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TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION
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TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION

HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS

SUBMISSIONS - QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

DATE: 03.05.96&#9;&#9;&#9;NAME: PRISCILLA GAMA 

CASE: GO\O185 - JOHANNESBURG

DAY 4

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DR BORAINE: Chairperson the final witness appearing before the Commission today is Mrs Priscilla Gama and I would ask her please to come to the witness stand.

&#9;I just want to say glad we are to have Dr Randera's three children, I think I'm right in saying that, nice to see you, you look just like him. Not entirely, thank goodness.

&#9;Also I think Professor Meiring's wife, I think Mrs Meiring is up stairs, we are very delighted to have her as well and of course we are as always pleased that people have come to listen to the stories and we are grateful that even as they tell their stories there are many many thousands, hundreds of thousands listening to the radio right now.

&#9;Mrs Gama, can I welcome you very warmly, you've had a long wait, it's now half past three and at last you are here and I know that yesterday you were at a funeral anc couldn't be here, you've brought somebody with you I think, perhaps you could tell us who that is?

MRS GAMA: It's a neighbour.

DR BORAINE: We are delighted to welcome you as well. I wonder if we could have the name of the neighbour please?

MRS GAMA: ...(indistinct)

DR BORAINE: Thank you very much indeed. Mrs Gama you have come to tell a story, a very terrible story about your son, and this happened in October 1993. In a moment we're ask you to tell us what happened on that day but before that I must ask you to please stand to take the oath.

PRISCILLA GAMA: (sworn states)

DR BORAINE: My colleague Mr Tom Manthata is going to help you to in your own words tell the story of what happened on that day. I hand over to him now, thank you.

MR MANTHATA: God afternoon, could you please relax. Are you working Mama Gama?

MRS GAMA: No I'm not working.

MR MANTHATA: Who is working in the family.

MRS GAMA: It's my husband.

MR MANTHATA: How many children are there in the family?

MRS GAMA: They were five, two of them died in 1993.

MR MANTHATA: Without meaning to hurt you, how did the two die?

MRS GAMA: When I got married I had two children and those are the ones who died in 1993. The one died on the 8th, I also found out that he's issue is not acceptable, the first one died on the first of October. I would first begin by him joining the Struggle. It was somewhere in the '80's, I don't remember well, the police came at night, between 12pm and 1am, we were still asleep when we heard the windows being hit and they were knocking shouting,Open up, we are police! I was very confused because this child Nkosinathi was in the house. I woke up and went to him and asked him what was happening. He asked me not to be afraid and to open for them. I suggested that I should perhaps hide him but didn't agree to this, and he said he would open if I was scared. They opened and got inside, three white policemen and one black person but his face was covered and we could only see his eyes. They asked where Nkosinathi was and he identified himself to them. They told him to get dressed and to go with them. It was very cold as it was in winter and he asked me for a polo neck. While I was doing this these white police were opening up cupboards and asking Nkosinathi where the gun was and he asked them whether they had given him any gun.

&#9;They got out and left with him, and I took a pen and paper with which to write out the registration number of the casper but the one white guy covered the number plate with a boot so I couldn't see it and they left. I stayed behind crying and my husband asked me I wasn't sleeping and I told him that I was so worried that I can't sleep because I didn't know where they were taking my child to.

&#9;They said these children had taken the law into their own hands, they knew so much, that's all they had said to me when they left. As I was still sitting there I made myself coffee because it was so cold. While I was still thinking of pumping the primus stove I heard some noise outside in the street and I got out and I saw a lot of people around the corner and I heard his voice and I could see that he arrived and he said, Mama I am back. I asked him how he came back and he said that he managed to escape while they were looking for another boy at another house. 

&#9;From there he left an he was involved in the Struggle, at the age, I think, of about 13 years, and my husband and I asked him one day if he couldn't stop being involved in it as he was so long and wouldn't live long if he continued his involvement and he refused saying he wouldn't stop even if they killed him because we would still live well on our child's blood.

&#9;In 1993 things continued and he was very involved in the struggle, he went to all the ANC rallies, he used to help organise transport and people used to come to my place to get transport. At the beginning of '93 before he died, he used to be very well known. When he ran away that night there were a number children in the street and people used to ask us who was a stronger comrade than this child and the children were instructed not to say anything if they were asked such a question. They did say they didn't know. 

&#9;As things went on there were a lot of eyes on his life and one day, he had dread locks on his hair, he was like a Rasta, and he said that he was well as he was aware that the police were identifying him by his dreadlocks, and asked if I could please make him a hair piece that he could use. I suggested that it might be better for him to go away to Soweto or to Natal or to run away somewhere but he refused to leave me alone because things were very very bad and his other brother went to Soweto and the last born also went there so it was only him my husband and myself who remained behind. Even when he went to school he really liked it but things used to be very difficult for me when going to school and sometimes he would phone me and tell me that he's unable to come home because of the situation, but I must not be worried. He told me that in school he had been told that there men who come to the school who were looking for Rasta from Rhadebe but many people don't know who Rasta is. 

&#9;On the first of October there was a funeral of one of the comrades at Mavimbele, a section behind our section. When he left home it was about eight and he asked me not to lock as he would come back to sleep at home. 

&#9;In the morning I didn't realise that he was there, as he had come back at night and had left again, so I went back to my neighbour and while we were talking I saw many people in the street covering their shoulders. And I asked why were these women who were coming towards us wearing shawls. The boers were killing our children quite a lot at that time, it was a time of chaos and confusion. Mamsa suggested that we check where these women were going to because it was as if they were coming down towards us, to my house. 

&#9;I left my neighbour and came back home and it didn't occur to me what was happening but the last woman said that I should please go inside. As I went to the bedroom where I found my husband and the last born on the bed crying. They told me that Nkosinathi had been killed by boers and I would not believe it as we had not seen anything.

&#9;A lot of comrades then started coming and told me that we must go to the camp at Spruit. We went there, my sister, her husband, my husband and I and on arrival he told them that he had lost his child. They asked his name and what he was doing and my husband said he was a scholar, they asked his age and they asked him to go to one side where they had put the people and then after a while my husband called me and I saw my child. I couldn't believe it and I even slapped him on his cheeks to find that he was already cold. My husband said they found him facing downwards on a tray where they had put him and he had to pour water out of the tray and turn him around. His one hand, I cannot remember whether it was the left or the right one, it was completely burned, and looked white and broken. On the side of his face was a dark mark and when I touched him I found that the bones were broken..... (end of tape 22 followed by a break in recording by tape 23.....this child had beautiful dreams. I'm still very hurt about this. He had already impregnated a girl who gave birth to a baby boy, so I asked the mother for the child so that we could bring it up. This child will be five years old on the 13th of this month.

MR MANTHATA: Mama it appears for the time Nkosinathi was with you that he was very close to the family.

MRS GAMA: Yes it was so, he always wanted to be at home. I remember when he was about 10 years old when we wanted them to visit they phoned us from where he was visiting that he was crying, missing his mother and wanted to come home. MR MANTHATA: He was at the same time a very popular youth, both amongst the students and the ANC Youth Leaders of Kathlehong.

MRS GAMA: I don't know among the leaders if he was known among them, but I could suspect that they did know him. before I had the ANC card he was still very young, 13 years old and I asked him what card that he showed me was. He didn't like talking and he just laughed and said that he would tell me one day, and while he was growing up he continued and I saw a lot of books that he had. When I asked me what they were he said they were about politics and he would read them for me one day. At school he was very popular and well known.

MR MANTHATA: When you were taken to the mortuary and you found all the marks on his body, didn't the family think about having to find out how he died, in short, couldn't the family be advised to go for an inquest?

MRS GAMA: No we didn't get any advice like that, we just got told that a lot of children had been attacked on that day. That the boers had killed a lot of children that night was the only thing that we heard.

MR MANTHATA: Thank you Mama Priscilla, I think that I am satisfied with that.

MRS GAMA: I am finished.

MS SOOKA: Mama could you tell us if there were any witnesses to your son's killing? Did anyone afterwards come forward and say they had information about his killing? How do you know that it is the ISU units that did it?

MRS GAMA: I don't know how to explain this, we just had people in that neighbourhood, one of the girls said things were so hectic and difficult, there was a lot of shooting. There were caspars, the boers caspars and black ones with black soldiers. They said when they passed the black ones came and that's when they managed to get out and recognise Nkosinathi.

DR RANDERA: Thokozile, what would you want the Truth Commission to do for you and are there any suggestions that you would like to make?

MRS GAMA: I really how I should say this. I can't take decisions. In my heart there's a lot of pain because my child had wonderful dreams. He said I'd have a car, a maid and I'll leave that aside but what I could say is that since I'm looking after his child who is five years old and I'm a sickly person with a bone disease, I will not be able to bring up, support, cloth and educate that child. So as I say, I had two boys and both of them were victims of this violence, they died during the violence and my husband is already on a pension. We will not be able to live like other people. I think the Commission must use its own discretion on what it will do for me and also other people who have suffered would also like to see a memorial place with the names of all our children displayed because it is a New South Africa and this New South Africa has emerged from the blood of our children. They just should be remembered and should not have died in vain.

CHAIRPERSON: Mama we would really like to thank you, we also thank your children for having made sacrifices and also that these things that you are asking for you are not asking for yourself alone, we really thank you that you are also thinking about other people, so that if there is any assistance it should not be assistance that is directed only at you, we are very happy to hear that. May God console you and anoint you with his oil to heal your wounds. Thank you very much.

&#9;I want first of all to express my appreciation to the South African of Churches and the World Conference on Religion and Peace, South African Chapter, and all those who helped to organise services last Sunday on the eve of these hearings. We want to say a big thank you to the Central Methodist Church for affording us this venue and their facilities and also to say thank you to the caterers.

&#9;It is a mark of the transition that is happening in our country that we are able to be increasingly...........

END OF HEARING

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