TRC Final Report

Volume 5

Chapter 9

Subsection 15

48 Testimony at the Alexandra human rights violations illustrated that forgiveness is not cheap, and the journey towards overcoming deep feelings of anger and humiliation is a long one:

Ms Margaret Madlana: After my child’s death, these white policemen came, and they came to one house where there was a tent, and they were running after some children. The children ran towards the house, and got into the house. When they arrived and entered the house I asked them (I didn’t know that they understood Zulu and I asked in Zulu) what are they looking for because they have already killed my son. And one of the white men answered me, and he said to me, we are looking for the young kids. There were so many people in my house, and they [the police] said they are going to take me and kill me in the house. However, the people tried to ask them not to kill me …

I would like to apologise before God … if ever I was to be employed, I was going to poison the white man’s children. The way they killed my son hitting him against a rock, and we found him with a swollen head. They killed him in a tragic manner, and I don’t think I will ever forgive in this case, especially to these police who were involved, and who were there …

This Sindani came to me to tell me that he has not finished the killings – they are still going to kill – and Mtebi himself came to say the very same words. They said they are coming to kill all the young kids and the dogs, and they are also coming to kill the leaders. Therefore, I don’t think there will be any reconciliation or forgiveness because today the police in Alexandra, they promote crime because they eat together with these criminals. They are crooks. They are still doing the very same things that they used to do, and therefore I don’t think I will ever forgive police. [Witness upset] …

What will make me to forgive is if Sindani and Mtebi, these two policemen, come and tell us why he killed these sons of the wars and also ask for forgiveness before the mothers of these children. It is then that I can forgive him. I am so surprised to find out that today that Mtebi is today a reverend and which children is he preaching to and which parents is he preaching to if he killed the children of the wars.

I would like Sindani and Mtebi to come and ask for forgiveness. Thereafter I might consider forgiving them, together with his fellow white people who came to kill our children. They just killed these defenceless children with their machine guns. They brought their dogs and hoses running after young children with machine guns with the aim of killing the black nation, the black race underneath the sun. I will say that I will never forgive because this was my last born. Maybe if he was still alive, he was going to be married by now [and] have some children and a wife. But because they have killed him, I will never rest …

I used to go out and go and sleep on top of his grave because even today I still go there and pray in his grave. I will never forgive them if they don’t come before the Commission…

I would like to say that for me to forgive, and I don’t see the opportunity of me forgiving anyone, I suffered a lot because of this because I didn’t understand why the children were killed. But there is just one important thing I would like to say before the Commission, before our children and the whole country.

At the beginning of the struggle – the struggle started at Wits⁹ University within the white community where white students threw away their books [and] not even a single of them was teargassed or killed. However, when black children started fighting for their liberation, they were shot by guns. We had to bury a lot of people killed by these guns and I would like to say I have buried a lot. I am only left with four children. However, when their children started to fight for their rights, they were not killed. However, our children when they started the very same thing, they were killed since from 1976 up to 1986. They never buried any one, or where we find them coming to a mass funeral saying that these white people were on strike, and we shot them or killed them. Even today, they still do that, they fight for their rights but they are not teargassed or killed.

Things like that we can find out that there was this apartheid system working within the black community. We were taken as dogs, baboons and all such things. These dogs and baboons which work for them, which bath their children, cook for their children, however, they are still content to kill them.