CHAIRPERSON: Mr Barton, you are welcome, feel at home and I will request Wynand to lead you in an oath.
MR MALAN: Mr Barton, will you please stand and take the oath.
JAMES ALLAN PETROS BARTON: (Duly sworn, states).
MR MALAN: Thank you very much, you may be seated.
CHAIRPERSON: You are going to be led by Mr Malan.
MR MALAN: Thank you. Mr Barton, you will be telling us about an incident that took place on the 11th of August in 1990, on Bloed Street the so-called Bloed Street bomb. We are glad that you are here and we are ready to listen to you.
MR BARTON: Could I carry on?
MR MALAN: Sorry?
MR BARTON: Can I carry on?
MR MALAN: You may carry on.
MR BARTON: It was on a Saturday morning.
MR MALAN: Could you speak into the microphone so that we can have as much volume as possible, so the audience can also hear, please.
MR BARTON: It was on a Saturday morning during the year, the 11th of August 1990. I woke up at home. I got dressed. I got ready for town, to go and pay an account at the
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Melody's Furnisher. I arrived in town safely. I went to the shop, paid the account. After paying the account, as I left the shop I was on my way back to the taxi rank, where I should get a taxi to get me back home. Then as I went to the taxi rank I passed near a dust bin.
All of a sudden I hear this huge blast, I was deaf, but I was still conscious. I could see what was going on around me. I just saw people running in all directions, seeking for shelter. As I was laying on my back I also tried to get up and I fell back on my back again. I tried the second time. When I looked at my left leg, I noticed there was a pool of blood. Then I realised I was injured.
Then because of my complexion, the people around there the taxi rank, thought it was me who brought this explosive there. They started throwing everything they could get, bottles and tins. The owner of the shop, it was a Chicken Licken Shop, I don't know if he was the owner, but he was working there also. He came out, he looked at me, the bottles they were throwing at me. He took one of those boards they write the prices on, and shielded me with it. Then I don't know if it was him that contacted the police or whatever happened. Then the police came. Then they abandoned the place.
After that the ambulance arrived. They stuffed a drip into my arm, put me on a stretcher in the ambulance and I was taken to hospital.
As I came, as I arrived at the hospital, the nurse just took a scissors and cut off my trousers right from the top. Then they took me to what they call the to the trauma or something like that. I was unconscious. When I came out of the trauma I recovered again and then I saw my wife was at
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the hospital with the children. At first they didn't allow the children to enter the ward where I was lying. I asked them to look into the trousers, because I had money in my pockets, because that was meant to be thrown away, because they cut it off like. She took the trousers, she couldn't find anything in the trousers.
After a while the nurse that had cut the trousers came with a brown envelope with the receipt that I paid the furniture shop. She gave it to me, to my wife. She said that's the only documents you have got in my pocket. I don't blame anybody for that. It could have been lost during the blast or whatever. Then I started, they took me to a ward, a private ward. I lay there in that ward. After three months there came a matron Sister Beulah. She asked if I had any financial support. I told her no, I was just fortunate that my wife at least works. Then she came with forms. It was written the State President's Fund. She asked me to write in those forms. I filled them in, all the particulars they needed there. I gave it to them. She took those forms and she brought them. She knew where to send them. I don't know where to, where from did she get them. They never responded. They actually told us that such fund does no longer exist.
Then came the police, two police sergeants came there to take statements from me. Then they told me that they have made arrests. When they made the arrests, I was injured, I could not attend any court hearing. Even up today I don't know who those people are. I have never seen them.
Then I spent about a year and seven months in hospital. Because the doctors came to me and said if they amptutate
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the leg I should leave the hospital, it would be quicker, but it was for me to decide. So the professor came and told me that if - they wanted me to, the leg to recover, it will take a long time in hospital. They ordered some equipment from Russia. That doctor even told me that I was the first patient in Pretoria to have such a treatment, they told the laser(?), it stretches the bones together again. When they removed it I was, I had plaster on my leg and there I still had a further six to nine months treatment. It was called out-patients treatment.
But up to this day the muscles don't function and then I asked the doctor will it ever, like ever get better again. He told me that it is a drop foot, actually they call it in Afrikaans, they said it is a "hang voet" or something. So he told me that it will never, the muscles will never recover. Because in his report there it is said that I had lost 50% muscle and 50% bone, but the bone has recovered, it is only the muscle now. That's it.
MR MALAN: Mr Barton, thank you very much. It is a crisp concise telling us of what happened to you. I have one or two questions. The first is, you said you have never seen or heard of the people. Do you have any knowledge of those people who planted the bomb, having been arrested or ...
MR BARTON: Ja, those people, the policemen who came there to take the statement, told me that they were arrested.
MR MALAN: Did you see anything on the follow-up there?
MR BARTON: No.
MR MALAN: Who were responsible, you don't have any names?
MR BARTON: I once saw their names in the newspaper, that's all I know.
MR MALAN: And you say you are getting a disability grant?
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MR BARTON: Yes, at the moment.
MR MALAN: Can you tell us what that entails, how much it is?
MR BARTON: It is, they actually ...
MR MALAN: And from where?
MR BARTON: It was actually from last year, June, July, I can't remember, it is not clear.
MR MALAN: From the department or who is paying your disability grant?
MR BARTON: From the department.
MR MALAN: Okay.
MR BARTON: You see, they worked it out. I was working for a company called Grinnaker. I was working in the engineering department there. And then the doctor, when I was discharged from hospital, he told me I can go back to my occupation to my job again, but those machines, when we work, most of the time we are doing standing jobs. And then the leg starts swelling up. If it swells too much the skin, they had done a skin graft, then it cracks open and it makes, it starts making a wound.
MR MALAN: Are you doing any other work at the moment, are you employed anywhere?
MR BARTON: No, I am not employed.
MR MALAN: Any additional income, only the disability grant?
MR BARTON: Only the disability grant.
MR MALAN: You make reference in your statement to your wife, Maggie, having visited you? Does Maggie work?
MR BARTON: Yes, Sir.
MR MALAN: Do you have children?
MR BARTON: Yes.
MR MALAN: How many?
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MR BARTON: Three.
MR MALAN: And their ages?
MR BARTON: The one is 20 and the two others are very small kids.
MR MALAN: The eldest, is that child already earning, studying, what is the position?
MR BARTON: He is actually in the motor industry, but he is still studying motor mechanic.
MR MALAN: So he is a sort of apprentice.
MR BARTON: Yes.
MR MALAN: And how old are the other two?
MR BARTON: The one is turning six next year and the other one ten.
MR MALAN: So they are five and ten?
MR BARTON: Six and ten.
MR MALAN: Already six?
MR BARTON: The one is, the youngest one is turning six.
MR MALAN: Okay. Mr Barton, my colleagues, Prof Meiring and the Chairperson, Mr Tom Manthata, they are both members of the committee of reparations and rehabilitation and they will have to take in detail, into account, also your situation, when they frame policy recommendations to Parliament and the State President, for reparations and rehabilitation.
I don't think there is anything that you want us to do except sharing your experiences with us, which we really appreciate. So that people can really get a fuller picture of what happened in this period that we are investigating. This was certain a dimension to the conflict, which is not often heard. Thank you very much.
Some of my colleagues may have questions, I am not
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sure. No, that's all. Thank you.
MR MANTHATA: Mr Barton, thank you.
MR MALAN: Thank you, Mr Barton.
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