TRC Final Report

Volume 5

Chapter 4

Subsection 3

31 Jose Saporta and Bessel van der Kolk have identified two common consequences of traumatic events.

a The first is incomprehension, where the sense of the experience overwhelms the victim’s psychological capacity to cope. Traumatic experiences cannot be assimilated because they threaten basic assumptions about one’s place in the world. After the abuse, the victim’s view of the world and self can never be the same again.

b The second feature is what is called disrupted attachment. This is often exacerbated by an inability to turn to others for help or comfort in the aftermath of trauma. It thus represents the loss of an important resource that helps people to cope. Traumatic rupture is an integral part of the torture experience. Victims are kept in isolation and their captors threaten them with the capture and death of family and friends. If they are then forced into exile, they feel further alienated and estranged. Traumatised individuals often show enduring difficulties in forming relationships. They tend to alternate between withdrawing socially and attaching themselves impulsively to others.⁷

32 The torture of Mr Abel Tsakani Maboya’s wife resulted in her psychological breakdown and subsequent social withdrawal. Mr Maboya’s cousin was a member of Umkhonto weSizwe (MK), based in Tanzania, and was sent on missions to South Africa. Both Mr Maboya and his wife were arrested with a view to extracting information about the cousin’s activities. Ms Mboya was tortured and suffered psychological damage as a result. At the Venda hearing in October 1996 Mr Maboya told the Commission that their marriage had not survived these experiences:

She is a sensitive person actually. I think there are some other people, people that would believe that now we are not free. Those nightmares are still there. She can’t face crowds like this. I tried by all means for her to make a statement so that people will - she was beautiful to me, I don’t know what happened to her.

33 Feelings of helplessness also undermine people’s sense of themselves as competent and in control of their fate.⁸ This makes them incapable of picking up the pieces of their previous lives.

34 Mr David Mabeka was a youth activist who was arrested and tortured in Barkly West in 1986. He described the consequences of his experience at the Kimberley hearing:

In 1993, I went back to school to do my standard nine. It was not easy ... I would forget things most of the time... The life that I’m leading now is a bit difficult. I cannot cope because of this Double Eyes and Rosa and their friend [those who arrested and tortured him]. I don’t know why should I live with this pain, knowing that I was defenceless.

35 Mr Lebitsa Solomon Ramohoase was shot in the 1960 massacre at Sharpville. He told the Commission at the Sebokeng hearing that he sustained permanent injuries to his leg and had subsequently struggled to find employment:

My life changed. I led a miserable life. You know my feelings changed altogether. But I didn’t know what kind of help I [could] give myself and I was satisfied. I said I have to be satisfied because it is something that happened to me. I am helpless; I can’t do anything for myself.

36 Political activists were less prone to post-traumatic stress disorder, owing to their commitment to a cause and their psychological preparedness for torture. Mr Mike Basupo (see above) was arrested for his activities in 1986. He referred to the strength that may be drawn from such commitment:

The circumstances I was under and many people were subjected to was very painful. However, we must remember that, even if you were released from detention under such circumstances, you would not give up. You would continue with the struggle for liberation.⁹

37 International studies have shown that non-activists, even if subjected to lower levels of torture, display significantly more severe symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. The less the psychological preparation for the trauma of torture, the greater the distress during torture and the more severe the subsequent psychological problems.¹⁰ The Commission’s statistics provide evidence of this phenomenon.

38 Psychological re-experiencing of the event can have debilitating consequences for survivors trying to rebuild their lives.

39 Mr Mike Wilsner is a friend of Father Michael Lapsley, a member of the ANC who was injured in a parcel bomb explosion in Harare on 28 April 1990. He told the Commission about Father Lapsley’s condition after the bombing.

He would wake up at night, screaming, re-living the bomb. I wanted to touch him but everywhere you looked - everywhere over his body was red and swollen and painful. There was nowhere to touch him. We were grateful that he was alive, but we were very aware that his life would be changed irrevocably from that moment on.