TRC Final Report

Volume 3

Chapter 3

Subsection 16

State and allied groupings

Detentions and harassment

108 Individuals affiliated to human rights organisations during this period told the Commission that they were subjected to constant harassment, intimidation, surveillance and detention by the security police.

109 For the most part, these organisations were based in the main urban centres of the province and functioned to promote social justice and democracy in all arenas of civil society. Diakonia in Durban and the Pietermaritzburg Agency for Christian Social Awareness (PACSA) in Pietermaritzburg worked to promote social awareness in the churches. The Black Sash and paralegal organisations such as the Legal Resources Centre (LRC) and Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) offered basic legal advice and support to ordinary people. The End Conscription Campaign (ECC) monitored developments in military conscription and offered advice to conscripts. Some organisations were set up to offer careers advice to school leavers and to address the problems of inequity in the educational arena. Others were set up in response to crisis situations brought on by intensified police repression and the repeated imposition of rule by emergency. Among these were the Detainees’ Parents’ Support Committee and the Education Crisis Committee.

110 These and other NGOs often worked shoulder to shoulder in joint social campaigns: calling for the release of political prisoners, the lifting of states of emergency, the withdrawal of troops from the townships, the abolition of the death penalty, the lifting of restrictions on the media and the free flow of information.

111 Diakonia took up residence at the Ecumenical Centre in Durban when it was established by the mainline churches in 1983 to provide office and meeting space for religious and other organisations committed to building peace and justice in the province. It soon became the object of intense scrutiny and surveillance by the Security Police. Former tenants told the Commission that they endured constant harassment by the security police and worked under the perpetual threat of police raids, detention and arrest. In 1985, the library housed at the Centre was severely damaged in a firebomb attack. No perpetrators were ever identified or brought to book.

112 Several individuals working for these organisations were detained during the 1980s, among them Mr Paddy Kearney [KZN/SELF/084/DN] and Ms Sue Brittion [KZN/SELF/083/DN] of Diakonia and Mr Richard Steele [KZN/SELF/084/DN] and Ms Anita Kromberg [KZN/SELF/091/DN] of the ECC, who were all detained in 1985 under Section 29 of the Internal Security Act No 74 of 1982. Kearney, who was held in solitary confinement for seventeen days, told the Commission that his arrest coincided with a heavy police crackdown on the UDF and preceded the August 1985 death of Ms Victoria Mxenge and the destruction of the Gandhi settlement at Inanda outside Durban (see below). He said that the detentions were part of a police attempt to create the impression that the UDF was responsible for most of the violent conflict in the province and that UDF activists were being severely dealt with.

113 On 12 June 1986, over twenty people were detained in Pietermaritzburg under Section 50 of the Emergency regulations.¹⁸ Peter Kerchhoff [KZN/SELF/088/DN] was held for ninety-seven days, of which thirty-two were in isolation. He reported that this group of detainees had been informed that they were being taken out of circulation on the re-imposition of the state of emergency (which had been lifted in March) and ahead of the Soweto Day tenth anniversary on 16 June.

114 Detainees told the Commission that they were arrested and detained following police raids on their homes and offices in the early hours of the morning. They were held for periods ranging from fourteen days to over three months. They reported that, while they did not experience physical abuse while in detention, they were subjected to many hours of questioning about the activities of their organisations and to periods of solitary confinement. Kerchhoff spoke of the psychological pressures which were brought to bear on the detainees through interrogation and solitary confinement, particularly as regards their families:

Generally detainees were coping but the problem was communicating this to those on the outside. The harassment of detainees’ families made the situation much more difficult for them. They were without support and vulnerable to abusive, threatening and hoax telephone calls.

115 Kromberg told the Commission that her police interrogators tried to extract information about the work of the ECC in an attempt to validate their suspicion that this and other organisations based at the Ecumenical Centre had operational ties with the banned ANC and its military arm MK. This perception persisted throughout the 1980s and was eventually adopted by the IFP.

116 In a section 29 hearing of the Commission, former IFP National Council member Walter Felgate said that it was a time:

in which you really [did] believe that, for example, Diakonia here in Durban was the hot seat from which MK people operated. You hated Diakonia, and Diakonia was also fair game for whatever.

117 Mr Felgate said that this belief in the existence of an MK operating infrastructure at the Ecumenical Centre was one of the factors behind the recruitment of up to 200 Inkatha youth for paramilitary training in the Caprivi in 1986 (see below). He conceded that their information about the involvement of Diakonia and other Ecumenical Centre organisations in MK activities was unsubstantiated.