TRC Final Report

Volume 4

Chapter 10

Subsection 16

134 Most of those who had suffered explicit torture had done so at the hands of men, most of whom were white. Mr Thandi Shezi explained that “the female used to hand over their assault and brutalisation to their male counterparts”. However, Ms Nomvula Mokonyane said that it was women who pumped water into fallopian tubes. She could not understand this betrayal:

This woman knows exactly what the effects of that pain will be on that other woman. It is hard to know if you will be able to reconcile with that woman perpetrator.²⁸

135 In the main, women warders exhibited cruelty in the way they treated prisoners outside of the explicit torture sessions. Thus, Ms Deborah Matshoba described as ‘torture’ the way that women warders threw her (bad) food at her. Her exasperation was such that one day she grabbed the hair of the woman concerned and “started bashing her head against the bars”. Her resistance won her a new warder, as well as exercise time and a weekly shower. Ms Matshoba noted that, when women warders were black, one was able to “conscientise them as time went on and to appeal to their senses and you would sensitise them to the point that they would realise that you are there for them.”

136 Ms Elaine Mohamed said she felt betrayed by the way the women police would “flick with their nails on my nipples, saying, ‘It’s a shame nobody wants you. You’ve obviously never had a boyfriend. No one touched these breasts, else why are they so firm?’”²⁹. Ms Phyllis Naidoo said that while, at first, she thought that women warders would be better because they would understand the women detainees’ fears of rape and violence, her experience of the “horrors” in Durban Central changed her mind.

137 Stephanie Kemp, on the other hand, remembered some kindness. She remembered a 19-year old warder “with uncommon sensitivity” who took the risk of telling her John Harris had been hanged. She remembered the then matron of Kroonstad Prison, Ms Erica van Zyl, who “sent the special branch away. She sat down with me and said that as long as I was in her prison, she would not allow the special branch near me.”

138 At the human rights violation hearing in Port Elizabeth, Ms Ivy Gcina told of the kindness of her warder at North End Prison, a Ms Irene Crouse:

The same night I saw a light at night and my cell was opened. I did not see who was opening my cell. I did not look at the person. She said to me, "Ivy, it is me. I am Sergeant Crouse. I have fetched your medicine". She rubbed me. She made me take my medicine. I told her that I could not even hold anything but I can try. I told her I was going to try by all means. She said "It is fine, do not worry yourself. I will help you". So she made me take the medicine and then she massaged me. Then after that I could at least try and sleep.

139 A few days later the local newspaper, the Eastern Province Herald, carried a front page, full size picture of Ivy Gcina hugging Irene Crouse: The report read:

Tortured activist Ivy Gcina was yesterday reunited with her Angel of Mercy – the kind jailer who held her hand and tended her wounds after hours of brutal interrogation by security police. “I never thought you’d remember me”, said Irene, 37, as the two women threw their arms around its other on the stoep, crying and laughing at the same time. Ivy, 59, replied: “But after I was assaulted it was you who was there to help me, who entered my cell at night. Can you ever forget someone like that?”

140 “We met as human beings, as women,” Ivy recalled. “There was such communication there. Ensuring I had a clean towel, asking me how I was. The relationship was so good.” Irene felt she was “only doing her duty” when she helped Ivy.

141 Ms Deborah Matshoba recalled how a white, male, Afrikaans-speaking uniformed policeman had assisted her by smuggling her asthma spray and tablets to her, and later smuggling her out to see a doctor.

142 Outside of the prison context, Ms Agnes Gounden and Ms Zodwa Lephina Thobela described how nurses had assisted and protected them when security police wanted to interrogate them. However, as emerged in the health hearings, nurses (most of whom are women), although not active perpetrators, often turned a blind eye to what was happening. Ms Betty Ncanywa, who worked at Livingstone Hospital in the 1980s, explained that they had been instructed not to obstruct the work of the security forces — that they must “try to refrain from politics, otherwise my future would be in jeopardy”.

■ CONCLUSION

143 This chapter draws primarily on the testimony of women who made presentations during the three special hearings organised in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg. It also draws on the associated submissions to the Commission and on statistics generated from the Commission’s database of deponents and applicants. As elsewhere in the Commission, the relatively few women whose experiences are recorded must represent many, many more who did not want to present their own stories, or were not able to do so for some reason. Nevertheless, the limited evidence available confirms the fact that women were active in all roles – as perpetrators, and in the full range of different primary and secondary victim roles. It also indicates ways in which women’s experience of abuse might have differed from that of men.

144 The chapter suggests further that the definition of gross violation of human rights adopted by the Commission resulted in a blindness to the types of abuse predominantly experienced by women. In this respect, the full report of the Commission and the evidence presented to it can be compared to reports on South African poverty, which make it very clear that while women are not the only sufferers, they bear the brunt of the suffering.