MS SOOKA: Could I ask Mrs Tshabalala to take the stand please. We would like to welcome you to the Commission firstly and for agreeing to share your story with us. But before we ask you to tell your story will you please rise to take the oath.
DOROTHY TSHABALALA: (sworn states)
MS SOOKA: As is our custom we have asked Mr Tom Manthata to assist you with the leading of your evidence. I will now hand you over to Tom.
MR MANTHATA: Thank you Mr Tshabalala you will bear with us. It is truly late but we can't help it. We value all you can give us and just be patient with us. Can you please lead us on the story of your son.
MS TSHABALALA: When this happened I wasn't at home, I was out in the rural areas. I usually come home during the weekends. When I arrived home I found that he is not around, he has been arrested. It was the 23rd of September, they were marching in town and they were arrested. In the morning on Friday I went to Modderbee where he was detained. I said what is he arrested for? Well I was surprised because he was only 14 years how he could do that. The second visit that I paid him as I was near the premises, the prison, when I went to the prison the prison warders were working they said here is the mother of the boy. When I arrived there they told me that he is sick and he is in
SOWETO HEARING TRC/GAUTENG
2 D TSHABALALA
Boksburg or Benoni. I went home. When I arrived at home there was a letter written to me from Modderbee to inform me that he has been transferred to Boksburg/Benoni Hospital. When I got to Boksburg/Benoni Hospital the nurses wouldn't allow me to see him. They said it was said anybody who comes to see him must be shot at. I said to them you have come to the right person, I am the one to be shot because I am his mother and I must see him. So they were yelling and making noise and they said I must go to the matron. I went to the matron of the hospital. I asked her to see my son, she said the prison said he shouldn't be seen. I said I am already from the prison. I had gone via the prison. I said I am from there, I spoke to the official, they said I should come here I will be able to see him. Then she phoned Modderbee and they said she should allow me in. I got there ...(tape ends)
....but this man couldn't understand any of the languages that we speak here in South Africa when I tried to talk to him then eventually I speak to Chris my son. I said Chris do you see me because his eyes were just a clot of blood. He said I don't see you mum, no doubt he knows me, but I can hear your voice. I said what's the matter with you? Why are you sick. He said I don't know. I said what do they say you've got? They say I've got the jail disease. I looked on the bed letter to see what the diagnosis was. All I could see there was P/6 suspect. I didn't know what that meant. There was nothing I could say, nothing I could do, I just said to Chris we will come and see you tomorrow. I was with his father, but now he's old, he couldn't come here. I looked at the urinal where he passes water, it was all blood. The legs, all the places where he's supposed to
SOWETO HEARING TRC/GAUTENG
3 D TSHABALALA
be - the little openings, ...(indistinct) openings were all swollen up as though there's some bleeding underneath.
I left. I intended going back to work which was between Piet Retief and Emily(?) to tell them that I will have to ask for a few days to come home and look after my son and see what's happening. On my way there I was listening to the news, one o'clock news and I heard an announcement that all the children that were under the age of 16 and have been arrested in the Modderbee Prison have got all the charges against them withdrawn. So immediately I heard that I knew it was now possible for me to be able to take him from that hospital where they put him, at the Boksburg Benoni Hospital because previously I couldn't, because he was a State patient, I couldn't take him to the hospital of my choice. So I came back, went back to Modderbee, I told them what I'd heard on the radio, they said to me yes he is discharged. He is very naughty, he's very naughty Mrs Tshabalala you must spank him when he gets home. How can you say he's naughty because he's sick, he's sick at home, you have poisoned him. They didn't react to that. They looked around and looked down. So I went away. When I got back to that hospital I found that the gentleman in police uniform had already left. Well the doctors were already off that time so he could not be discharged, the nurses asked me not to take him off, signing the ...(indistinct) form, they refused hospital treatment form. Well I didn't want to cause anxiety to the nurses because they will perhaps think that they'll have to answer many questions the following day. So early in the morning, I think it was on a Saturday we went back to Boksburg Benoni Hospital. When we got there they fixed up the bed letters. SOWETO HEARING TRC/GAUTENG
4 D TSHABALALA
The only treatment that he was on for all that, and as he was, dying as he was, was Aspirin grams 5, nothing else. So we took him straight from BBH to Baragwanath Hospital. He couldn't lift a thing. He was completely dead, but he was still conscious though looking at him he was moribund, you would think he would die any time.
We got to the hospital at Bara, they asked what the matter was. I told the doctors he's been in prison, all the reaction of the doctors oh these young revolutionists you know. I told them my story that this child, because he had already told me on the way that the reason why he got ill he was a throat sufferer, he used to suffer from tonsillitis and I would give him some penicillin for it and he would get better. So when he got this attack he was in hospital and they gave him a small tablet, he says it wasn't penicillin but he slept very, very deeply after getting that tablet. So deep that he didn't know what was happening. When he awoke there, that is now still in Modderbee, I've gone back, when he awoke there he found that his whole body was sore, painful, he couldn't move. The other inmates of the jail, the ones that are also ill there asked him, did you see them when they gave you the injection? And then he said no I didn't. You didn't feel the injection? He said I didn't feel it. But then he said I told the nurse in the jail, it's a male nurse, that I want to be taken to a hospital I am not going to sit here because this is not a hospital. That is how he got to BBH.
Now at Bara I gave them the history. When I gave this history of how he came to be as he was the doctors would sort of shun that they would - they wouldn't want to listen to that, and they ended not knowing what the diagnosis was. SOWETO HEARING TRC/GAUTENG
5 D TSHABALALA
But he was put on penicillin, a very big dose. He was getting two million mls into the drip every hour. That did make him look a bit better.
He said that - he lay there for some getting this penicillin, it was for over two weeks and after that he appeared like he was getting better, but we still had to assist him to get him home. We got him home. He looked like he was gradually becoming better, better, but he complained that he couldn't run anymore. He kept on complaining he had pains in the legs. Well we thought as time went on it will be alright. He hadn't finished school when this occurred to him, he was 14 years and at 14 he was in Form 1. He was 14 years when he was arrested. Now at home we were with him, he's recuperating but he still goes to school. I mean when the schools were on he would go, you know how they were going, they will go on and off, it was not really proper school attendance.
Years went on, well he was no longer doing so well at school now, yet when he started in high school he was doing well, in fact in the primary school he had been promoted about twice so that's why he found himself in high school so early. He wasn't doing very well. Anyway years went by until one fateful day after he was walking, saying that thing is coming back again, I am stiff all over and I can't walk. He said he had a headache. That was the thing that got him to the state in which he is now. He got that headache, we rushed him to hospital, Bara, private doctors, they said, at one stage they said it was a tumour, when they got ready to operate on the tumour it wasn't a tumour it was not there, and he ended up being as he is now. He's flat in bed, he can't feel anything, I have to feed him, he cannot
SOWETO HEARING TRC/GAUTENG
6 D TSHABALALA
talk let alone writing, but one thing that he hasn't lost is his intellect. He thinks very very clearly. He remembers some of the things that happened but not all of them, but though that happened, those things, he still remembers, he somehow tries to communicate but not with very much success. That is my story.
MR MANTHATA: Was he a student leader even at that age? Was he a leader at his school at that time?
MS TSHABALALA: ...(indistinct)
MR MANTHATA: He was not a leader.
MS TSHABALALA: There's a lot of noise.
MR MANTHATA: Okay thank you, thank you. What do you think could have led him to be considered a leader when they got to detention?
MS TSHABALALA: They didn't suspect of him being one of the leaders. They were marching on the 23rd of September in Eloff Street in town and they were all arrested. After they were arrested they were questioned. I could hear them singing, they were singing the song ...(indistinct). He was not alone there were many. He said on the day in which they were electrocuted, in front of him there was a boy called Dumisani Dlhamini, when they electrocuted him, thinking that he will tell them what the other boys had been saying he just dropped and died and he thought he was going to save himself from dying. From that time they got the chance to give him the injection.
MR MANTHATA: Why I say he could have been regarded a leader is because they were saying he was a dangerous child. During this whole time who was supporting you in your efforts to trace where he was?
MS TSHABALALA: That the child was arrested some young boys
SOWETO HEARING TRC/GAUTENG
7 D TSHABALALA
they've seen him he was caught while the others were running. He was arrested, I didn't go around looking for him, I knew that he was arrested. When we asked at Orlando they told us he's at Modderbee Prison.
MR MANTHATA: Yes. My question is on the basis of your strength and courage to trace him from one hospital to another until you could even take him to Baragwanath Hospital. So my question was who was giving you, who was the source of your support, morally?
MS TSHABALALA: I was alone. I didn't suffer much. Since I was working far away from home I had the transport to go all these places. All the information I got I didn't struggle, I followed it right from the beginning.
MR MANTHATA: Since he became what he is what support does he still enjoy from those students of his age group and his grade, that is of his standard? Do they still come and check on him, chat with him?
MS TSHABALALA: Kids do come. In the beginning they used to come a lot of them, as he was becoming worse with the sickness and they were realising that it was going bad they never came back. Some of them believe that he's all gone. I met one of them and they are thinking that he's dead, but some of them do give him some support. A few of them know that he's still alive.
MR MANTHATA: Did you ever have a lawyer to lean on?
MS TSHABALALA: No I never thought of getting one.
MR MANTHATA: And did you ever get a private doctor who could diagnose and perhaps suggest to you what the disease was?
MS TSHABALALA: I went to private doctors, they couldn't tell me what the sickness is. One of the doctors did a
SOWETO HEARING TRC/GAUTENG
8 D TSHABALALA
small operation on the head. He told me that it wasn't a tumour and he doesn't know exactly what the matter was. At the present moment he's taking drugs just to get him better and be able to sleep, not to ...(indistinct).
MR MANTHATA: In short the condition of your son has always remained the concern of the family without any opinion from outside the family.
MS TSHABALALA: This has become a family matter. There is a thing that we didn't discuss much, it seems as if it's something wrong that he did that caused his arrest. As a family and others we are the only people who knew exactly what happened.
MS SOOKA: Mrs Hlengiwe Mkhize will just ask you a few questions.
MS MKHIZE: Mama Tshabalala we would like to thank you for all that you have explained before the Commission and all the victimisation that you have suffered and also the burden that you have to carry through with regards to your son. You might help us, we would like to know if there is any help from the government to get these drugs?
MS TSHABALALA: Yes he does get a disability grant and he does get the drugs from the hospital or the clinic.
MS MKHIZE: Perhaps as a parent when you are trying to cool down, at the same time you still have to face the burden at home, if you were to help this Commission what do you think how the people, parents like you should be helping the situation?
MS TSHABALALA: I would like to thank you because this Commission has given us a chance to speak what's inside us. I think there is nothing else that the Commission can do except to help and sort of give support to organisations
SOWETO HEARING TRC/GAUTENG
9 D TSHABALALA
like care groups so that people who have suffered, or the victims can go there for help.
MS SOOKA: Mrs Tshabalala I would like to thank you for coming to share your story with us. It's quite tragic that an incident in 1976 should have changed both the lives of yours and your son. We are very very happy to see that despite all of what has happened to you your thoughts are not for yourself but rather for other groups and organisations and for their support.
We thank you for sharing your story with us. Thank you very much for having come.
