TRC Final Report

Volume 4

Chapter 10

Subsection 9

59 Ms Hilda Bernstein documented the torture of Black Consciousness leader, Ms Joyce Dipale, while in solitary confinement for 500 days. Dipale’s torture included electric shocks on her naked breasts, buttocks and genitals. She said that she “got used to the pain, but never the humiliation” ¹³

60 Ms Elaine Mohamed was made to strip, do star jumps, and was fondled by doctors and prison officials. During the hearings, Ms Virginia Mbatha described how her captors “would fondle me in whatever part of the body that they wanted to and I couldn't do anything because my hands were tied to the back”.

61 Women who were not actually raped spoke about the ever-constant fear that they would be. Ms Joyce Sikhakhane Ranken described how, while in prison, she “was terrified that one day I would be gang raped by those bullies.” Ms Thenjiwe Mtintso described an incident in which she was captured by a group of eight security force members and taken to Kei Bridge.

They asked me to get out of the car and they all got out. And I had not minded being beaten or anything or even died in the process, but rape, just as far as I was concerned, this was… going to be a gang rape and they were just going to leave me here…”.¹⁴

62 Ms Yvonne Khutwane of Worcester described how she was first humiliated by repeated questions about her sex life. She broke down and cried when one of the young soldiers who had arrested her put his hand inside her vagina: “I was afraid [because] we have heard that the soldiers are very notorious of raping people”.

63 There were many stories of how women were degraded when menstruating. Most commonly, women would be forced to stand, with or without pads, with blood running down their legs while being tortured. Ms Phyllis Naidoo was forced to use newspapers instead of pads: “It was horrible, and terribly demeaning.” For Ms Joyce Sikhakhane Ranken, “the feel and smell of the sticky blood [was] a reminder of imminent slaughter at the hands of your torturers”. When Ms Elaine Mohamed was told she was not allowed to use tampons, a policeman “shook the pad and hit it against the wall saying ‘Put it on’”. Ms Mohamed also reported that another woman had rats pushed into her vagina. She said that rats would come into her own cell and eat her soiled pads. “I’d just pick up the bits of my pads, but that experience was terror for me. I always felt that the rats were gnawing at me”.¹⁵

64 Stories of rape and sexual abuse were not confined to those that occurred in detention. In the Durban hearings, speaking from behind a screen, a woman described how she was gang raped by youths from an opposing political organisation. Her husband was forced to watch the entire attack. When she awoke in hospital, she was told that she needed a hysterectomy. Like some others, this woman felt she was in some way responsible: “Sometimes I feel like I invited the trouble myself. I feel very degraded and dirty. And especially because I am a Christian.”

65 Ms Gloria Ella Mahlophe related how her sixteen-year-old daughter went with two other young girls to a meeting in Thokoza.

When they arrived in Thokoza, they were put inside the hostel. They started undressing them, taking of their clothes. After they've undressed them, they raped them. After they raped them, they took them and threw them outside the hostel, at the back of the hostel and they started shooting at them. They were trying to chop them with some huge bush knives.

66 Fourteen-year-old Ms Winnie Makhubela, the child of Ms Mahlophe’s brother, was the only one of the three young women to survive. In her testimony, Ms Makhubela said that the meeting was attended by women as well as men, and that the women “started applauding and they were very happy when they saw this happening to us. They slapped us when we tried to plead to them to help us.”

67 Another anonymous witness from KwaZulu-Natal also described herself as apolitical, but said she lived between an Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and ANC area, and that “they used to tell themselves that in my house that's where Inkatha people were staying.” One day, on her way to hospital, the woman was offered a lift by a man who then abducted and raped her. This rape was followed by further rapes by other men. The woman was sixteen when this happened, and had been hoping to preserve her virginity as her mother had done. However, the rape resulted in pregnancy “and now I have a child whom I don't know his father”. Further, when this woman tried to report the incident to the police, “the judge told me that I was just a concubine in that area, [that] I am lying, they didn't rape me.”

68 Ms Kedibone Dube, who also said she “wasn’t a comrade”, spoke about her experience when Inkatha invaded Swanieville in 1992. A man, promising to take her to safety, took her instead to a house in which no one was living.

And each and everyone pulled their own girls there and they were sitting together with their girls. And I said to him, “I'm not going to sleep here, I want to go home.” He said, “I will take you to the Xhosa people and the Xhosa are going to kill you.” And he beat me up the whole night until he raped me.

69 Ms Khosi Dora Mkhize of Mpumalanga said that, when she and her family were attacked in 1987, they were living in an ANC stronghold. However, she said, “I didn't know anything about politics”. In the middle of the night, a gang attacked the house, seemingly without reason. Three of the attackers raped her as well – she suspects – as her sister. The assailants stabbed her mother to death, and then burnt down the house. Ms Mkhize said she had never told anyone, even her sister, about the rape. Today, she said, “I totally do not trust a man… I regard him as an enemy”. This legacy was echoed by Ms Thandi Shezi, who said that her experiences had left her unable to have a good relationship with a man: “They say to me I'm frigid. Because if I get involved with amanI get very scared.”