I would like firstly to thank the organisers and you ladies and gentlemen for the invitation to this conference. I would like to start by briefly giving a background of incidences and situations that have deeply affected my family and myself during the last years of apartheid.

For the sake of brevity I begin in the year 1986, South Africa. This was a period in which the then Apartheid government had its back up against the wall from both the pressure exerted by the international community and resistance inside the country. The Apartheid regime reacted like a cornered animal, desperate to maintain its evil hold on power. The regime declared a state of emergency in the townships and a complete media blackout on the vicious killings and assaults taking place in the township my family lives in, Mamelodi. My 53 year old father, a medical doctor and a man known for being outspoken against the then government of the day, was inundated in his small surgery with assault, rape and murder cases. My father took it upon himself to record these cases and take photographs of these cases of brutality with the hope of letting the outside world know. My father became known as the “peoples doctor” in our community because he and my mother instilled hope in people. But he also became a marked man by the Apartheid regime.

The first blatant attempt on the lives of my parents came in 1986 when policemen standing on top of their armoured personnel carriers fired what we later discovered were chemical bombs into my parent’s bedroom and into other areas of our house. These bombs had the effect of creating strong flames which when doused with water seemed to become more flammable.

The fire brigade was openly prevented by the police from attempting to douse the flames and our home was razed and completely gutted to the ground. My parents managed to escape with only their pyjamas and all our worldly possessions were lost, including most of my father’s evidence of police brutality. The family was relegated to living in the family motorcar garage.

A few months later the apartheid police then sent an agent to my father’s surgery to leave a bag with explosives which was rigged to explode when it was unzipped. But fortunately the agent was an ex-patient of my dad and confessed and showed us the bag. This agent informed us that the police intended murdering my dad.

I was a student at university when my parents then decided to seek refuge in my room until things quieted down. A month later they decided to return to our gutted home. We children begged them to stay a little longer but they refused stating that with them gone from the township, nobody was there to record the brutality. They felt that somebody had to record these and give people hope despite all personal dangers. It was then decided that my brother Chris and I accompany them home to see if it was relatively safe. My brother Chris was to stay with them as bodyguard/a lookout whilst I would return to school after a seek to write my year end exams.

On the 1st of December 1986 (four years before the release of Nelson Mandela) assassins in broad daylight, whilst my brother Chris had gone to the shop, walked into our burnt out home and shot and murdered my unarmed father and my mother.

Chris on returning from the shop saw the killers run out of our house and when giving chase was shot at and narrowly escaped injury. On investigating at home he found the lifeless bodies of our parents.

What followed the death of my parents was complete chaos. Family life as I knew it, ended abruptly. We were not allowed to bury our beloved parents for two weeks because the apartheid government had banned their funeral, the police camped outside what was left of our home and pointed their guns at us, taunting us and laughing at us. One night they jumped into our yard and upon us investigating shot at us. A neighbour closest to me was shot. I carried him to a passing car and we rushed him to hospital. Whilst in intensive care the police handcuffed him to the hospital bed. Today he is a disabled person unable to provide for himself. On Christmas day that same December, and one week after the funeral of my parents, we buried another neighbour and close friend who had given up hope and felt that he could not navigate life without my parents. His suicide note stated that he would rather join them than continue without them. He had hanged himself.

Suddenly we children were left parentless, having lost the stability which our parents provided for us and therefore unable to continue and complete our studies and dependent on friends and a few neighbours for food. My eldest brother Joseph was unable to get his degree certificate because of outstanding school fees. My sister Barbra completely withdrew into herself. My brother Chris twice attempted suicide and on his second attempt I managed just in time to grab hold of his legs whilst a friend cut the rope. I tried explaining to Chris that we had go on living somehow or else the killers would succeed in wiping out not only the family but also memory of our parents.

The following year I returned to university in an attempt to complete my studies with financial aid promised to me by the South African Council of Churches. But by April that year no aid was forthcoming and the university kicked me out because of my inability to pay the fees. I, together with my best friend Phindile Mfeti then decided to attempt leaving the country to join the liberation army in exile. But three days before we were to leave, my friend Phindile disappeared from his room on campus. I suspect, in fact, I am now certain that he was picked up by the security forces. I have spent years looking for him but to no avail. I did not know whom to trust anymore.

In 1992 I managed to secure my first job, but after 2 years of employment my surname caught up with me. In 1994 South Africa was heading for its first democratic elections and my employer stated quite bluntly that some of his workers would see in the new South Africa unemployed. He duly fired me stating that he knew which way I was going to vote.

The TRC Process

With the advent in 1996 of the TRC process my family was faced with a dilemma. We initially strongly opposed the TRC chiefly because of the truth for amnesty clause.

 

Firstly, how could we the children of our parents let their murderers go unpunished, free? We had no right to do so. The killers had boasted and actually threw a party celebrating their evil deed.

The South African government then stated that if victims did not participate in the TRC process they would not be eligible to receive any aid, counselling or reparation from the government. This statement created a dilemma in our family. Not to participate and forfeit any government assistance or to participate and forfeit our right to justice. This was a form of blackmail and it had the effect of dividing us children.

The manner in which we were forced to participate suggested to us that the TRC had already made a pre-determined decision that amnesty would be given to the perpetrators. The argument to participate was based on the following:

How very wrong our thinking turned out to be. My brother Chris led the family delegation to the TRC hearings. We had to relive the whole painful memory of the death of our parents and after being sucked dry emotionally and physically. The TRC gave amnesty to the people who murdered my parents. We only learnt of the amnesty verdict from the newspapers – nobody bothered informing us personally. It was an immoral decision as the perpetrators did not show any remorse and neither did they divulge the whole truth about the extent of their own involvement, names of the assassins and who authorized the murders.

The orders to kill my parents must have come from very high up as the military, the police and special forces were involved. Also the question of why my parents were not arrested (as had happened on a number of previous occasions given the state’s repressive powers at the time) instead of murdered was never answered. Did the perpetrators act without orders? This also remains unanswered.

At the TRC hearings the murderers were well represented by a battery of lawyers whose fees were paid by the government. We victims were not even afforded a counsellor to guide us through this traumatic TRC process. In actual fact, we as a family are very bitter about the TRC process. We feel that we were just used to lend credibility to these hearings.

Not long after the TRC hearings into my parents murder my brother Chris was viciously assaulted in a racially motivated incident. He was brutally gun-butted, kicked and knocked unconscious by a known racist right winger. Three months after this brutal attack he died. He died a virtual pauper, deeply depressed and unhappy with the family circumstances.

Who benefits from the TRC process?

After the TRC hearings the criminals returned to their families and continued their normal lives without loss of the rewards or promotions they had received for performing their dastardly deeds. In fact some of them are still in the employ of the present day government, maintaining their relatively luxurious lifestyles. The perpetrators remain free today and have gone unpunished. As far as they are concerned the chapter of our history which deals with the murder of my parents is closed. It is this that angers my family and I, as victims, because the TRC process appears to result in collective amnesia among human rights violators once they have appeared before the Commission. Their continued impunity sends a message to all South Africans – that life, or perhaps I should say African life, is cheap. The perpetrators showed no remorse – in fact one of them actually stated that “my mother was in the wrong place at the right time”. My dear mother was at my father’s side at our home when she was murdered.

We victims, on the other hand, have returned to our shattered lives faced with a deep sense of loss and despair, and confronted with a life of poverty. The government’s promises of assistance have proved to be nothing more than an illusion – a mirage of emptiness. In fact, one present day government minister coldly stated victims would be better aided if the government erected statues and monuments. And, as I stand before you thousands of kilometres away from home, I am full of distress about my life in South Africa, in my late parents’ home where the water and electricity supplies have been cut off and continued unemployment faces me. My parents’ basic right to life was taken away, and now so is my right to a meaningful existence even though my country’s constitution is supposed to guarantee the right to the basic essentials of life such as water, electricity, and employment. I sometimes feel as though we victims are the criminals and are now being punished. There has been no reconciliation – just more pain and suffering whilst we are desperately crying out for JUSTICE. And because of the above incidences and circumstances we find it impossible to reconcile.

My family and I need closure on this painful period, which will enable us to heal and to progress with our lives.