[PEN-L:3813] testimony, and union response (fwd)

[D Shniad <shniad@xxxxxx>]

> Subject: Biko's widow's testimony
>
> TRUTH-2ND-LD-WITNESSES
> EAST LONDON April 15 1996 Sapa
>
> WITNESS TELLS TRUTH COMMISSION OF TORTURE, HUSBAND'S `SUICIDE'
>
> A former secretary to slain black-consciousness leader Steve Biko on Monday
> told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission she had been repeatedly
> tortured and detained by police after her activist husband's apparent
> suicide in police custody in 1976.
>
> Nohle Mohapi, the first of 28 witnesses due to testify in the commission's
> first hearings in East London, told chairman Archbishop Desmond Tutu and
> his fellow commissioners she wanted the commission to establish the cause
> of her husband's death.
>
> "I hope the truth will ultimately come out," she told reporters after the
> hearing. "I still believe my husband did not commit suicide. He had the
> best of plans for the future, for the country and his family."
>
> Mohapi said a 1977 inquest into Mapetla Mohapi's death had confirmed police
> reports that he used a pair of jeans to hang himself in his cell.
>
> She said she had faced financial ruin after she lost a subsequent civil
> case against the police and was ordered to pay more than R250,000 in court
> costs.
>
> Her attorney at the time was Griffith Mxenge, who was later murdered,
> allegedly by agents of the state, and his body dumped at a staduium in
> Umlazi, Durban.
>
> She said her husband had attracted the attention of police because of his
> involvement in a students' organisation. They had been constantly harassed
> by police and her husband was regularly detained.
>
> "He said our time together would be short. He would say `If anything
> happens to me you have to know I'll always be with you'. He told me if the
> police came I must never show the Boers I was weak."
>
> Mr Mohapi was arrested in July 1976 while working at Izimele Trust, set up
> to teach former political detainees new job skills.
>
> "He wrote letters on toilet paper saying the situation was bad but that he
> was alright and that he would be back," Mohapi said.
>
> After arriving home one day after trying unsuccesfully to get access to him
> at the Kei Road police station, a policeman named Fouche had come to tell
> her her husband was dead.
>
> "He said that Mapetla had hanged himself ... I said spontaneously `No not
> Mapetla. He had plans for his family, he would not kill himself'."
>
> Shortly afterwards the Bureau of State Security had recruited her as an
> informer, offering her overseas trips if she reported back on meetings she
> attended. When she refused she had been placed in solitary confinement in a
> Port Elizabeth prison for six months.
>
> During her first month in detention she had been given no water to wash
> herself with, even though she was menstruating.
>
> She had been forced to confess that Biko was a terrorist, and was tied to a
> grill and beaten.
>
> "During the six months everything revolved around Steve. They would bring
> blank papers and ask me to sign them. They asked me whether I wanted the
> same thing to happen to me as had happened to my husband."
>
> After her release from prison, she had been served with a three-year
> banning order and was unable to find a job.
>
> Mohapi told reporters she felt relieved after tesifying.
>
> "In the past I was feeling very angry. I now have hope the truth will
> ultimately come out."
>
>
> TRUTH-SAHPSWU
> PRETORIA April 15 1996 Sapa
>
> UNION SAYS NO TRUTH WILL COME OUT OF TRUTH COMMISSION HEARINGS
>
> The Truth and Reconciliation Commission's refusal to grant apartheid
> victims access to amnesty application files proved that no truth would come
> out of its hearings, the SA Health and Public Service Workers' Union said
> on Monday.
>
> In a statement in Pretoria, union deputy general secretary Success
> Mataitsane said the commission would do anything to protect human rights
> violators.
>
> "But the same commission does not hesitate to prosecute witnesses," he added.
>
> The commission last week refused to provide the families of murdered
> activists Steve Biko, Griffiths Mxenge and Dr Fabian Ribeiro a copy of
> former police murder squad operative Dirk Coetzee's amnesty application.
>
> Sahpswu criticised commission chairman Archbishop Desmond Tutu's weekend
> statement that most black South Africans did not want revenge for human
> rights violations under apartheid.
>
> Tutu had not conducted any survey, referendum or ballot to test the will of
> the people, Mataitsane said.
>
> "If Tutu and the government believe black life is cheap, and people can
> kill as many as they want knowing they would go to the commission to ask
> forgiveness, then together Tutu and the government have it wrong."
>
>
> ZAMBIA-RAIL
> LUSAKA April 15 1996 Sapa-AFP
>
> STRIKING TANZANIAN, ZAMBIAN RAIL WORKERS GET THE SACK
>
> Workers for the Tanzania-Zambia Railways Authority (Tazara) who went on
> strike last week over a pay dispute have been fired with immediate effect,
> Tazara management announced at the weekend.
>
> "Tazara has with immediate effect dismissed all employees participating in
> the illegal strike ... in addition, management is inviting applications to
> fill vacancies arising from the dismissals," Tazara managing director
> Antisne Mweemba said in a statement.
>
> According to Mweemba, recruitment would start Monday.
>
> Tazara operations have been paralysed for nearly a week because of the
> strike called by about 2,000 unionised workers demanding increased pay.
>
> The workers went on strike when management offered them a five percent rise
> after they had demanded 150 percent.
>
> Communications deputy minister Gilbert Mululu last week gave an ultimatum
> for the workers to return to work by the weekend or be fired.
>
> Scores of passengers and goods have been stranded along the line due to the
> strike, which includes train examiners, controllers, shunters and drivers.
> [...]
>
>
>
> Source: ANC Department of Information and Publicity
>