CHAIRPERSON: Can we have order of some kind. There seems to be disturbing noise coming from the back. I do not know exactly where it is coming from. It is not from the people who are seated here, but it is like it is coming from the back rooms. We would really appreciate your co-operation because when we started we said we should make sure that we restore people's dignity today.
I will ask the next witness to take the stand, but before doing that I should remind her that, when we started she was not here. We had proposed that we will try to limit the witnesses to 15 to 20 minutes. Our next witness is Sophie Thema whom I would like to take the stand. Sophie, welcome. I would like you to take an oath.
SOPHIE THEMA: (Duly sworn in, states).
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Before I ask Yasmin Sooka to assist you in leading the evidence, I will just ask Max Coleman to stand up so that everybody can see him. He comes from the Human Rights Commission. Max, welcome. We are happy to have you.
MS SOOKA: Cyril Ramaphosa is coming in.
CHAIRPERSON: Where is he? We also see Cyril Ramaphosa coming in and we would like to welcome you in a very special way Cyril. Stand up. I see, Cyril, I see people jumping around wanting to see you next to, yes, they want you. Our SOWETO HEARING GAUTENG PROVINCE
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people, they want you this side. Thank you. I will ask Commissioner Yasmin Sooka to assist you in leading your evidence Sophie.
MS SOOKA: Sophie, thank you for coming. I wonder if you could very, very briefly just tell us a little bit about yourself before we actually get to what you are going to tell the Commission.
INTERPRETER: The speakers mike is not on.
MS THEMA: Right, am I on now? Okay. I was born in Sophiatown, my parents told me, but I grew up in Soweto. I went to primary school at the St Mary's Anglican School in Orlando East and I went to high school at the Stofberg Gedenk Skool where I actually obtained my education in the medium of Afrikaans. That was by choice. My parents did not force me to go Stofberg Gedenk Skool. I had a reason why I wanted to go to Stofberg Gedenk Skool. After matriculating I worked as a switchboard operator for a newspaper called Eleto Mirror and thereafter I was offered a job at the World Newspaper. I became a self-styled journalist. I became in journalist in 1965 and I continued until 1992. I am from a family of five children, two sisters and three brothers. After I gave up my job as a journalist, I became a cognitive and life skill facilitator teaching thinking skills and life skills in prisons to prisoners. That is what I am doing at the present moment.
MS SOOKA: Sophie, you have mentioned in your statement that you were contacted before the uprising on June the 16th took place. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that?
MS THEMA: Yes. On the 15th of June 1976 I was working for Weekend World. At about four thirty I was preparing to go home because it was not a very busy day for me. Ten minutes SOWETO HEARING GAUTENG PROVINCE
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before I left my office a young girl came into our office dressed in a black and white uniform. She had an envelope in her hand and after entering our office she enquired from my colleagues who Sophie Thema was. I heard her mention my name and I stepped forward and I told her that I was Sophie Thema. She handed me the letter. She did not wait for me to open the letter and read the letter. She turned back and ran out of the office. I remained reading the letter. It was a short note informing me that the following day there was going to be a march by students from the Naledi High School. The letter mentioned that they were going to end up at the Orlando Stadium. I took this letter to my news Editor who was a Mr John Miscally and we immediately make arrangements that a car pick me up from home the following morning on June 16 and six thirty. A photographer was also dispatched together with a driver.
The following morning at half past six I, the photographer, Dan Kletekle, the driver who is now deceased, Stanley Mojale, left our homes and proceeded. We were hoping to get to Naledi High, but we did not because we met the students at Sizwe Stores as they were coming from Naledi towards Lebonie. Lebonie is just opposite the Sizwe Stores and that is where we met them. The students were in a jubilant mood. They did not give the impression that they were going to be violent or that they were violent in so much that at one stage I and Dan actually marched with them. Dan particularly for the reason that he could get, you know, the best pictures and I was just marching with them for the fun of it. We finally got to Orlando West.
When we got to Orlando West I immediately saw a contingent of police coming up from the eastern side of
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Orlando West. They turned into a street which actually caused them to come face to face with the students. The students were now facing east and the police were facing west. I then positioned myself in such a way that visibility was clear, that I could see everything that was taking place, I and Stanley Mojale. At that time Dan Kletekle was moving around somewhere so that he could also get the best of pictures. At no time did I hear a warning being sounded to the students to disperse and the students were standing there like children who do, I mean, children do taunt. They taunt one another and they were there taunting the police. Some of them picked up little, what I would call, little pebbles, stones, little stones and threw them towards the police. That is what actually angered the police. To me it was like a movie unfolding before me. I did not really think that they were going to shoot at those young children, but they did. In so much that I stood there and I do not think they heard me, but I was screaming, do not shoot our children, but they were shooting.
As I and Stanley were standing there helpless, not knowing what to do, a young man came running up to us. He was shot in the leg. I asked Stanley to take this little guy and rush him to the nearest clinic in Orlando West. Then Stanley said to me I cannot go alone, go with me. I got into the car with Stanley and we rushed to the clinic, dropped this guy there and drove back to Orlando West. As we were driving back to Orlando West, that is when we noticed this young girl with agony and anguish on her face come running up the street. Next to her was this young man in an overall and carrying a young boy in his arms. I was with Stanley in the car, we were driving down the street.
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When I saw that I said to him, Stanley, stop and he immediately stopped the car. I said to them, come into the car, Stanley please take these people to hospital or to the clinic, wherever you can. Stanley managed to get the three of them that was, I later came to know that it was Antoinette, Hector's sister, it was the Makoeba boy and it was Hector. I realised that as they were going into the Volkswagen Hector was already gasping, but there was nothing I could say, I was just hoping and praying for the best. Stanley and the three of them drove to the clinic. At that time there was shooting all over and it did not dawn on me at that time that a stray bullet could hit me or anything. I just wanted to get to the clinic myself. I ran up to the clinic on foot.
When I got to the clinic there was confusion in the clinic. Everybody was just asking what is going on, how did it happen and nobody could explain to them at that time. We just, all we said was the police shot him. I realised that he had a wound in his throat and to me it indicated that it is where the bullet had gone in. A doctor came forward and he said to me, Mama, is this your child? I said to him, yes doctor, he is my child though I am not his biological mother. He is my child in that I saw him, he got injured and I brought him to the clinic. He said to me, I am sorry, it is too late. He has been shot in the throat, the doctor said and, you know, Antoinette was besides herself and everybody was just besides themselves and later in the afternoon we took Antoinette to her home together with some members of the staff and other people who had gathered at the clinic. It was only when I got to Antoinette's home that I realised that I had known that family even before
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that day, but I did not know that Hector was their child, but I was pleased that at least I had rendered a good service because on that day I felt that I put away my journalistic ethics and my motherly instinct to control.
MS SOOKA: How did you feel about the fact that the police made no efforts to issue warnings, to throw teargas canisters, to shoot with rubber bullets or buckshot, but actually fired real live ammunition.
MS THEMA: It made me feel very angry, but I was not surprised because as a journalist I had experienced so many atrocities and so many injustices that had come from our police, it was just unbelievable. Not only from the police, but anybody who had to do with the Government of that day and the Government of that time was bent on hurting, frustrating and, you know, causing pain to other people. We were so use to that already.
MS SOOKA: Yesterday Dan Montsisi in his evidence actually said that prior to Hectors being shot, the march was a peaceful one.
MS THEMA: Yes.
MS SOOKA: The students were jubilant, but that once Hector had been shot the mood of the students changed and, of course, this morning you have heard Janet Goldblatt describe how her father was caught in the crossfire. Did you manage to see any of that or capture any of the change in mood?
MS THEMA: Yes, it is true. Soon after Hector's death all hell broke loose. I remember I remained in the area until late afternoon and by the time I left that area everything was on fire. Vans were burning, cars were burning, buildings were burning. It was just mayhem all over, it was chaos. It is true that the mood changed after Hector had
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died and after other children had also been killed and injured. You see, Hector was the first victim of police shootings on that day.
MS SOOKA: You mentioned in your statement that you testified at the Cilliers Commission.
MS THEMA: Yes.
MS SOOKA: What was your experience of that?
MS THEMA: Well, my experience was that questions were actually being put to me. I was not given the opportunity to express myself like I am doing now. I had to respond to the questions that were being put to me, but I was quite happy because here and there I managed to sort of, you know, add what I felt that people needed to know.
MS SOOKA: You know that in terms of the findings of the Cillier's Commission, they found that it was just the SRC making trouble and they did not think that Afrikaans was the real problem. What was your opinion of that?
MS THEMA: My opinion is that Afrikaans was just the last straw that broke the camel's back. I can site one incident, you know, that during my career as a journalist really hurt me and this was when a woman's husband died. That woman had reached the end of the road of her livelihood because she was not entitled to own a house. If a man married a woman outside Johannesburg and she did not have the right qualifications that was either Section 10(1)A, B or C, that man was not allowed to stay with his wife. That woman would be given 72 hours to leave the area. Children who had lost their parents, often children were not allowed to have homes. Our parents were sometimes woken at about four o' clock in the morning by what we use to call Gokasambe, those were called the black jacks, the henchmen of the township
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superintendents because they were in arrears with their rents. Those township superintendents were a law unto themselves because they would wait for the very, very cold months like June and July and then they would start evicting people, throwing them onto the streets, locking them out of their houses.
If I might just mention, more often than not, I would find some of these people who had been evicted from their homes because they were in arrears with their rents and I would appeal to the Institute of Race Relations, at that time, where Mrs Ina Pearlman was employed. I must Ina Pearlman did a lot to get many of those people back into their homes by paying their rent arrears and that gave rise to the formation of Operation Hunger because Ina had a problem. She said to me, Sophie, it is all well and good me getting these people back into their homes, but what do they live on, what do they eat? They hunger and starve and that is how she got the idea of starting Operation Hunger.
MS SOOKA: You also mention in your statement that the community and, particularly, woman, mothers came out in support. Will you tell us a little bit about that, but also about what you said once when we were taking your statement, that there were efforts made by the community to get the community leaders to meet with Treurnicht, to discuss the situation before June the 16th.
MS THEMA: Okay. Now let me start with the efforts that were being made by the community to get Treurnicht to, sort of, have a change of heart. I remember, I with the now editor of the Sowetan, Andre Klaaste, we were colleagues at that time and working for Weekend World. Before June 1976 we knew, we had a suspicion, we had that gut feeling that if
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Treurnicht was going to go on with his proposal of introducing Afrikaans as a medium of instruction, there was going to be problems in this country. We then went around at night and tried to get hold of people of integrity, people who we thought, you know, were being recognised by the community as leaders. We tried to say to them cannot you people get a delegation or send some kind of message to this man to tell him that once he introduces Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in our schools, there is going to be chaos, but many of our leaders, I would not say were not prepared, I think they were scared and I do not blame them because at that time anybody who stood up to oppose any policy from the Government was silenced brutally.
MS SOOKA: And a little bit about the support group in the community.
MS THEMA: After June 1976 there were a number of mothers who came together. Mrs Khuzwayo who gave information yesterday was one of them, I was one of them. Most surprisingly was that most of those mothers who were involved did not have children in jail, they had none of their children killed, but those were the mothers who actually stood up and we were not surprised because we knew that those mothers who had children in jail, who had children killed they had been so traumatised that they did not want to get themselves involved any further. So the parents, the woman who actually stood up were those who were not effected in any way, but who felt the pain and who felt that we need to support those mothers who lost their children, whose children had been imprisoned.
We use to meet at night, different venues. We made sure that the police never found out where we met and we
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sometimes got some of the mothers to smuggle into prison food for the children because they were not allowed to get food from their families. Those were some of the things that we were doing. We actually tried to get money to get some of them across the border. Those are the things that we did.
MS SOOKA: Sophie, you also mention that a story that you wrote helped Tietsie to escape from the country. Could you give us more information on that?
MS THEMA: Yes. Soon after June 1976 the police were on the lookout for Tietsie and I was just doing my daily work. I went around my work as usual as a journalist. This particular day, again, I do not know, he sort of had, I think, a liking for me, I do not know. All the students had a liking for me, but they sent me another letter. In this letter they actually told me that Tietsie had skipped the country and he was in Botswana. We all got very excited, I wrote the story and on Sunday the story was on the front page of Weekend World that Tietsie had skipped the country. I did not know until Tietsie was safely in London and he came onto a TV and radio programme in which he actually told them how he had asked the students to write a letter to the Press to say that he had skipped the country. After we had published the letter, the story in the paper the police removed all roadblocks and that opened up the way for him to get to Botswana.
MS SOOKA: Sophie, one of the problems or, in a sense, it seems that the black journalists were a window to Soweto in a white world and initially they were the ones who took the photographs, they were the ones who wrote the stories and yesterday we had many accounts of how those transitions took SOWETO HEARING GAUTENG PROVINCE
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place from people doing messengaring and making tea and suddenly they were taking photos, but the other effect of what happened was that they were harassed by the police. Did this happen to you?
MS THEMA: Only on one occasion. I think it was because I had taken a stand and I said to myself the police are going to harass me once and not twice. I got home on this particular day and my children were in a state because the police were there, did not find me and they left a little note to say that I had to report to Protea the following day. The entire family spent a sleepless night because they knew that if you go to Protea, you do not come back. I got to Protea and on the note I was told that I had to look for a Major van Eck. I still remember his name very well.
I got to Protea Police Station and I asked for this Major van Eck. I was shown this Major van Eck and I was taken to his office. In his office certain questions about June 16 were put to me and I answered him the same way as I answered the Cillier Commission. At the end of it he actually said to me that I can go. After he had questioned me he said, you can go, but if we need you we will call you again. I took a stand, I said to him, if you think that I will come to you, you are making a mistake. If you need me you will come to me and that was the last time they called me.
MS SOOKA: Part of our function is to make recommendations to Government about reparation policy, but also about interventions that can be made at an institutional level to make sure that human rights abuses do not take place in the future. Do you have any suggestions or recommendations that you would want to make?
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MS THEMA: Well, I have heard some of the witnesses yesterday make recommendations for transformation in the community. Yes, I agree, but I would like to make a special appeal for those people who I work with in the prisons. I think that rehabilitation should really start taking place in our prisons, but rehabilitation in such a way that we do not frustrate people at the same time as it is happening right now. The conditions under which prisoners live in the prisons are not conducive at all. It makes it very difficult to rehabilitate people when they live in appalling conditions, when they are being frustrated because in the prisons we still have those officials of yesteryear who still use the same old methods to frustrate our people in prisons. Remember that I believe that some of them are there not through their own liking or their own choice, they are there because of the system in which we lived. Some of them were actually forced to be where they are today. I think the Government should really, you know, turn its attention to the prisons and see if something really constructively cannot be done to help the prison community because we have to work with the ...
MS SOOKA: Sophie, thank you very much for sharing your story with us.
MS THEMA: Thank you.
CHAIRPERSON: Sophie, other fellow Commissioners wanted to ask you a few questions.
MS THEMA: I am sorry.
DR ALLY: This is not the Cillier's Commission. You can stay as long.
CHAIRPERSON: Okay. Joyce Seroke, have you got a question.
MS SEROKE: No.
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CHAIRPERSON: Hugh Lewin.
MR LEWIN: Thank you Madam Chair. Sophie, could I, you call yourself a self-styled journalist. Once a self-styled journalist always a self-styled journalist. Two questions please. One about the methodologies of June 16. There has always been the story of the dog, the dog.
INTERPRETER: The speakers mike is not on.
MR LEWIN: Can you tell us the story of the dog.
INTERPRETER: The witnesses mike is not on.
INTERPRETER: The speakers mike is not on.
MS THEMA: As we were doing our rounds around the area we came across this dog and when we enquired how that dog came to be there they told us that it was a police dog that was killed by the students, but I did not actually see it. It is, for instance, like the white guy who was pushed into a dustbin, was killed and pushed into a dustbin. We did not see it, we only got there after it had happened.
MR LEWIN: But you saw a dead dog?
MS THEMA: Yes, it was a black dog, police dog.
MR LEWIN: Thanks. More seriously, how would you identify the idealogy of the students at the beginning of June 16?
MS THEMA: I have to think a little bit about this one. Can I start by saying I think the students had been frustrated to such an extent that when June 16 actually dawned they had no choice but to do what they eventually did. I can imagine that on June 16, I do not think that it was their intention to actually cause violence. Their intention was just to express a feeling that was within them that we do not want Afrikaans as a medium of instruction. I think this is one message that they actually wanted to get over to the officials, but the officials would just not listen.
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MR LEWIN: Thanks very much.
CHAIRPERSON: Joyce Seroke.
MS SEROKE: Sophie, in the same way that we heard of young people who were very angry, killing white people because they were white, but during that time we did hear of incidents where the black people disguised white people in order to save them. Do you remember that?
MS THEMA: Well, I heard about such incidents, but I was not actually, it was not actually my personal experience, but we did hear of such incidents. If that was the case I do not think I would have a good reason to say they should not have done that because I do not know why they did it. Perhaps they had a good reason for doing, perhaps they were trying to save them. I do not know.
MS SEROKE: What I am trying to say is that even in the midst of anger there was also compassion among the people.
MS THEMA: Yes, yes.
CHAIRPERSON: Sophie, I have one brief question for you. Yesterday we heard one of the Press people who really drew our attention to the amount of mental pain and anguish that most journalists are still living with today following their firsthand involvement with the atrocities of the past and in your testimony I saw you sort of singing through whatever you saw. Would you agree with him that in our reparations we have got to think about trauma and its effects?
MS THEMA: Yes, I agree. You know when I look back I think of the times where journalists were themselves never safe in this country. They took a great risk, even in 1976, to have exposed what happened during that period and not journalists only, but even other people in the community. Leaders, you know, people who were recognised as leaders of the
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community. People in the community tried to help. Some of those people were actually silenced and I think that the Government should really take a stand that people should be allowed to express their opinions, they should be allowed to express their feelings. I mean if we are talking about democracy I think that is what it is all about. We are experiencing something called democracy for the first time in our country. It is something that we are not use to, but I think with this new Government our appeal would be make it as safe as possible for the journalists that they do not suffer the same consequences as some of our journalists suffered in the past and are still suffering today.
CHAIRPERSON: Russell Ally. Thank you Sophie.
DR ALLY: Sophie, you testified before the Cilliers Commission. What was your perception of this Commission? Did you feel that the Commission was genuinely trying to get to the cause of 1976 or did you feel that there was, perhaps, another agenda?
MS THEMA: Well, I did not get the feeling that they were really trying to help in any way. I thought that it was just but a cover-up because, I mean, Cillier himself, he was an Afrikaner. I would have understood it if it was a black person who was sitting there and he was heading the Commission, but this did not happen, but because we wanted the world to know what actually happened on that day, some of us went there to testify because we felt that we could not sit with this atrocities bottled up in us. We had to talk to somebody, we had to tell somebody about what we saw on this particular day, but I still feel that the Cillier Commission was just but a cover-up.
DR ALLY: And what kind of reception did you actually get as SOWETO HEARING GAUTENG PROVINCE
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a witness?
MS THEMA: Well I was not harassed in any way. It was like I was in a Court of Law where a Magistrate would sort of, you know, put questions to me and I would answer him.
DR ALLY: And in the report which was eventually published do you in excerpts that you have seen or in the report itself or in accounts of the report, do you get a feeling that some of the testimony which you actually gave was incorporated, is reflected, your experiences and ...
MS THEMA: I am sorry, I cannot hear you properly.
DR ALLY: In the actual report itself do you get a feeling that some of the experiences which you related, are they captured in that actual report? Do you feel that what you were trying to convey to the Cillier's Commission was taken seriously and was incorporated in the eventual report?
MS THEMA: Well, some of the facts, yes, they were incorporated, but I think there were other facts that were really, that were not incorporated. For instance like I did mention to the Cillier Commission about the warnings that were sounded by some of our leaders. For instance I know Mr Mosala was one of the people. The Institute of Race Relations actually wrote letters to Treurnicht to actually say to him watch, you are looking for trouble. I still remember, I think it was in the Beeld that morning when he was actually responding to the letters that were written to him from the Institute. He actually said die Instituut skop stof op. That was after he read the letters that were sent to him and I gathered from that response that he was not prepared to listen.
DR ALLY: And just a last question Sophie. Politically, how did, did 1976 change you in any way?
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MS THEMA: Change me?
DR ALLY: Politically, before and after?
MS THEMA: Unfortunately, I never was a politician and I am still not a politician and 1976 did not change me as a person. I still see human beings as I saw them before 1976 and during 1976, but what I can tell you is that nothing much to effect our human lives has changed since 1976. Very little has changed. Our education is still the same, our people still live in the same old informal sector situation. Very little has changed, but I still say I, as a human being, 1976 did not change me. I still have my idealogies within me and my own police within me.
DR ALLY: Thank you Sophie.
CHAIRPERSON: Piet Meiring.
PROF MEIRING: Most of my questions have been answered. Thank you very much. Only a brief question. You, as a black journalist, had easy access to what was happening in Soweto, you were trusted by the people giving note of what is going to happen. Your colleagues who worked for the white newspapers or the newspapers with the white readership, were they also allowed to see what was happening in order to report back to their readership what was happening in the country?
MS THEMA: For the first few days or the first few weeks white journalists were not safe in Soweto. I lived with the people, I lived in Soweto so I had easy access and even in instances where police surrounded certain areas, I had easy access because I would dress like an ordinary housewife and they could never recognise me.
PROF MEIRING: But the others had a more difficult task to get hold of the news and to get photos?
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MS THEMA: Well, the black journalists, yes, because in most cases we also had the protection of the students, but white journalists had a problem.
PROF MEIRING: Thank you.
CHAIRPERSON: Sophie, I just want to thank you very much for coming forward before this Commission to give your own perspective of what happened in 1976. In thanking you I also want to acknowledge and affirm your resistance. As you have just said you are not a politician, but we value something in you, special commitment and the ability to live closely to the suffering. You described the manner in which you rushed a young person who was shot in your presence even at the time when your male colleague did not have the courage of rushing a child to the clinic. We appreciate that. It tells us the kind of a leader you are and also we want to thank you for the challenge that you are setting for other journalists even today to be committed and be prepared to highlight the struggles of people. You just mentioned that you still, you are concerned about people in prisons, you are still conscious and aware of people who are in the street without homes. All that, it portrays and it leaves a challenge for all of us that we should be aware of those who are less privileged than us. We thank you very much for agreeing to support the witnesses today. Thank you.
MS THEMA: Thank you Commissioner.
CHAIRPERSON: I would then ask that we adjourn for tea, but I will ask that we have order of some kind. Zothwa will ask one of the TRC members of staff to lead the witnesses and our dignitaries to the tea room while you all remain here and then we will adjourn for 15 minutes and we come back.
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