TRC Final Report

Volume 4

Chapter 10

Subsection 6

■ SILENCES

36 A primary aim of the Commission was to end the silences around the atrocities under apartheid. A primary aim of civil society’s intervention around gender was to end the silences around the gendered nature of those atrocities.

37 One of the silences was that of women who had themselves suffered gross human rights violations, but spoke only as secondary victims — as relatives of men who had suffered. Hence, for example, in the first week of hearings in the Eastern Cape, the widows of the Cradock Four spoke about their murdered husbands. Each had herself been arrested and harassed, but their own stories did not become the subject of the hearings. Later in the hearings, Dr Liz Floyd and Ms Nyameka Goniwe spoke about the abuses suffered by their partners, Mr Neil Aggett and Mr Matthew Goniwe. They, too, mentioned their own roles and suffering only in passing.

38 Several of the women who spoke at the special hearings began their testimony by stating their reluctance to come forward. Some said that they felt their sufferings were less severe than those of many other people. Ms Jubie Mayet, who had been banned and detained, said she was reluctant “because my experiences under the old regime were nothing compared to what so many countless other people suffered.” Ms Nozizwe Madlala, detained for a year in solitary confinement, said that when people ask her if she was tortured, “I usually answer in the negative, for my own experience of torture was much milder than that of many others.”

39 At the time the abuses occurred, many women (and men) remained silent about their sufferings. Ms Wilhelmina Cupido, reported that after her sister, Ms Coline William’s, detention, Coline “said she just want to go on with her life, she just want to leave it there and carry on.” There could be multiple reasons for this silence — a desire to protect her family, a desire to protect herself by keeping silent about ‘illegal’ activities, and/or a desire to forget a terrible experience.

40 Others might have kept silent because they felt there were not ready listeners. Thus Ms Zubeida Jaffer described how most people react:

They'll smile at me and say: “Oh, you’re the journalist, you were detained…” Then they'll say to me: “But I am sure they never did anything to you”. I think it's maybe too much for people to think that things [like this can happen]. I think also because I am a woman there is always the assumption that they wouldn't have touched me … “[they] didn't really do anything to you, did they?”

41 In opening one of the special hearings, Ms Thenjiwe Mtintso spoke about the difficulties of describing ones suffering in a public arena. Ms Mtintso had previously spoken openly in a face-to-face interview as part of the CALS research. She was not, however, prepared to speak about her personal experiences in the open hearings. She congratulated the women who were prepared to “open those wounds… The personal cost may be high. They may have to go back home and deal with the pain that has opened today.”

42 Many claim that, by talking things through, people come to terms with what has happened and the pain is lessened. In opening the Cape Town hearings, Trauma Centre psychologist Ms Nomfundo Walaza questioned this conventional wisdom:

We talk very glibly about the fact that we can show our weaknesses in a way that will render us much more strong later on. Some women are sceptical that the process will uncover the wounds that are healing and render them even more vulnerable that they started off with…

43 After hearing Ms Zubeida Jaffer’s testimony, Commissioner Mary Burton commented on how someone “who is known as a strong person in the community” had been brave enough to give “a glimpse into a vulnerable side” of herself.