TRC Final Report

Volume 4

Chapter 10

Subsection 12

■ NON-PRISON EXPERIENCES

98 While torture, as defined by the Commission, occurs in prison or in custody – and is thus primarily perpetrated by agents of the state – there were also women who described gross violations of human rights which occurred outside of captivity, and which were perpetrated both by the state and others.

99 In the earlier decades covered by the Commission, banishments and banning were a popular form of punishment. The punishment provided for people to become their own jailers, thus relieving the state of the burden of providing for them. Ms Frances Baard, an Eastern Cape unionist, was banished to Mabopane in the Transvaal. She was dumped there in the cold with only the clothes she was wearing, without even a blanket for protection. She faced severe isolation on a personal level:

I didn’t even know a person in that place; I couldn’t even speak the language of the people there. Since I was brought there by the SB [Security Branch], the people were afraid to talk to me.²²

100 Ms Fatima Meer and her husband were first banned in 1954 and needed special permission to speak to each other. In 1977, during her second banning term, someone attempted to kill Ms Meer in the home to which she was confined. She escaped only because a taller visitor opened the door, catching on his shoulder the shot that was aimed at Ms Meer’s head level. The would-be assassin’s car was suspiciously similar to that seen at the time of Mr Rick Turner’s murderer.²³

101 Harassment continued for those who went into exile. Ms Phyllis Naidoo described how her “backside … is full of potted holes” from a parcel bomb received while outside the country.

102 Ms Selina Williams, mother of Ms Coline Williams, was convinced that her daughter had actually been murdered. Ms Williams was sceptical of the police story that her daughter and Mr Robert Waterwitch had blown themselves up in error. Her other daughter, Ms Wilhelmina Cupido, pointed out that the fact that Coline’s nose was still intact, while her eyes were out of her sockets, seemed inconsistent with death from a bomb. Ms Williams herself had a further, ‘gendered’ reason for disbelief. She noted that when the police handed back some of Coline’s goods, her bag contained intact sanitary towels. She asked: “How could sanitary towels survive a bomb blast?”

103 There were several stories of abduction. For example, Ms Nozibele Maria Mxathule described how, in 1986, a group of young girls and boys were abducted en route to a funeral of children shot by police:

They took us to a guesthouse. We were bleeding… They told us to face the wall. We stripped naked, all of us, against the wall, boys and girls the same. They assaulted us. They threw us out on the grass and poured water on us and left us there.

104 While much of the evidence related to abuse by government forces, women within the opposition also faced abuse from colleagues. General Masondo, who testified to the Commission about the ANC Quatro camps, gave the following evidence on the position of women MK members in exile

In Angola there are at one time twenty-two women in a group of more than 1 000 people … there was an allegation that … Commanders were misusing women … the law of supply and demand must have created some problems.