was on his neck, underneath and then he say again that Skeepers said Shadrick was shot running.
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MR GOLIATH: When he was asked they said that he had been running.
MS SEROKE: Is it possible that ...
MR GOLIATH: If somebody was running they would have a wound on his neck like he did.
MS SEROKE: Well it is clear that when he was shot they were holding him back. What was the feedback from the post mortem. Do you have the report?
MR GOLIATH: Yes we do.
MS SEROKE: Did you give it to the statement takers?
MR GOLIATH: Yes, I did give them. I have it here.
MS SEROKE: If we could please get the copy just in case they do not have it. Could you give it to Mr Jaffer. Thank you.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you Ms Seroke. Mr Goliath, if I can just ask a few more questions. Can you tell us how old Shadrack was when he passed away.
MR GOLIATH: He was between 20 and 22 years of age.
CHAIRPERSON: And did he leave any family himself? Did he have any children? What was his work at the time?
MR GOLIATH: He was going to go back to school, actually university. He had no child. He had not been working, he was going to go to university.
CHAIRPERSON: Now, in your statement you say Shadrack had been an active member of the youth congress in Khutsong since 1982. Was this the first time he was arrested or harassed by the police?
MR GOLIATH: It was the first time. He had never before been arrested for political reasons. It was the first time. CHAIRPERSON: Can you tell us what Gerry's surname was?
MR GOLIATH: I cannot remember. I just knew him as Gerry. KRUGERSDORP HEARING TRC/GAUTENG
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CHAIRPERSON: Do you know members of his family, Gerry's family?
MR GOLIATH: No, I do not know them.
CHAIRPERSON: I just want to ask on the day that Sharack was arrested, there was this possibility of the police station in Khutsong being bombed or attacked. Were there any other people who were arrested on that same day as Shadrack was arrested.
MR GOLIATH: No, he was the only one that was arrested. All I know is that they were going to bomb the police station down. I do not know how many there were.
CHAIRPERSON: Mr Goliath, you told us that Shadrack lived with your mother at the time. Is your mother still alive.
MR GOLIATH: Yes, she is still alive.
CHAIRPERSON: Can you tell us how the death of your brother has affected your family?
MR GOLIATH: They are very reticent. It is my mother that I can see clearly. Even today she is lying in bed. She cannot get up from when Shadrack was killed, my mother has been in ill health.
CHAIRPERSON: Mr Goliath, can I just ask as my last question. What is it that you are requesting or wanting from the Truth Commission?
MR GOLIATH: I request of the Commission today because my siblings have now disbursed. My mother stays with my sister and her children. If the Commission could please honour my mother, honour my brother and create a tombstone for him.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you Mr Goliath. Mr Goliath I thank you and your sister for coming here today. Although the death of your brother took place almost ten years ago, we can see that the pain is still with you. You have mentioned the
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names of two policeman who may have been implicated in the death of your brother. One has passed away, the other one, you say, is still alive and working as a policeman in Potchefstroom. As you know before we can actually come out with any position from the Truth Commission, we have to make enquiries and, yes, we will make enquiries and we will come back to you and your family. We thank you for coming today. MR GOLIATH: Thank you.
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