MR ALLY: Thank you that you could make it. Before I ask you to tell us what happened to you, because you are going to speak about your own experiences, will you just please stand to take the oath. I am going to ask Commissioner Richard Lyster to assist you.
KWINDA TSHINANE: (sworn states)
MR ALLY: Thank you and over to Mr Tom Manthata who will assist you with your evidence.
MR MANTHATA: Who is accompanying you Kwinda?
MS TSHINANE: It is my father. It is Mr Johannes Tshinane.
MR MANTHATA: Mr Tshinane, you are welcome. Can you please make it comfortable for Kwinda? Kwinda, what are you doing now, Kwinda?
MS TSHINANE: I am doing nothing, I am just sitting at home.
MR MANTHATA: At the time you were - you encountered with the police, you were still a student?
MS TSHINANE: Yes, I was 16 years, attending school at Tambaqera and I was in standard 6.
MR MANTHATA: And can you tell us strictly how you met with this police who injured you?
MS TSHINANE: Yes, I can do. It was on Monday on the 10th, we were at school. We went to the morning assembly. After that assembly, going into the classes, the eldest were coming, telling us that we must leave the class rooms and we VENDA HEARING TRC/NORTH WEST
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must go to the trees and when we were going there, they told us that we must disperse.
And they told us, no there is a problem here at school and they told us that we must go back home. And we will meet again on the 11th, early in the morning, we must all be here.
They told us that we must all be here at eight o'clock. The next day it was Tuesday, the 11th of August, we went to
(indistinct) secondary school, I was late and I found that they have already started talking and they were now going back through the gate.
When we went to Tambaqera school, we entered there we found that the police were in the staff room and the teachers came out and they came to where we used to take our morning assembly and then these old boys came here and told the teachers that we have got a problem.
The problem is with punishment, more specially corporal punishment. Then the teachers agreed and said, we'll limit this. And when we were now going out we found that there were police vans.
In arriving there one policeman went out and the police asked what we are doing and then the students said we are doing nothing, but there is a problem with just hurting us.
And the police gave us an order that after 15 minutes we must disperse and then we dispersed.
We reached a certain house next to the school, when in arriving to the road, we found those police vans in which - those who are like scorpions and they like and those vans which are used by the trucks, but they are soldiers just as hippo's.
We were surrounded by the soldiers, no one was taking
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care of anyone. We ran away, we went looking for a friend. I ran, I jumped about three cars and the fourth one trapped me and the skirt was torn off and I was left with my underwear.
In entering a certain house, I found certain people opening the house. I never watched whether I was going to an important house or what, I just went under the three quarter bed.
In arriving there, the police were behind me and the police threatened the old lady, telling the old lady to show them where the people who were running in this direction, were.
And the old lady was trying to say no, I know nothing, but because she was threatened, she showed them. And the other one came and said no, I found her and I asked that policeman please, don't drag me please, I am very tired.
And please come my sister, today you will tell us what you were doing. But I told them, but no, we were not fighting, we were just talking.
Please you must go and check the school, we did not damage the school and he told me that you are spoiled, the school children.
And then I went out, I was placed down there in the van and they forced me to let my hands down and they said, girl what is your name, I told them that I am Tshinane and they told me that today, they will show me.
They were beating me as if I was found stealing. I was heavily beaten and the one who lastly beat me and then my ear was injured. And the police ran away and truly the police ran away and in fact the blood was running, oozing out and the gland to my eye was giving out blood and then I
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collapsed.
When I collapsed a certain Pastor, called Mr Cheza, the police car arrived there and they said, no leave them alone, they are interested in strikes and then a certain gentleman came and carried me and put me on the side of the road.
My parents were called, who took me to the hospital. I don't know how I went to the hospital, I only realised it the following day and I asked from one other nurse as to whether my eye was still going to function and the nurse said, well, no, I cannot explain now. So she went away crying.
When I asked the other person, they didn't tell me my eye was closed, I couldn't even see because I didn't have a mirror. When I asked the Doctor who had taken me for an operation, he then explained to me the one who was interpreting explained and said Daphne, it is painful whatever happened to you, you must just accept, because you are still a kid.
She explained to me that my eye was damaged and I admitted that my future was ruined and if I were to stay in this country, I am no longer peaceful and people are not going to accept me. That is when I stayed for two weeks, the third week Reverend Modina arrived and explained to me that this is a very important issued, we are going to deal with this matter with Ramaqwede and we cooperated very well with him.
Saying that the Government should really help because it really damaged my eye. Then we went with Mr Ramaqwede and on the last day with my father who is seated here, Modina said your case is going to terminate because they say people of Tsirizeni are really striking and it won't work VENDA HEARING TRC/NORTH WEST
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and they said you are not going to see.
And I went home. Within a few days CID people came on plain clothes. They found me right at home and they asked me if I was Daphne and they told me look, if you are still taking his matter further, we are going to take serious steps and whatever your father has, we are going to damage and you are not going to enjoy.
And I said, well I do accept as you are saying, I really did damage to the Government and this people left and I don't even know the people.
I went to Modina, Modina said he didn't know the people and it ended there. So I went to my Headmen and asked if at all I can get pension, because at the moment I don't have money.
And at school I went back and it was difficult for me to concentrate since there used to be blood and the only little part which is left, cannot really concentrate on looking and I went to the offices, pensioners offices and the Doctor at Tsirizeni said, you have to get pension.
I had to come to Parliament because I was asked to come to the place where the pensioners go and I was told that the cheque had been released. But the Doctor who was in the Parliament said, if one is one-eyed, one has to work, but I did explain that I want to see the Doctor so that he can explain to me whilst he was watching, because my future is ruined in such a manner that if I go to the motherhood, I will never stay in somebody's place because it will be regarded as something unacceptable because people won't accept me.
So I took my father whilst crying, it was very difficult for me to accept because by then my eye was still
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having a hole and somebody from a family gave me some money and I had a plastic eye which is artificial and as I am saying now, I cannot get used to this eye because quite often it has to be taken away, sometimes it falls down and at the moment is cracked. The second thing it gives me a problem.
MR MANTHATA: Be patient, relax please. Please.
MS TSHINANE: The eye gives me a lot of problems because each time I keep on taking it out, now it is cracked. It cannot even get accepted, one can see I am one-eyed, I don't have money to buy anything.
I am failing, please I plead with the Commission to help me. I would like to get pension as I want to live like other people.
That's all I can say.
MR MANTHATA: Kwinda just relax. We understand that ...
MS TSHINANE: I am relaxed.
MR MANTHATA: ... Before the people who share your hurt, your pain. Perhaps it is not even necessary to go back. In the process of trying to address the issue of your eye, did they ever think about you having to readjust your whole life and be taken to a blind institute or an institute for the blind?
MS TSHINANE: No, it never happened like that.
MR MANTHATA: And you have never been subjected to some therapy of some kind where you can begin to accept that at least one eye can still see?
MS TSHINANE: What made me accept this was that one Reverend came to me and preached to me so that I could repent. Although I still find it very difficult because now, that is over now. I was crying over the fact that the
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people who did that, should at least have come to me so that we shall reconcile and all of us will be free.
Whosoever did, could also ask for forgiveness from God that whatever they did, was wrong.
MR MANTHATA: You see, our point here is, we would love to take you back to a position where you can be, you know, a full member of the community, work productively and accept your personality. It is for this reason that our main concerned will be just how to get that, to get you to accept the situation in which we are and that this has nothing to do with your brain, because like you are resiting here, I mean, you seem to remember almost every minute, you know from the day when the students sent you back home, you know, even the following day when they called you back, when the police attacked you, you know you have that chain so well, that one gets to understand that you are a very strong integrated person, intellectually.
And it is for this kind of a reason that we would love to see Kwinda, these things have happened, but they have not hurt your dignity.
Because what has happened, it is quite true. I mean one would even ask, what did the teachers do when the police attacked you as you were marching out of the school?
MS TSHINANE: The only evidence that I can present was that there was no phone at this specific school where I was, they used the Rondani Secondary school, perhaps they were very afraid that the school kids were going to damage the property, but we didn't have that in mind.
MR MANTHATA: Yes, but what did your teachers say? Have they ever been to you right through that process of pain?
MS TSHINANE: The teachers sat down with me, giving me that VENDA HEARING TRC/NORTH WEST
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kind of consolation about what happened. I did accept that, but it was difficult for me to take that into, because I had to leave school because of this problem.
MR MANTHATA: And what about your school mates? What did they say to you?
MS TSHINANE: People were no longer coming to me, because they were afraid of being witnesses.
MR MANTHATA: Not necessarily as witnesses, but perhaps just for saying how are you, you know, to keep making you realise that you are part and parcel of the main stream of the youth of the town?
MS TSHINANE: My friends used to come to me just to console me although they had a problem on which eye is hurt because it was not clear as to which eye was badly damaged, because they were not able to realise that the other eye was not really functioning. I just told them that I was hurt, because I was not very seriously or severely hurt, because people couldn't realise which one was really hurt.
MR MANTHATA: Kwinda, I have no further questions thank you.
MR ALLY: Daphne, thank you very much for coming forward.
As I said to many other witnesses that it is really the President and through him, Parliament who will be responsible in the end for reparations and for rehabilitations. We only make recommendations.
But I am sure that one of our briefers here will try to assist as best as possible, especially in this request in your statement about a disability grant.
I am sure that the Truth Commission will be able to assist you in pointing you in the right direction in making proper enquiries and to establish your rights with regard to VENDA HEARING TRC/NORTH WEST
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a disability grant.
Also the Committee on Reparations, although it is only at the end of the work of the Commission that it will perform recommendations, but there is also provision for what is called, urgent interim reparation, that is where people need assistance immediately and desperately.
Those who have been found to be victims of gross human rights violations and that policy is in the process of being implemented, so I hope that quite soon the Committee will be able to announce something.
In the mean time I will request that you maintain this contact with our briefers and that they, I am sure, will try and provide as much assistance in helping you to go through the right channels.
But, thanks again for coming forward and for telling us what happened to you.
That was then our last witness for today. We will start tomorrow again at nine o'clock, but before we close, just to remind people of what we heard today.
And I think we did get a glimpse and that is only a glimpse, because remember we only heard a small number of statements, but we got a glimpse of what life must have been like in the former Venda land.
The harassment, the detentions, the torture, the killings often just the arbitrary way in which the police and the security police went about their business of someone who just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and was shot in his shoulder, accused of being a so-called terrorist, of Daphne her now, during school boycott, then losing her right eye.
Of others being killed, who was suspected of being
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members of Umkhontu weSiswe and one of the appeals which came forward constantly from the survivors of these abuses, was that they would like their torturers, those who detained them, those who were involved in the shootings, those who were involved in the killings, to come forward, to come to the Commission and to come and explain why they did what they did.
To come and give their version, their account of what happened. And we can only endorse that appeal.
But I also want to make absolutely clear that while the Commission is committed to reconciliation, we are also committed to finding out the truth, because people want to know and although we put out this request and invite people, it is important to know that the Commission also has powers.
That it has powers to actually subpoena people, in other words to force people to come forward, to assist in establishing the truth and it is with that in mind that I just want to read to you extracts from a statement that was put out today by the vice-Chairperson of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Dr Alex Boraine, just to give an indication of the seriousness with which the Commission takes this search for truth.
The Truth And Reconciliation Commission will tomorrow begin the process of issuing subpoenas summoning the former Minister of Law and Order, Mr Adriaan Vlok and former high ranking police officers to appear at investigative hearings of the Commission.
The subpoenas will be issued in terms of section 29 of the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act which grants the Commission power to call upon any person to appear before the Commission, to give evidence or to answer
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questions relevant to the subject matter of the hearing.
This decision to issue subpoenas follows receipt today of a letter from Generals Johan van der Merwe, Mike Geldenhuys, Johan Coetzee, Hennie de Witt all former Commissioners of Police.
In their letter the Generals say that their own knowledge of gross violations of human rights is based on general information. They say that any possible involvement in violations on their part, may be restricted to limited instances.
And even in those instances proper legal advise would have to be obtained.
Section 39 of the Act provides for penalties for any person who fails to appear in response to a subpoena without sufficient cause or who fails or refuse to answer fully and satisfactorily to the best of his or her knowledge and believe and question lawfully put to him or her.
Those guilty of offences in terms of the Act, are liable to fines and to imprisonment of up to two years.
It has already been publicly reported that the list of policemen upon whom the Commission is considering serving these subpoenas, includes Generals Van der Merwe, Geldenhuys, Coetzee, Lieutenant Generals Basie Smit and Johan le Roux and Major Generals Krappies Engelbrecht and Bertus Steyn.
The Commissions' National and Regional offices already have more extensive lists of subpoena candidates which they will act upon as and when deemed necessary.
So while again as I say the Commission appeals to people to come forward out of their own free will, if people don't come forward, in order for the Commission to establish VENDA HEARING TRC/NORTH WEST
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the truth, we will seriously consider subpoenaing such individuals.
Once again, I want to thank people, particularly our witnesses and their families. I want to say also that there is a little type of questionnaire which some of the staff of the Commission has to ask people to fill in where they express their views on what they feel about the hearings and how the hearings went and other things relating to the hearings.
If people can please get those forms and fill them in, they will assist us in our work. I will ask us again please to stand and to allow the witnesses to leave before we go and then just to remind people to please leave the headsets.
They are of no value to anybody outside of this hall, if you can please leave the headsets behind, these things which we were using for the translations and they will be available again tomorrow for those who come.
If we could please stand while the witnesses leave, thank you.
MR LYSTER: People, just leave the headsets just on your seats, just leave it right on your seats, thank you.
