DATE: 17 JUNE 1997
HELD AT: CAPE TOWN

Day 1, Part 1

• Detainee Case Studies
• Submission on Steve Biko
• Submission by Military Medic
• Manipulation of Forensic Evidence

ARCHBISHOP TUTU OPENS THE HEARING

CHAIRPERSON: It's a bad thing to do but we start with an apology. We are waiting for some of the presenters who have not yet arrived and we are sort-of at the moment re-adjusting the schedule to some extent, so I hope you will bear with us for a little bit.

WELCOME IN AFRIKAANS: I would like to welcome you all to this public hearing of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This is the first in a series of sittings.

WELCOME IN XHOSA: We welcome you all to this Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearing. We welcome you all very warmly to this hearing of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

This is the first in a series of professional or institutional hearings and in this one we intend to be looking at the role of the health sector in perpetrating, colluding with or resisting human rights abuses during the period under review. This is perhaps appropriate as the TRC is so often described in terms of medical metaphors, opening wounds, cleansing and healing. There has been very considerable support for and interest in these hearings both locally and internationally. This is very encouraging and we are most grateful for this.

I want to express our appreciation especially to the special task group that has put together the hearing and been responsible for eliciting contributions from various people.

I also want to say a very big thank you to my colleagues, Commissioners and Committee members and also staff persons for all they have done.

Thank you to the Police who had their dogs come through sniffing to ensure that no one wanted to send us to "Kingdom Come".

Two years ago I was at Nuremberg, part of a BBC panel discussion on the legacy of the Nuremberg trials fifty years or so ago. We met in the very court room in which the trial had taken place. I am not wanting to evoke any special associations or responses by reference to this.

After the session in the court room I visited the nearby Dachau site of one of the notorious concentration camps of the Third Reich. It contains a museum of what happened there in the times of the Nazis. And then at the entrance you will find the haunting words,

The Germans ever so methodical took pictures and kept immaculate records that were later to incriminate and were used perhaps to convict them, very much like a picture that appeared on the front page of The Argus of three police officers seemingly with a trophy after their hunt.

Then a little further on in the museum were pictures of people caught in grimaces and with their faces distorted in experiments, some of which were to see how much depth the human person could stand or how much altitude decompression. And one recalled too how you had accounts of psychologists in the Soviet Union keeping dissidents as certified inmates.

I didn't think here in South Africa we might be so blatant. I myself have a very high regard for the medical profession in our country whose very high standards compare favourably with those in other countries. After all we pioneered things like heart transplants.

And just as an aside people might want to know that the President called me in to give me a gentle ear-full about going to the United States for treatment. I do want to point out that I myself would have wanted to receive all of my treatment here, though in consultation with a panel that includes two Professors at UCT Medical School, their consensus was that I should accept the offer that was made by the Sloane Kettering Kensa Institute and I buckled under the pressures from the rest of my family. But I would like you to know that there is very close collaboration between the medical team here and the medical team overseas.

What we have heard that there has been collusion between healers and the security forces. And outstanding instance being the Steve Biko case when doctors appeared not to have given the welfare of their patients the priority that we would have expected them to have done. That is the sombre side.

There is a bright side in the witness of the medical profession where people like Professor Ames and others ensured that people who had behaved, in what was to their view, unethical conduct, were to be brought to book. And sitting next to me is my colleague here who was very instrumental in getting an interdict against torture, against the police, to prevent them from torturing detainees so that there are very, very considerable bright spots.

May I quote from a Professor Ralph Kirsch.

"True healing demands that we examine, face and record the acts of commission as well as omission of the medical profession.We have recently been reminded that membership of the health care profession includes the responsibility for what we ought to do, an ought that derives from dealing with people who are in a dependent, vulnerable, exploitable state of weakened humanity.In this context we all share the blame of those physicians who assisted in the torture of prisoners, falsified reports or suppressed knowledge of mistreatment.Facing our past failures will, we hope, increase our resolve to meet the responsibilities of our profession".

May I, in conclusion, introduce my panel colleagues. Dr Fazel Randera is Commissioner and member of the Human Rights Violations Committee and he is our regional convenor in our office in Gauteng. Glenda Wildschut is a Commissioner and member of the Reparations and Rehabilitation Committee and she is based in our office here. Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela is a member of our Human Rights Violations Committee and is based in our office here. Denzil Potgieter is a Commissioner, a member of the Human Rights Violations Committee. He is probably going to be moved to another Committee. Then Alex Boraine, the Deputy-Chairperson of the Commission, based here. Wendy Orr, Commissioner, Deputy-Chairperson of the Rehabilitation and Reparations Committee based here and she is also our boss-woman here. She is the regional convenor in this office. Dr Mapule Ramashala, a Commissioner, member of the R & R Committee and based here. Hlengiwe Mkhize, Chairperson of the R & R Committee based in Gauteng.

I'd like to hand over to Wendy who is going to welcome specific persons.

DR WENDY ORR: Thank you Father. We have so very many special guests here today that it is impossible to welcome each one by name. We do, however, have a number of international visitors and we are deeply grateful to them for taking the trouble to come all this way to participate in the hearings and to add their support and hopefully their on-going support as we prepare our final programme and recommendations.

I just want to comment particularly on the context of these hearings. I think there have been accusations that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is going beyond its mandate by exploring the health sector, the judiciary, the education sector, but in fact our mandate is very clearly spelled out, to examine the context, perspectives and environment within which human rights violations occurred, and to make recommendations to ensure that those violations do not happen again. And it is within that context of our mandate that we are holding these institutional and professional hearings.

This process started a long time ago. In August last year Fazel and I were charged with putting together a health sector hearing and to that end we had a national consultative workshop in November at which we discussed the issue with a number of major role players and decided that it would be appropriate to hold health sector hearings at which we would hear submissions from a number of major role players.

We have tried to structure the day by starting off with case studies to demonstrate real life situations in which things went wrong. In which complicity and collusion, negligence, mistreatment and violations occurred and then moving into the organisational submissions to try and help us understand the context and environment within which these occurred, why they occurred, how they occurred and most importantly, and I feel very strongly about this, how we can prevent them from occurring in the future.

We are going to have to change the order of the case studies just a little bit because Mrs Ntsiki Biko and her brother-in-law, Steve's brother, Mr Kayo Biko will be arriving any minute. Their plane was due, SAA willing, to arrive at 10 o'clock, so we are hoping that they will be here soon, but we obviously can't have our presentation of the Steve Biko case study without Mr and Mrs Biko being here. So we will be starting with Case. no.3 on your programme which is the Detainee case studies.

Before I move into that I want to say thank you to two very special people without whom these hearings would never have happened. One of them is here and is Sheila Roquitte who is a research intern from Princeton, who has been my right-hand, my left foot, my head, my eyes, my sanity in the last few months as I've been working towards these hearings and I want to say a huge thank you to her.

The other person is not here, she is Linda van Demen, my secretary, who turned her office into a printing press to try and produce copies of all the submissions so that people had a chance to read them beforehand and prepare questions around them.

We received almost 50 submissions and they are still coming in, so there is obviously tremendous interest in this issue. It highlights the fact that we need to break the culture of silence, the taboos which have surrounded the medical profession, the mystique of the medical profession, the fact that people don't speak out, the fact that doctors are viewed as a closed club very often who stand up for each other rather than for their patients and that's really what these two days are all about. It's how we can break that culture of silence and move together into the future.

I'd like to ask Nomfundo Walaza and the witnesses whom she is bringing with her to come forward and do our first presentation on Detainee Case Studies and Glenda Wildschut is going to be facilitating their evidence.

DETAINEE CASE STUDIES

MS WILDSCHUT: Nomfundo before we start may I ask that Mrs Lesani and Mrs Gcina please stand to take the oath and we will ask Denzil Potgieter to administer the oath. Are you going to be testifying as well Nomfundo? Okay, alright, then you can take the oath as well.

ADV POTGIETER: Thank you. Can I just ask you to state your full names for our record before I administer the oath to you and would you mind just switching on the microphone in front of you. Thank you.

NOMFUNDO WALAZA: (sworn states)

MILDRED LESANI: (sworn states)

IVY GCINA: (sworn states)

MS WILDSCHUT: Welcome Nomfundo and Mrs Lesani and Mrs Gcina. I would just like to find out whether you would prefer to speak in your own language, because it is possible, we do have people who can interpret.

MS WALAZA: Yes, we will speak in our language, in Xhosa.

MS WILDSCHUT: You will speak in Xhosa.

MS WALAZA: Yes.

MS WILDSCHUT: If you are going to be speaking in Xhosa will you please put on your earphones because I am disastrous at Xhosa.

Nomfundo just a minute, I just would like to make one housekeeping announcement. These earphones, if you do not understand Xhosa you are going to have to use these earphones. Channel 1 is Afrikaans, 2 is English and the 3rd is Xhosa. We do not have enough earphones so those people who understand all three languages or English and Xhosa please share that with those who do not understand.

I have just been asked to make one small announcement to the witnesses but could people who have cellphones please switch them off. I have just switched off this one now. Can we ask those who do have cellphones please to switch them off.

And for those people who have to leave the room if you could please leave the room after the witnesses have given evidence, it's very disturbing to give evidence while people are moving around in the room. Thank you very much.

Thanks for your patience. Nomfundo I believe that you are going to give a short statement and then we will move over from your statement to Mrs Lesani. Thank you, please go ahead.

MS WALAZA: Thank you very much Glenda. I think the first thing that I felt that was important to do was to contextualise this case study and in a way give a reason why the Health and Human Rights Project had decided to ask Ivy Gcina and Sheila to talk today.

The death in detention of Steve Biko was a critical moment in the history of health and human rights in South Africa because that created schisms in the medical and other professionals that remain to this day. His death led to an increase, according to some researchers, of the number of visits made by district surgeons to political detainees. And his death led to a few minor reforms that in retrospect had little impact on the health care of detainees.

But what is most ironic about the furore over the Biko doctors is that the highly publicised case did not prevent further deaths in detention or torture for the next 20 years.

In our submission to the TRC, the Health and Human Rights Project draws attention to more than a hundred cases of detainees ill-treated by doctors, nurses, psychologists while detained under security legislation. A phenomenon, we believe, was widespread in apartheid South Africa.

Former detainees had told us numerous stories about inadequacies of the custodian care system; doctors failing to take adequate medical histories; district surgeons refusing to listen to their complaints; medics pronouncing them fit for torture and further interrogation; physicians handing medical files to the security police; nurses deliberately withholding treatment or shackling detainees to their beds; psychologists violating the confidentiality of their patient for security reasons; doctors neglecting to keep proper clinical records and failing to follow up a prescribed course of treatment. And this list goes on.

In fact there are probably as many complaints about health care in detention as there were detainees in South Africa. Each one has a story to tell, and their voices have been conspicuously absent from the TRC hearings.

There is one woman, however, who did not leave enough to tell her story. A 50 year-old political activist and diabetic she died in 1987 as a result of the gross negligence of prison officials, security police, district surgeons and nursing staff. Her name was Nomabanda Elda Bani and she was detained on the 29th of August 1986.

I think the reason, as I said, why we chose this case as the Health and Human Rights Project is that we felt that the medical, her medical reality was denied by health professionals. She had severe insulin dependent diabetic and she was told to eat sweets and take sugar. Her treatment was withdrawn at the time that she needed the most assistance. She was left in a coma for days before her death. For weeks she was incontinent, and her cell mates who are here to talk on her behalf today, had to witness the humiliation that she had to endure as a result of medical negligence. And in a way we feel very strongly that the medical professionals contributed to her death and actually forced her to her death bed.

And it is with that, that I, at the present moment, want to introduce the two women to tell the story of how she suffered in detention. We asked her former cell mates to describe the circumstances which led to her death in 1987 after her one year in detention.

It is my honour and my privilege to introduce the two women from the Eastern Cape. Ivy Gcina, who is currently a member of Parliament, she was the longest detainee at the time during the state of national emergency, she spent 35 months in prison. And Sheila Lesani, who is at the present moment at home, she is very important in the sense that she is a diabetic and she accompanied the patient to hospital most of the time that she had to go. So I will hand over to them to tell the story of what happened during that time. Thank you.

MS WILDSCHUT: Thank you Nomfundo. Mrs Gcina you can use the mike in front of you. I think you are going to be speaking first.

Thank you very much for coming and we really do want to pay tribute to Elda Bani today. We know that she suffered and you were her co-mates and suffered with her, so please go ahead and in your own words and in your own way please tell us the story of Elda Bani and also your own story. Thank you.

MS GCINA: Thank you. I would like to greet everybody here and I would like God to give you strength because after all the things that happened to us during the apartheid period we did not know that there would be people like you who will find out the truth so that we can forgive those who did these things to us. But I would like to ask Sheila, as she was the person who was together with Elda Bani in prison and they were in a single cell together, they were then transferred to the hospital in the Northern Prison in Port Elizabeth.

I will start on the 12th of June 1987 where they were transferred to my cell. I will help her as we are going to testify on behalf of Elder Bani I will hand over to Sheila and then continue afterwards.

MS LESANI: I would like to greet everybody here. I am Sheila Lesani who was detained on the 16th of July 1986 in the Northern Prison. I stayed there for a long time. Mrs Bani came on the 29th of August. We were then together in that cell. We were both diabetics.

The first thing was that we did not have a toilet in our cell. There was a bucket there. As we were diabetic we would eat and Mrs Bani would eat and we were supposed to go frequently to the toilet, while she was eating I would go to the bucket. There was no care for us. We stayed for a long time in prison. Mrs Bani had a pile of pills and insulin injections. She used to inject this insulin herself.

We were then taken to the hospital, to the prison hospital. After a while Mrs Bani was not given treatment until we were transferred to Cell 14 where there were other detainees in that cell, but most of the time we were together and we were very ill. We could not help each other.

In the Cell 14 Mrs Bani was not receiving treatment at the time. After that we were called to the reception, after we arrived at Cell 14, when we arrived at the reception we were told that - it was on the 12th of June, if I am not mistaken of that day, we were told that the state of emergency was not disbanded, we were to continue to be detained.

After that Mrs Bani started to get ill. She asked Mrs Gcina whether we were going home or not. Mrs Gcina said no we are not going home. This disturbed her. Mrs Bani was very sick and she was not receiving treatment in prison at that time.

On the 13th of August Mrs Bani went to hospital alone. She came back on the 15th, the same week. She was very ill at this time. She came back to the cell. I don't know whether to continue about that. I think Mrs Gcina will take over then.

But I remember one night before Mrs Bani passed away it was twelve, midnight, I was taken to the office. Captain Nel was there. He woke me up at that time. When I got to the office I was asked whether I knew Mrs Bani. I said yes. They asked me where I knew her. I said I knew her because we were together in the prison cell. They asked about the injuries, I said she was not injured when she got to prison.

MS GCINA: Thank you Commission. On the 12th of June 1987, as Sheila has already said, we were taken to the reception. We were told that we were going to stay for a longer time in prison because the state of emergency was not disbanded. Mrs Elda was very sick. When she got to our cell she was a confused person. You would give her an apple and she would not take it. She was very ill. She asked me for how long are we going to stay there. I said Elda we must wait, it might happen that we might die in prison. Anything can happen when you are in the hands of the enemy. We have to wait and we must only pray to God.

On the 13th Elda then became very sick. In the morning we would be asked about our complaints and we complained about the state of health of Elda. We requested for her to get treatment. Captain Nel then agreed. He said that she was going to be taken to a doctor.

When Elda was taken to the doctor we requested someone to accompany her because Elda could not even tell her name. The doctor then did not agree. They said that a person should speak for herself. She was taken to a doctor, she then came back to the cell. We asked for treatment for her. She would be given a chicken thigh, samp with too much salt, there was no special treatment or special diet for her as she was diabetic. They were eating normal food just like us.

Elda then urinated herself. We reported this to Captain Nel because first of all in our cell we were 14. It doesn't matter how small it is but there were supposed to be 14 prisoners in each cell, we could not even sleep in that cell. We then asked for Elda to be taken to an outside doctor because in the cell we had a nurse, Mrs Fazi, she asked for a urine bag for Elda because she was urinating herself.

They took her out of our cell. We found out that they said we were not happy because we were together with Elda. That was Captain Nel and a warder by the name of April, a Black man. We got a report that we complained that we were not happy because Elda was with us.

Elda Bani was taken. After a long time I went to Captain Nel in the office, I asked him where they took Elda he said that she was in Uitenhage in hospital. I asked him whether he was sure, he said yes.

After a few days Elda came back at night together with Captain Nel. Captain Nel opened the cell and we all woke up. We saw Elda, she looked beautiful at that time. She said that the police had beaten her up. She thought that she was just confused because she looked well to us. We gave her food. While she was still eating she urinated herself. Sheila took out her gown and she was naked at that time. She had nothing on except for the pink prison gown. When Sheila took off this gown I saw blood in the left corner of this gown. I said to them Sheila this gown has blood. When Sheila took her we saw that her back was injured. But before this she was not like that. We asked her what happened, she said that the Police had beaten her up. We asked whether she went to the hospital she said she did not know but what she knew was that she was beaten up.

We washed her and dressed her and gave her our clothes. She slept and the following morning Captain Nel came. I showed Captain Nel that Sheila was beaten up and her gown had blood. Nel said that she must go to the hospital. We said that there should be someone to accompany her to hospital. Nel said that he would accompany her to hospital. After that she was given pills. We asked what for, but nobody told us, but we could see that these were pain tablets.

We tried to talk to ourselves because we wanted her to be treated. Nel said that she was going to be taken to hospital. Elda then left us. I then asked all the detainees to gather in a hall so that we can talk about this matter. We were taken to this hall, all of us, we explained to other detainees that Elda was very ill. When we came back Sheila was called and while we were still in our prison cell we could hear that Sheila was screaming. At the time Sheila was together with Mrs Bani. Mrs Bani could not even speak at that time. We heard that afterwards.

As Sheila has already said they went to Uitenhage hospital. In hospital the doctors said that Sheila you are going to be admitted. Sheila said that I am not sick, this woman is sick she has to be admitted, she was not speaking, she was not saying anything. They came back late and she was taken to a single cell, she was in a coma. Sheila asked Captain Nel that in prison as you said that - why are you keeping me with this person because she is in a coma and she could not speak. Sheila's health then deteriorated also.

Elda urinated herself and I was the one who was doing her washing. At the time, on the day of her death, in the morning I asked Captain Nel if I could wash Elda's clothes. He agreed and he brought me her clothes. But on this day I found out that Elda has vomited. I was very scared, I was confused, I did not know what was happening.

On the previous day Captain Nel came to our prison cell at night. He took Peti Rose Lungu, Namsa September and he left with them. We waited for these two but they did not come back. They came back in the morning. Peti Rose and Namsa September said that something has happened to Elda because they found out that there were men in Captain Nel's office and they asked them whether they knew Elda Bani, whether they knew what was wrong with Elda Bani, they had to answer all those questions. I asked why they left, why they were asking you these questions because they were supposed to ask us, I told them that something happened to Elda. They were scaring them. I could feel that something had happened to Elda.

In the morning I asked a prison warder for permission to go and see Captain Nel. He told me that Captain Nel was very busy. Sergeant Leech came, together with another policeman, but I've forgotten his name, I think he is preaching, they said that we have tried everything we could for Elda Bani's health but she has passed away. We asked where was she, in hospital or here in prison? They did not answer that question.

But what is important is that I asked to see Captain Nel. I said that we were going to have a prayer on behalf of Elda Bani. We met in one place as the detainees and we prayed for Elda Bani. We were then supposed to report to the township about this. As the detainees of Cell 14 we discussed what to do. I then said that comrades what we must do, when we are writing letters home we must tell these people. When we have a visitor you are going to talk Xhosa and you are going to report this matter to this person. We did this. Fortunately Mrs Fazi had a visitor, her daughter-in-law. We then reported this, and her daughter-in-law reported it to the township of the death of Elda Bani. We reported this to the Black Sash too. We then used the Black warders so they can investigate for us about the funeral arrangements. We called Captain Nel and we requested to have a service for Elda Bani in prison.

MS WILDSCHUT: Sorry, sorry before you go on to the funeral. Could we perhaps just clarify some of the - a bit of the story. While Mrs Bani was in the prison was she already on insulin, was she receiving insulin treatment before she came ...(intervention)

MS GCINA: No they did not give her this treatment.

MS WILDSCHUT: But before she was arrested she was receiving treatment?

MS GCINA: Yes she was. Before she was arrested she was being treated with insulin. She was given this treatment by her doctor outside. When she was arrested she took her treatment to prison and they took this treatment from her.

MS WILDSCHUT: Right. So she didn't receive any medication while she was in prison, no tablets no insulin injections?

MS GCINA: No she did not receive any treatment Honourable Commissioner. As a result we could see that she was just given aspirin.

MS WILDSCHUT: And the request from yourself and Mrs Lesani was that she should get a special diet and she never got that special diet is that so?

MS GCINA: No she did not get the special diet. We asked Sheila what she was supposed to get. She said that she was only getting a thigh and samp, mealie rice and samp only.

MS WILDSCHUT: When was the first time that she was seen - from the time of her arrest when was the first time that she was seen by any medical person be it a nurse or a doctor or somebody?

MS GCINA: When you are arrested, when you go to prison Commissioner, you would be taken to a doctor as a person who - Sheila was the person who saw her first. I am sure that a doctor examined her because it was the prison policy that when you are arrested you have to go and see a doctor. But I am sure it is Sheila who can say that because they were arrested on the 12th of June. They came to our cell on the 12th and after that she did not receive any treatment.

MS WILDSCHUT: You talked also about the fact that Captain Nel said that he was taking her to hospital, do you believe that she was taken to hospital, because it seems as though you were talking about her being very bruised when she came back from that visit somewhere?

MS GCINA: I didn't believe that she was taken to hospital. What I knew was that she would take her out of our cell to a single cell pretending to take her to hospital. When you are a detainee you would be taken by a prison warder to hospital so we were not aware of whether she was taken to hospital or not.

MS LESANI: I would also like to add something on this matter, the question of whether Bani was receiving treatment or not. When Bani arrived in prison she had her medicine with her. From a single cell, in Cell 2, she was receiving treatment. She was receiving insulin and I was helping her in that. But when we were taken to Cell 14 they said that she was well, she was not given any treatment, she was only given these pills.

MS WILDSCHUT: Thank you very much for your presentation to us today. I don't have any more questions, I will hand over to the Chair.

CHAIRPERSON: We thank you ladies. I am very interested in your story, and I am very pleased for what you have done for us, but I would like to ask my colleagues whether they have any further questions. Wendy?

DR WENDY ORR: Perhaps it's better that you don't answer this question now in terms of the legal implications, but if you do know the names of any of the doctors whom Elda saw we would be very grateful if you could give those names to us. And I would also like to point out that the doctor in charge of the district surgeoncy in Port Elizabeth at that time was Dr Ivor Lang, who was supposed to take overall responsibility for the health of all detainees and he has in fact been notified that he will be named at this hearing.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Any other? Would you like to add something? Ms Walaza.

MS WALAZA: I think like me I hope that - I am sure that you will all find this story remarkable, remarkable because of the strength of these women to fight the health care for one of their sisters. Remarkable because of the absolute intransigence of the authorities to provide adequate care for Elda Bani. And remarkable because of the way in which the forensic pathologist who conducted the post mortem failed to understand that Elda Bani's pulmonary embolism was most likely a result of being unconscious in a prison cell without adequate nursing care. And lastly remarkable because Elda Bani's death was probably preventable.

If we are to honour the testimony that we have heard today, and if we are to honour the memory of Elda Bani and thousands of other detainees, what steps can we take to ensure that there will never again be a situation where detainees die as a result of medical complicity?

As a group of health professionals committed to human rights we would like to suggest five measures. We ask the TRC to reopen the investigation into the medical care offered to Elda Bani and thousands of other detainees.

We ask the TRC to call upon the professional health organisation to hold their members accountable and possibly levy sanctions against those who participated in the death of Elda Bani, and who were complicit in the detention and torture of thousands of other activists.

We ask the TRC to facilitate reparations to the family of Elda Bani, not only from the President Reparations Fund but from the professional health organisations and their members.

We urge the TRC to recommend to government that the health care of detainees no longer be a matter of custodian care but of health care. That the responsibility be shifted from the Police and Prisons to the Department of Health where it rightly belongs.

And finally we ask the TRC to propose that the statutory council adopt new and forceable codes of conduct for health professionals working in prisons and police stations so that we can ensure that Elda Bani's death in detention was not in vain. And so that we can restore the honour of the caring profession which failed, not only this woman, but so many detainees and thousands of others.

Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much. I just want to express again a very deep, deep appreciation to yourselves, but particularly I want to pay a very warm tribute, it is inadequate but it is from the heart, to pay a warm tribute to you, our mothers, for the incredible resilience that you demonstrated. I have said before that the freedom that we gained would almost certainly have been impossible without the quite remarkable contribution of our women folk, and we have had here testimony again of just what wonderful people you and other women who suffered and paid a very, very heavy price.

And I would just hope, I mean that our children and others listening and hearing your story, reading about your story will realise that we have a very precious thing, bought at very, very great cost, this freedom, and that we will cherish it as a precious thing that it is. And for those who sometimes seek to take it for granted it will be salutary for them to know that they are free because of people such as yourselves. Thank you.

MS WALAZA: Thank you Commissioner. Dr Wendy Orr had a question and we did not answer this question, that who was the doctor responsible at this time. What happened in prison was that they were not called by their names. It was a tall doctor, a hefty tall doctor. If I am not mistaken it was Dr Rensburg, I am not sure. But what I knew in prison they were not referred by their appropriate names.

CHAIRPERSON: I think it's probably better to take what Dr Orr said, that we want to be quite certain, we don't want for you to implicate someone when we are not certain. I mean we want to be as certain as possible and not undermine or impugn somebody's integrity when it might not have been that person. You were saying it - thank you.

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SUBMISSION ON STEVE BIKO

DR WENDY ORR: It now gives me tremendous honour, and it is with great humility that I welcome Mrs Ntsiki Biko and Mr Kaya Biko, who is Steve Biko's brother, to these hearings. We are indeed most grateful to have you here, and the Archbishop and I will now come and greet you.

We now ask Professor Peter Folb, who is the head of the Department of Pharmacology at UCT to come forward to give a narrative account of the circumstances surrounding and following the death of Stephen Bantu Biko in detention and Advocate Denzil Potgieter will be facilitating his evidence.

ADV POTGIETER: Good morning Professor!

PROFESSOR FOLB: Good morning.

ADV POTGIETER: Welcome. I would ask you to take the oath first before we listen to your testimony. Could you give us your full names for the record.

PETER IAN FOLB: (duly sworn, states)

ADV POTGIETER: Thank you very much, you may be seated. Professor Folb you are a professor of Pharmacology at the University of Cape Town Medical School, is that correct?

PROFESSOR FOLB: Yes.

ADV POTGIETER: You are also the Chairperson of the South African Medicines Control Council is that correct?

PROFESSOR FOLB: Yes.

ADV POTGIETER: And you are also the Director of the World Health Organisations Collaborating Centre for Drug Policy?

PROFESSOR FOLB: Yes.

ADV POTGIETER: You have come to present testimony on a very well-known case, that of Mr Steve Biko, is that correct?

PROFESSOR FOLB: Yes.

ADV POTGIETER: I am going to ask you to take us through your testimony.

PROFESSOR FOLB: Honourable Commissioners, I am deeply moved to have this opportunity to make the submission to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the presence of Mrs Ntsiki Biko, the widow of Steve Biko, and Mr Kaya Biko, his brother.

My sole qualification for doing this is that, at the time, hundreds of students, colleagues, lawyers, clerics, journalists and international experts in ethics and medicine visited me to seek advice or make points and left with me, in the process, more than 2,000 documents relating to the death in detention of Steve Biko, which are now part of an archive that will form part of the proceedings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

The death in detention of Steve Biko and its aftermath ironically and tragically provided unique insight into what I shall refer.

I shall start by a short excerpt from the inquest into the death of Steve Biko.

"Mr Kentridge, for the family: In terms of the Hippocratic Oath to which I take it you've subscribed, are not the interests of your patient paramount?

District Surgeon: Yes.

Mr Kentridge: But in this instance they were subordinated to the interests of security? Is that a fair statement?

District Surgeon: Yes. I didn't know that in this particular situation one could override the decisions made by a responsible officer".

The narrative account is well-known to many if not all, and I shall repeat it only briefly.

The response of the South African Medical and Dental Council and the Medical Association of South Africa, representing the group interests of South African doctors was as follows:

The South African Medical and Dental Council took two-and-a-half years to respond. In a preliminary inquiry it was found that the doctors had no case to answer, not even the falsification of the medical record or the flagrant disregard of the patient's elementary needs. That decision was ratified, confirmed, by the full Council.

The Medical Association of South Africa, after perfunctory, superficial examination of the ethical issues declared that the South African Medical and Dental Council had been correct in its findings, and that doctors and others who thought differently were politically motivated.

The reversal of the South African Medical and Dental Council decision took years, and was the result of unremitting and determined efforts of Drs Ames, Veriatha(?), Jenkins, Mzimane, Wilson and Tobias.

Was this an aberration in an otherwise proud, if not excellent South African Medical profession, or was it inevitable? The truth is that it was the latter.

It was the culmination, as I have no doubt we shall hear -

- of apartheid discrimination in health facilities and provisions of care at all levels;

- salaries discrimination whereby doctors who were not White earned half of what White doctors did;

- conditions in South African jails and the hostile response, even of the medical profession, to colleagues who attempted to expose these;

- the lack of response to children in detention and their treatment;

- the failure of the medical profession to respond to the banning of colleagues such as Dr Hoffenberg and others;

- the lack of interest of the medical profession in corporal punishment;

- the lack of understanding or training in even the most elementary aspects of medical ethics, and the lack of support and special training of district surgeons and others working in prisons.

Steve Biko was a medical student and under ordinary circumstances he would today have been a practising doctor. His legacy to South African medicine has to be thoroughgoing correction of those issues in this story that might conceivably ever allow it to happen again.

I now wish to, in conclusion, address some personal words to the family of Steve Biko, his widow, brother and children, and to extend to them, as far as I am able, and on behalf of every doctor who feels this way, an apology, to state that this is an auspicious opportunity to do so. And to give you an undertaking that those ethical and human issues, neglected in the case of Steve Biko, will be remembered and continue to be addressed and corrected to the best of our abilities and to express, Mrs Biko and your family, our understanding of how, even until today, you must feel.

Mrs Biko I have composed, for this occasion, a short poem, a haiku which I dedicate to you and the family of Steve. It is my first haiku to have been translated into Xhosa. It reads as follows:

ADV POTGIETER: Thank you very much Professor. I must say that it is a well-known case but listening to the chronology and the sequence of events it still induces a very deep sense of shock if one listens to what has happened.

Perhaps just to draw your attention to one minor thing, you have started the sequence of events by incorrectly reflecting the date as the 19th of August 1997. I think you obviously meant 1977.

Now perhaps one other issue, even to a non-medical person, the conduct of these doctors in question here, I mean it's clearly unprofessional, at best for them negligent, but it had taken a considerable period of time for the professional bodies to take any action. In fact there has been suggestions that that was part of an attempted cover-up of what happened. Do you have any comment on that issue?

PROFESSOR FOLB: At a meeting held at the University of Cape Town with the Executive Committee of the Faculty of the University on the 27th of September 1980 four members of the Medical Association of South Africa, two of them now deceased, one of them, the President of the Association at the time, advised the Committee that, the University of Cape Town Committee, that MASA, the Medical Association, was under threat from the Department of Health should the Association in any way cast doubt publicly on the competence of the district surgeons and on the health service.

ADV POTGIETER: So it appears as if that influence, undue influence, also played a role it seems in the way in which this thing developed?

PROFESSOR FOLB: That was what was stated to us at the University of Cape Town when we called the Medical Association people to explain why it was that they had given unqualified support to the decision of the Medical Council that there had been no infringement of basic medical responsibility towards the patient.

ADV POTGIETER: And in your view that in itself an extraordinary conclusion by MASA?

PROFESSOR FOLB: My colleagues and I found that extraordinary, and as is known the Supreme Court, in due course, some years later, equally found it extraordinary of the Medical Council.

ADV POTGIETER: Thank you. Professor thank you very much. I don't have any further questions. I will hand back to the Chairperson.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much. Any further questions? Wendy.

DR WENDY ORR: Peter thank you very much, and I'd like to add my voice to yours in apologising to Mrs Biko and her family. Although I am very proud to be a doctor I can never listen to or read the chronology of Steve Biko's death without feeling a deep sense of shame.

And I do hope that one of the products of these hearings is that we will be able to overcome that shame and make sure that that never happens again.

I have had access to Steve Biko's files in the Department of Justice in Pretoria and I'd like to read, just very briefly, from a magistrate's report. It was the law at that stage that detainees had to be visited once a week by a magistrate to record any complaints. On the 2nd of September 1977 Steve Biko was visited by the magistrate and these were his complaints.

CHAIRPERSON: Pumla.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: Thank you Chairperson. Thank you Peter. I would like to greet Mrs Ntsiki Biko.

You mentioned in your submission the fact that you thought that the treatment of Steve Biko reflected apartheid discrimination, I think that actually it goes much deeper than that. I think it reflects a total subjugation of the Black body. The way Steve Biko was physically abused was as if he does not feel pain. The way we saw him in the photographs following his death, it was as if he did not feel pain, and one wonders at what point they were going to stop to abuse him. I think that that is the sadness in the relationship between the police and the people that they abused. They had no moral obligation on the people that they abused.

The sad thing about it is that he did not only have physical abuse visited upon him, he also had verbal abuse when, following his death, Kruger declared that he was not moved, his death left him cold. So it's this double violence over someone like him that left the country shocked. I am wondering to what extent did the treatment of Steve Biko, by the medical profession, set a trend for the way future detainees were treated by doctors?

PROFESSOR FOLB: The point about the death of Steve Biko and the subsequent inquest was, as I have mentioned, that it gave a unique insight into what happened to people. We cannot say how many times that story was repeated, one surmises that it was often.

CHAIRPERSON: Fazel Randera.

DR RANDERA: Peter I know we are going to have submissions from Medical Schools tomorrow but Cape Town is not featuring in that so I am going to take advantage of having you here today, and asking, you've mentioned already that there were hundreds of people who literally came to visit you at the time and subsequently, what changes, if any, did it bring about in the human rights and ethical teaching that took place at the University that you were present at?

PROFESSOR FOLB: The Universities, including our own, started from the position at that time of not teaching the students anything about ethics and their responsibilities to people such as prisoners, detainees, their rights and obligations with respect to the police and to the State and to interference by the State and the police. Insofar as that was the position there has been improvement since then.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much. I just want to say that whilst there is the horror that is evoked by hearing yet again what did take place, I want us also to take account of the stand that was made by people such as yourselves and others, and that we are this extraordinary mixture in this country, and the wonder is that the good has managed to prevail.

Whilst we mustn't engage in a great deal of self-congratulation I think it is a good thing to say yes, there was evil, there was all that was wrong, but that was not the only element in the story, and that it would be people like yourself and others of the same ilk who will help to ensure that we do get the kind of South Africa where this sort of thing doesn't happen again. That now your Medical Schools will have said that an important part of your syllabus is inculcating the culture of a respect for human rights and I am sure that that is happening, but that we need a great deal more than ever before, especially with a democracy that is still so fresh, we need those who will speak out when it is necessary to do so. And that we mustn't allow ourselves to be fobbed off with accusations of, oh you are being a racist or whatever, that we've got to say that we want to be able to stand upright and hold our heads high in this country, and want to know that those who are the custodians of this kind of thing are people who will in fact stand up and be ready to be counted and speak the truth without fear or favour. I salute you and your colleagues. Thank you.

DR WENDY ORR: While the Archbishop is greeting Professor Folb I just want to show you the number of messages of support we've received from around the world and I am going to try and read some of them over the next few days.

The first and perhaps the most important is from President Mandela himself. He sends his best wishes for the success and positive outcome of the hearings.

We have one from the Department of Psychology at the Orange Free State saying,

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SUBMISSION BY MILITARY MEDIC

DR WENDY ORR: I now call Sean Callaghan to give evidence. Sean thank you for being here, I know you have travelled all the way from Durban to be with us today. You and I have spoken before. This really is your story and I admire you tremendously for your courage in coming forward to tell it. You were a conscript in the South African Defence Force in 1982 and 1983 and served as a medic. Before you give your evidence I am going to ask you to take the oath or the affirmation, which would you prefer?

SEAN MARK CALLAGHAN: (sworn states)

DR WENDY ORR: Sean please go ahead and tell us your story in your own words.

MR S CALLAGHAN: I am glad that you made a slip because at least it calmed my nerves slightly.

I want to really touch on two main issues today. Firstly my experience as a medic in the South African Defence Force, and secondly my struggle against post-traumatic stress for the ten years after that.

I was 15 years old in Standard 9 when I was asked to sign all the papers for military conscription, and part of the questions which I had to fill in was which unit would you like to serve in and why would you like to serve there? I put down that I would like to be a medic, and my reasoning was I would like to help people rather than kill them. That was the motivation from which really most of my life was going and from which in January 1982 I got on a train for Potchefstroom.

I spent three months in Potchefstroom learning how to march in a straight line, learning how to shoot at the target and things like that.

I was then sent to Pretoria for a further six months of training to become an operational medic. During that time I learnt as much as I could about pharmacology, about trauma, about casualty, about nursing, everything from how to make a bed with square corners through to what do you do when a patient had a rocket through the middle of their chest.

During that time, the first time I ever put a stitch into a person, or the first time I ever gave anybody an injection was at Tembisa Hospital. As medics we were sent there on Friday and Saturday evenings to practice on people because quite frankly it didn't matter if we made a mistake because they were Black people, and many mistakes were made. Certainly we weren't asked to practice at 1 Military Hospital. At 1 Military Hospital we learnt how to make beds and how to give pills to people and things like that.

The first time I ever put a drip up successfully was actually in Angola when I was confronted with a patient because up until then I was too scared to practice on my friends because they would have to practice on me.

In essence after nine months of training and really six months of medical training I was posted to Oshakati in Northern Namibia where I worked at the Oshakati Hospital which at that stage was the main casualty evacuation hospital. I spent 13 months in South West Africa and Angola as a medic.

All of us who left Pretoria went through Grootfontein and there we were divided amongst the various units, amongst the various hospitals. Some of the people who went with us were sent straight to Unita, to be medics for Unita, particularly one chap who used to sleep in the bed next to me in Pretoria, and when we all came back 13 months later he didn't come back and I still to this day wonder what happened to him.

Nobody in my family has ever died. All my grandparents are still there. My parents are still there, my brothers, sisters, my cousins. I've never been to a funeral. In fact I've been to a colleagues funeral subsequent to going to the army. I've never seen a dead person until I was in the army.

My first night in Oshakati I was supposed to go on duty and happened to be at a music concert which had come to town, and heard helicopters come over and from the stage they said any medical personnel please go back to the hospital, which I ignored, and a few minutes later, anybody with B-negative blood please go back to the hospital, and being a medic and having B-negative blood I thought well now I've been called twice I had better go back, to be confronted with a patient who had no arms and no legs, was blind and was deaf, who had been in a mortar pit launching 80mm mortars when one of them exploded in the pipe, that was the first patient I ever saw in the operational area.

Right there and then I realised that as an 18 year-old I am not going to be able to handle this after six months of training, and right there and then I decided that the only way to cope with the situation was to switch off my emotions immediately, not to feel anything for anybody, not to try and fit into any kind of humane circumstance but just to be a cold machine that did what I was trained to do.

Most of the patients that came through Oshakati Hospital were Black. Most of them were 32 Battalion. Most of them came out of Angola. I would say that on average there probably were ten patients that were very seriously injured that were flown in every day. One or two of those dying every day. If you look at the official statistics you will see that the Angolan/Namibian war cost South Africa 250 odd people which flies right in the face of what I saw. And when I asked who are those 250 odd people they were White national servicemen. We never counted, seemingly, any of the mercenary troops, any of the Black troops, again because they weren't really there, and they weren't really official.

There were 10 to 20 medics at that Oshakati Hospital, maybe four doctors, one surgeon, one anaesthetist. The surgeons and anaesthetists used to come in on a weekly or two-weekly basis. We had two theatres and it was pretty much get in and do what you could. If you had 20 patients come in from a landmine explosion there weren't enough of you, and there certainly weren't enough doctors or surgeons to go around and it was a matter of get in and do your thing and hope for the best that you are actually going to be able to save some of these patients. Doctors became surgeons and anaesthetists, medics became doctors. Schedule 7 drugs were, well we think this will work so let's put it in and hope for the best. I must say that I think we did pretty well for the little group that we were, but we could have done a lot better if we had had more personnel.

During December/January 1982 I had been in the operational area now for three/four months and many people had been there for many, many more months. Again I would guess that there must have been about ten suicides that I heard about in the operational area during that Christmas time, national servicemen who couldn't take it. They were away from their loved ones, and they in a sense couldn't take the pressure and they shot themselves.

In January or February 1983 I was posted to Onjiva which is maybe 50 kilometres inside Angola. It was a 32 Battalion and Unita base at the time. I specifically remember going there because I specifically remember Pik Botha saying on television that we weren't in Angola at the time and there I was.

One of the operations which was being run out of that base was the resident doctor ran a little clinic under a tree outside the base for the local population and we did everything from give-away vitamin pills and aspirin for toothache, through to anything that we could possibly try and treat. The Military had a term for it, it was called COMOPS, Community Operations, basically trying to win hearts and minds, make them feel like we were the good guys.

While we were there the International Red Cross, who were based in the town of Onjiva brought a woman to us who had breast cancer and asked us if there was any way that we could possibly arrange for her transport to South Africa for treatment. When the doctor and I took this back to the base commander we were severely reprimanded because we had spoken to the Red Cross, because quite frankly we weren't in Angola so how could we be there to talk to them. Any acknowledgment of our presence would have meant an acknowledgement of troops being there and therefore any treatment for this woman would have meant that the only way we could have treated her was if we were actually there.

Another one of the patients who came into the base while I was in Onjiva was a young White South African conscript who shot himself in the foot while on guard duty in an attempt to get out, and that was quite a good way of getting out because he couldn't walk around and fight anymore, so he was obviously sent home. I am not sure whether his foot was saved but it was, in his mind, better than being there. At that stage there was no doctor in the base, there was me and me alone. I treated him with as much morphine as I could possibly get into his body every few hours and flew him out the next morning.

A few days later the new doctor arrived and as he arrived I got a message to say that a number of 32 Battalion members had been involved in quite a serious contact and that the helicopter that dropped him off would be going straight on to pick up those patients and were coming back to pick us up to fly us back to Oshakati with these patients. We identified blood groups and drew as much blood as we possibly could from the people in the base. I essentially told the doctor, put your kit down and get ready we are getting back on the helicopter.

We were presented with two patients, one who had shrapnel wounds covering his body and certainly looked like the worse off of the two. Another complained of chest pain in his lower right chest and had lacerations on the top of his left shoulder. It was pretty obvious that he had internal bleeding within his chest cavity and we put in a chest drain and he pumped out 1.5 litres of blood and we thought okay, probably what we have done is chopped open an artery and let's hope like hell that he actually survives the airplane flight. What we didn't realise is that he had a live rifle grenade stuck in his chest. It was an anti-tank grenade which had flown through the air and hit him in the top of his shoulder and lodged against the ribs, at the bottom of his chest, and 30cms of bomb were sitting inside of him. We happily unloaded him at Oshakati and when they took him into X-rays they immediately cleared out the hospital and the operating theatre and brought in the bomb squad to actually remove the bomb out of the man's chest.

Later in February I went back to Oshakati and back to the Hospital and one Wednesday evening a helicopter came in with four patients who had been in a Buffel that had driven over a double landmine. The landmine had blown a core through the middle of the diesel tanks of the Buffel and sprayed burning diesel all over the people inside. Those that came to us, the four that came to us were essentially 90% third degree burns and I landed up treating one of the patients, giving him a mixture of valium and morphine, dressing his wounds ready to send him to Pretoria, and he was still conscious and he pulled out of his pocket a photograph of his girlfriend and he said to me I'm really glad I've been injured because I'm going to go home and I'm going to see her. I didn't know what to say to him because I knew that he wasn't going to actually live through the night. He wasn't going to get on the airplane, and yet nothing had prepared me to counsel him, to talk him through that, and I just said, that's great, she's very pretty. That night I took off my clothes, which at that stage smelt like burnt flesh, and threw them in the corner of my room, and the next morning went through to Ondangwa Air Force Base where the remains of the other six people who were in the Buffel were brought in. Essentially there were about 20 pieces on the table. Nobody knew which piece fitted with which piece, which piece belonged to which name, and most of the pieces were contorted from the heat. They were burnt black to the bone. Eventually all we did we put the pieces into six body bags and put them into coffins and put big labels on to say don't let the parents have a look at this and sent them back to South Africa.

That night again I threw my clothes in the corner of the room and the next evening I started having nightmares about that incident. My room stank like burnt flesh for weeks afterwards. The only way that I dealt with the nightmares was that I just didn't sleep for about three days and then they seemed to go away.

While I was also at Oshakati we had at least one SWAPO patient who was chained to his bed. The thing that surprised me about him was how dignified and intelligent he was, because I was taught that he would be this uncouth animal. He spoke Afrikaans, he read Huisgenoot, he asked me where I came from, I told him a small town in the Eastern Cape and he said Port Elizabeth or East London? He obviously knew a lot more about my situation than I knew about his.

While at Oshakati there were a number of gay medics who would sexually harass patients and which many of us knew about but there was absolutely nothing we could do about it.

Having been there for six months four of us were asked to go and join Koevoet, to be medical personnel to Koevoet. All we knew about Koevoet was they were the guys who didn't strap themselves into casspirs where the rest of us had to. They were the people who drove down the middle of the road, even if there was a landmine there, not through the middle of the trees and bushes, and they were the guys who drank beers while sitting on top of casspirs instead of drinking water while on patrol. And in a sense that was something which was quite attractive to 18 year-old boys who were living under military rules and military regime.

We cashed in our browns for camouflage uniforms, we let our hair grow long and four us went and worked with Koevoet for a further seven months.

I was seconded to the Koevoet team Zulu India led by Marius, I cannot remember his surname, and second in command John Deegan, with probably about 50 Black, many ex-SWAPO combatants with us. I stayed at the base, Onamwandi, which was next door to the main Koevoet base which was a prisoner of war camp, for those prisoners which Koevoet members caught.

The procedure at the camp was that those who were captured were brought back to solitary confinement until they were prepared to sign application forms to join the South African Police or the South West African Police which immediately mean that they weren't prisoners of war anymore and therefore the Red Cross couldn't touch them. There must have been a couple of hundred prisoners of war who stayed in that camp while I was there, and one of the big questions that still remains in my mind is what happened to those people when we pulled out of Namibia, because certainly we wouldn't have declared them. My gut feeling is that when Koevoet broke the UN ceasefire in 1989 that that was a good time to assassinate all of those prisoners of war.

Koevoet worked on a bounty policy where anything and everything that you brought in had a price on its head. People somewhere around R2,000, large calibre mortars probably a bit more, landmines slightly less and so on, which was a great motivating factor for the combatants and the teams because you could earn double, triple your money. It also meant that score boards were kept and that the teams competed against each other for the most number of kills in a given week in the bush.

During this time I went home on leave probably for the first time since I had left Pretoria. I had long scruffy hair, I had a scruffy beard, I wore camouflage uniforms and when I arrived at Port Elizabeth airport my mother ran away from me because she couldn't believe what she saw.

While I was on leave my unit, Zulu India, was involved in an ambush and the casspir which I would have been in, and the place where I would have been sitting, my replacement had his legs blown off.

I had applied for Medical School and Wits had offered me, well had got me as far as interviews and I went for an interview with Wits Medical School during this leave and said to them I don't want to be a doctor anymore, not after what I've seen. I went off and applied for Computer Science at the University of Port Elizabeth.

While at Koevoet I was involved in clashes with SWAPO, probably every week that I was in the bush. One of the first ones was a situation where we were driving down the tar road back to Oshakati and a number of SWAPO personnel were drinking at a shebeen on the side of the road and we turned off, it was just dusk, we turned off straight, driving straight towards them and one of them managed to shoot a rocket grenade right into the middle of our engine and we were stuck in the middle of this clearing. I remember pushing my rifle out of the gun port and pulling the trigger not knowing what I was shooting at and not knowing what was happening for the next five or so minutes. There were just loud bangs, flashes of lighters, rockets flew by as anyone and everyone shot anything that they could out of the holes in the casspir.

At the end of it I realised that I hadn't shot a single shot because my rifle had jammed right there and then. I was so angry that somebody had tried to kill me, the fact that I had been part of a team that tried to kill them hadn't really entered my mind, and I stood up on top of the casspir and there was one insurgent who had died in that conflict and I shot his dead body, in a sense to get rid of the anger within me.

Later that night I had diarrhoea, I was vomiting, I just had a complete physical reaction to that whole situation and everybody laughed at me, everybody in the team, they said don't worry it happened to all of us the first time, but you'll get used to it. From then on I carried an AK47 not an R1 because I knew that maybe it wouldn't jam the next time.

Another incident which I specifically remember while with Koevoet was two SWAPO members who were captured at the beginning of the week that we were in the bush and they were interrogated, they were shocked with telephone winders on their genitals in order to get as much information out of them as possible. The unit commander used torture to get information so that we could find other SWAPO members, so that we could find other arms caches, because all of that meant money.

At the end of the week they were told to dig graves and they were shot and left in those graves. I always wondered why they weren't just taken in, but maybe it was because they were shot at point-blank range and somebody would have noticed.

Every time there was a contact bodies were tied to the casspirs' bumpers, to the mudguards, to the spare wheels and we drove around for a week maybe with those bodies tied there, through dense bush, the skin being ripped off of those bodies. Really, for two reasons, one, it intimidated anybody and everybody that saw us, and two, those bodies represented money and those faces represented a command structure that was being put together in the prisoner of war camp, and those bodies were shown to prisoners of war to say who was this, where did he fit into the structure.

Once we picked up a spoor and chased a political commissar for two days. We chased him relentlessly towards the tar road knowing that if he managed to get to the tar road before us he would probably be able to avoid us and we would probably lose the track. There were 50 of us in casspirs with canons and rifles and enough ammunition that five casspirs can carry, and food, chasing one person running with an AK47. That was pretty normal for Koevoet, they did that all the time.

Eventually we did catch up with him two days later. He was hiding in a kraal. My unit commander, second in command, because the unit commander was on leave, John Deegan chased everybody out of that kraal and of course he stayed hiding in the hut. He lined up a bunch of Koevoet members on the one side of the hut and drove over the hut with a casspir. Everybody then fired into the rubble and they pulled out the political commissar who was then handed over to me, as the medic, to treat. He had been shot in the arms and the legs. He'd been ridden over by a casspir. I immediately started applying bandages, putting up a drip. At the same time John Deegan was interrogating him, because as a political commissar he would have been carrying a handgun. His handgun couldn't be found and I guess that John wanted it for his personal collection. While putting up a drip John got so frustrated that eventually he shot the patient while I was working on him, through the head. That patient was just then somebody who got tied to the bumper of the casspir.

I've met up with John earlier this year to try and understand why he did that and how that affected him. I went to visit him in Johannesburg. He still wears camouflage uniforms, the room where he was living was covered with camouflage netting, he's dropped out of society, he's on drugs, he's an alcoholic and he tells me that it was all because of that day and what he did, and that he completely lost it, and that 15 years later he's still carrying that incident with him.

A couple of weeks later I was at the Koevoet base and was called into the detention cells where I was presented with a patient who had been tortured by pouring boiling water over his chest and genitals and he had welts and burns all down his front. I was completely incompetent and unable to treat him and went and called a doctor from the local hospital. And essentially was told you don't tell anybody about this, this never happened, he wasn't a SWAPO member, he was just a member of the public, but we made a mistake. Make him go away in a sense. I don't have any idea what happened to him because I handed him over to the doctor.

While I was still at - my last month or so there, one of the Koevoet unit commanders was killed in a road accident. Basically the rest of the White Koevoet police members went on a complete rampage. They threw handgrenades at each other. They fired AK47's. They essentially demolished their whole base camp over the death of one of their members. Again, as I look back at that I start to understand the trauma that they were going through because of the things that they were doing. As medics we had unlimited access to schedule 7 drugs. We were given ampules of morphine, Sosegon(?), and if you are on patrol and if you drop an ampoule of morphine you didn't have to account for it as much as if you were in base camp and opened an ampoule of morphine and injected it into yourself, you didn't have to account for it. And in a sense many of my friends were either complete alcoholics or abuses of schedule 7.

I remember sitting up one night waiting for a friend of mine to die because he had injected himself with a mixture of two ampules of morphine and an ampoule of valium directly into his arm. He didn't die but I certainly thought he was going to die.

Around that same time I remember phoning my mother and telling her that I wasn't sure if we were going to actually survive the night because we had got to the point of being completely suicidal. We had come to the end of our tether. We had been involved in that kind of thing, seeing patients, seeing people being killed for 12 months already and all because I wanted to go and heal people and not kill them. And we went to go and see the local psychiatrist who was resident in Oshakati and the Major in charge of South African Medical Services up there, and we were basically told to grow up and carry on and there was nothing wrong with us. Eventually we did get out.

A bunch of new recruits arrived. I happened to recognise one of them from school, got him and three of his friends, I said you are not going there and the four of us got on the same plane and left town, and a week or so later we arrived back in Pretoria with everybody else. That was November 1983.

In theory we should have had 50 odd days leave due to us because we were promised one day of leave for every weekend that we spent in the operational area, and with only 20 something days left until the end of our military service we all expected to go home. Instead we stayed in Pretoria, had no leave and built a bar for the officers. There was no de-briefing, there was no "what happened to you"? There was no, "this is what you can expect when you go home"; "this is how you should try and integrate yourself back into society".

I do remember a letter, I think being sent to our parents, with 10 points on it saying something like, you had better lock your alcohol and your young girls away because these young boys are coming back home. But that was the extent of the support that we got.

I went home and I had heard about things like "bossies" and so on, not understanding what it was. I was hyper-vigilant. I was having screaming nightmares every night for at least six months. I was very anti-establishment, anti-social, I was cold. Whenever I heard a loud noise I would dive to the ground. When I heard helicopters I would look for somewhere to hide. I used to wear camouflage uniforms because I had brought a whole box of memorabilia home with me and every time I went hiking with some friends in the Wilderness I would put on my camouflage uniforms. I remember going to see a film with my father and a helicopter came flying over in the film and a gunshot went off and I dived under the theatre seats.

Eventually I learnt the avoidance tactics. Eventually I learnt that I don't go and see these kind of films, I make sure that I don't go into those kind of places, I learnt how to cope with what I later became to understand it was post-traumatic distress order.

In 1989 I had quite a good breakthrough, which was seven years after being in Angola, and I made a bonfire in the back garden and took all that memorabilia and burnt it and marched around and sang songs and my parents and my sister were crying thinking that I had gone completely mad having watched me deal with this unknown thing for seven years and then seeing this. That brought some relief.

And then at the end of 1990, the beginning of 1991 the Gulf War started and CNN carried the feed for 24 hours a day and I happened to live in an area of Johannesburg at that time where I was able to receive CNN feed and got completely addicted to CNN, completely addicted to the Gulf War. And once again all the nightmares came back, but by this stage they had been distorted completely out of reality. The recurring nightmare at that stage was a swimming pool full of blood and helicopters landing in the back garden and me carrying patients from the helicopter in my bedroom to treat them. Waking my house mates up night after night with this nightmare.

I eventually, during the Easter of '91, went to go and seek psychiatric help from a private psychiatrist who immediately diagnosed me with post-traumatic stress disorder. I couldn't afford to see a psychiatrist so he made a plan for me to go and receive treatment at 1 Military Hospital.

I was there over the period of Easter '91 and during that time I saw a psychiatrist for about three hours in about ten days, at the end of which he declared me fit for battle and sent me home and that there was nothing wrong with me. The point was that I wasn't fit to be a father and I wasn't fit to be a husband, but I was certainly fit to pull the trigger of a gun.

For the rest of '91 and '92 I had to seek out my own counselling. I had to go to friends, I had to go to church, I had to go to anybody that could help me. By '94 I was offered an opportunity to go back to Oshakati by a journalist who would write a story about me and I turned her down purely because I couldn't face the ghosts that still lived there.

In '91, '92 I remember going to see the film, "For the Boys", by Bette Midler and I remember coming home crying and not wanting to sleep all night again because of the nightmares. And that was after my treatment and after my counselling.

Essentially I think I am pretty healed. I think I have come to a point of being whole. I have my emotions back. I am a father. I am a husband and I can do those things pretty well, but no thanks to the SANDF or the SADF for helping me.

I think as a last point the question remains in my mind, what can the Commission do for other people like me? Every South African family, be they Black or White, has been involved in a conflict, and if statistics are anything to go by that means that there are a few million of me walking around who haven't dealt with their post-traumatic stress. I don't know how the Commission can help set up some kind of counselling for those people, but if the Commission can't I don't know if anybody can. And I am not sure that many of them would even be willing to come to the Commission or to counselling purely because they are South African men and we don't cry.

And secondly, I think maybe we can take a lesson from the vets of Vietnam. Maybe we need to build some kind of a memorial where we can go and have our time of mourning. Some place where maybe the names that you are collating as a Commission of everybody who has died in this conflict, from all sides, are put up on that wall, so that all of us can go together and touch something, something tangible that says it's over, and something that says it was this big, and something that says it was important enough for us to be healed from it.

DR WENDY ORR: Sean thank you very much. You have shared with us a story of multiple abuses, a young boy really being sent into a situation which he wasn't prepared for; being faced with the most horrendous pain, suffering, injuries; being forced to carry arms when in fact you were someone who wanted to heal and not to kill. And finally the lack of acknowledgement of the pain and trauma that you went through. And I know you have travelled a very, very long journey since 1983 to come here today, and I want to say thank you very much for sharing this with us.

I hand you over to the Chair.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Pumla Gobodo.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: Thank you God and thank you Sean. I think your experiences you've shared with us are a very painful example of the incredible suffering that young White men are carrying around themselves in this country. Unfortunately it's very much an untold story. No-one knows about the suffering you and people like yourselves have gone through because of the symbol of the South African Defence Force in those years. Unfortunately the country looks at those people as people who were fighting on the side of apartheid without realising what you had to go through to put yourselves in a situation that you were forced to be in.

I was listening to you as you were recounting the changes that you went through. You went in, you wanted to prevent death and to protect life, and you were confronted with the reality of the situation where in fact you had to be faced with death and brutal death for that matter, and you had to switch off your emotions.

Now I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about this strategy of switching off? I imagine that it was in the interests of the army officials that many of you switched-off, how did the army encourage this switching-off?

MR S CALLAGHAN: The military training which every White South African who was conscripted went through essentially was designed to break the individual and make them part of a whole, to break any individual spirit and to make you part of a unit, which in a sense is understandable in one point of view from a war perspective, but not acceptable from a human perspective. I think the simple lack of acknowledgement, the simple lack of any support, any acknowledgement that seeing that first patient might have been traumatic for me, or seeing those kinds of patients every day might have been abnormal; the simple lack of any kind of focus groups or any kind of support groups or anything when we came home, any material, that in itself constituted a strategy which de-humanised us in a sense.

I don't specifically remember saying to myself one day I've got to stop feeling about these things. All I know is that as I look back I got to the point where I had to cope with the situation I was in and the only way to cope was to feel nothing. The problem really became, once I was out of that situation I still felt nothing, I didn't know how to express any positive emotion. I didn't know how to love or how to be happy, or how to experience joy or any of - the only, in fact even an emotion like anger I didn't know how to direct it other than through a violent reaction to it. And that is really what took me 10 years, 15 years to undo, was that searing which took place in a sense.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: Sean I am going to ask you a little bit about what happened in Tembisa. Thank you for that explanation.

When you went into Tembisa Hospital as medics, what kind of official arrangements were there for you?

In other words was the superintendent aware that you were not doctors?

Was there a standing policy about medics, military medics coming to practice on patients? Can you tell us a little bit about that.

MR S CALLAGHAN: It was a standing procedure I would guess that often Wednesday nights, Friday nights, Saturday nights, medics in training went to both Tembisa Hospital and the hospital at Attridgeville. It was an accepted norm. There was no, what are you doing here? Why are you here?

The doctors were very obviously briefed to train us, to help us, to help us understand how you inject a wound before you stitch, how you stitch these kinds of wounds, how you inject, where you inject, why you inject, those kind of things. We learnt "on the job training" in a sense.

We worked together with civilian doctors, civilian nurses who worked in those institutions. We were catered for at lunch times or at supper times in the canteen. We were part of the establishment.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: Thank you Sean.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much. I can only say that one is so very aware, listening to your testimony, to the high price that has had to be paid especially by our young people to get us where we have got to. And I hope that we might be able to encourage the faith communities to take, as a particular part of their share of this healing, the sort-of credicur(?) that you were expressing in that people came back and did not have the facilities. I hope that as people read about and hear testimony such as yours that it will urge, especially the faith communities, to take this up as a very serious task.

But we must keep remembering that casualties were on all sides, and that the healing, if it is going to happen, is a healing that must embrace all of us in this traumatised, this deeply wounded people. And sometimes they speak of the wounded healers, that those of you who have been through and come through the other side might also be able to assist your comrades and help them perhaps to come through to the point which you have reached.

But we want to thank you for your courage in coming forward and enabling us to tell as full a story as possible, be able to give as full, as complete a picture as possible of the human rights violations that have happened. And that people walking the streets of our cities and our villages look whole and perhaps not very many of us are whole.

Thank you.

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MANIPULATION OF FORENSIC EVIDENCE

DR WENDY ORR: We are now going to move on to Dr David Klatzow's evidence because two of our colleagues have had to leave for a meeting with the Department of Justice, so we will return to the witnesses whose evidence they will facilitate after lunch. Dr Klatzow will you please come up to the table. Advocate Denzil Potgieter is going to facilitate your evidence.

ADV POTGIETER: Thank you Wendy.

ADV VAN ZYL: Advocate Potgieter may I at this stage please intervene with your permission. My name is Van Zyl, I appear on behalf of certain clients, including General Lothar Neethling. As I understand the notice that had been given to him in terms of Section 30 of the Act his name, or he himself might be implicated during the evidence of Dr Klatzow. If not so, if you indicate to the contrary then I will accept that, if not, then I am unfortunately then in a position that I have to then raise certain matters with you. If he's not going to be implicated by this witness then of course this issue is settled.

ADV POTGIETER: Yes thank you Mr van Zyl. I am told that Dr Klatzow won't be referring to any individuals in his testimony.

ADV VAN ZYL: Thank you.

ADV POTGIETER: Thank you. Okay.

CHAIRPERSON: You have no objection!! (General laughter)

ADV POTGIETER: Thank you. Dr Klatzow I am going to ask you just to take the oath. Your full names for the record.

DAVID JOSEPH KLATZOW: (sworn states)

ADV POTGIETER: Thank you. Please be seated. You will in your testimony give an account of your personal experience as a forensic scientist and you will also be referring to some cases which illustrate the way in which forensic science has failed in its professional duty to serve the community as you indicate. I am going to ask you to please just proceed and present that testimony to us, Dr Klatzow.

DR KLATZOW: Mr Commissioner, thank you for the opportunity of allowing me to address the Commission. It has been a deeply humbling experience to hear this morning the testimony of others who have clearly suffered far more than I have suffered, which is not at all. The work which I have done seems so minimal in relation to what I hear before me this morning.

But in a small way I would like to make this offering to show you what was done and in a way, almost as a cathartic experience for myself to get rid of some of the anger of the things that have happened in the past and which I may well not have done enough to prevent their happening.

This submission has been the end process of a great deal of thought, extending over many years and after much consideration I have decided to mention the broad topics and to avoid the mention of names. I don't have to expand on the fact that the mentioning of names has created, or the thought that there might have been mentioning of names, has created a great deal of agitation, as was evidenced by that worthy gentleman's submission a few seconds before I gave evidence. But the persons and people that I will be referring to, in any event, know just who they are. And as the purpose of this Commission and this hearing is above all reconciliation I cannot see any good that will come out of the names being mentioned. They will, in any event, give rise to a welter of accusations, denials and counter-accusations would, in my view, obscure the true point of my submission.

This is, in essence, to make the community at large and the legislators aware, and as much as I can do in my small part, of the way in which forensic science failed the community that it was bounden to serve, and how these failures resulted in the eventual support of the evils of the system which are now coming to the public attention, largely as a result of the efforts of the TRC.

It should be explained that forensic science is the parent discipline and may be divided into a number of sub-specialities, forensic medicine being one of these, as are blood grouping, forensic blood grouping, serology, DNA testing, ballistics, fire investigation and a host of other specialities. And they have in common, all of them, one thing, they are all subject to the laws of science and these laws are flouted at some considerable peril, as I can give evidence on from bitter personal experience.

It's impossible to separate out the different categories of forensic science into watertight compartments as they all function together in the judicial system, and the inter-linkages were so intimate as to make the task of separating them both unfruitful and illogical.

A forensic post mortem would have several of the other specialities involved in it, and for instance there was no point in taking a bullet out of a deceased unless it was subjected to other forensic tests, and the whole system was coordinated to form a coherent end point.

In each category, and my submission is about forensic science in general, including forensic medicine, in each category the system failed to deliver an impartial service to the community. Each part of the system became so integrally part of the police, and they in turn were such an integral part of the system of repression that eventually the whole forensic science service came to be part of that repressive and shameful system that was apartheid.

I would like to illustrate from cases in which I have been personally involved just some of the points made so far.

When I first went into practice in 1984 I spent some time attempting to get the State to alter the way in which blood was taken for the analysis of blood alcohol, and after some correspondence with the Deputy Attorney General in Johannesburg, and a string of acquittals the system was changed to that which I had advised all along. The nett effect of all of this was to make me a set of extraordinary vituperative enemies in the forensic science service countrywide.

I vividly remember one of the pathologists from the State Mortuary in Johannesburg relaying the comments of a senior member of that laboratory after he, the pathologist, had been observed in conversation with me. "Don't" said the senior man, "speak to that bastard, the State are gunning for him". That's as it was to be for some time.

I failed to see the reason for this attitude, but even more so I failed to see and understand why that senior man, who made that comment, failed to recuse himself from a matter in which I was giving evidence and in which he was sitting as an assessor.

In addition that same man, vigorously over the years, opposed any efforts on my part, ever, to obtain first-hand evidence from any post mortems that were done under his control in various fields of interest to me. And if there was ballistic evidence to be had I was excluded on the grounds that I was not medically qualified, and that only medically qualified people were allowed to attend medico-legal post mortems. There were many others who attended post mortems at this time who were not registered with the Medical and Dental Council.

And the failure of the State pathologists to allow the family proper representation and proper expert assistance for the pathologists who did get into the post mortems on behalf of the family always put the deceased's family at a disadvantage and made the work for the family representatives very difficult indeed.

An example of this was during the middle eighties when in Natal a police constable was shot dead by his colleagues under very questionable circumstances. The State pathologist who was in charge of the post mortem simply refused me access to the post mortem and went out of his way to hinder the appointment of a pathologist for the family. At the time he was unwilling to delay his post mortem to allow for the travel arrangements of the family pathologist, and every possible obstacle was put in my way, to the point where the State pathologist made insulting and derogatory comments about the experience of the family pathologist.

By the time that we eventually got representation at the post mortem, by the time the post mortem was done, and by the time we could get our pathologist in at the same time as it were, but it was later in the day, the car had been hosed down, in which the shooting had taken place, and vital evidence appeared to have been destroyed forever.

During the Ashley Kriel inquest one of the State pathologists sat on the bench as an assessor and this particular individual had occupied a chair in forensic medicine at one of our universities and thus I would have expected him to have more than a nodding acquaintance with research methodology and experimental design, and this was not shown to be the case in the subsequent enquiry.

The facts, as I am sure you will well know, are briefly as follows. Informers had led the police to a house where Ashley Kriel was staying, and when an arrest was attempted Kriel allegedly produced a pistol and during the scuffle he got shot in the back with his own pistol and died on the spot.

It became crucial to estimate the distance between the muzzle of the weapon and the body at the time of discharge. Kriel was wearing a tracksuit top and a T-shirt, and the bullet traversed both sets of clothing to inflict a fatal wound in the heart. There were certain stigmata on the body which suggested that the wound was a close-contact shot and thus supported the police version.

However, the hole in Kriel's clothing through which the bullet had passed was small, it was indeed calibre size, and this was inexplicable because when a weapon is placed up against clothing and discharged under the conditions that were described it invariably tore a large rent in the clothing as a result of the hot gases which emanate from the muzzle of the weapon. The hole in Kriel's clothing clearly did not fit this, and was extremely perturbing to me. The State were also clearly perturbed by the findings and sent their ballistics expert to perform exhaustive tests, 200 shots were fired.

The exact words used by this expert at the inquest are reproduced here because they give much more meaning and substance to my views than anything that I could say. I want to quote from page 171 of the transcript of the inquest and the syntax is not mine.

The forensic individual goes on to say,

We have further revelation from this so-called expert on page 199.

This evidence, if one can call it that, was given before one of the forensic science doyens. It was given in front of a magistrate, and nowhere in the subsequent judgment or in the subsequent questioning is a single question raised about this nonsense.

I would like to make the following comments about this and to say what I see the experimental as it was for this expert.

That the distance was of considerable relevance was clear, otherwise neither I nor the State would have expended so much energy on the issue. It's quite clear that the Court and the police expert had a problem with this hole in Kriel's clothing.

The Court itself became involved in this, and clearly after I had challenged the Police expert on the nature of his tests and the lack of any controlled evidence, the Assessor and the Court clearly didn't understand what was meant by control. Because the last question asked to me by the Court in this was quite illuminating. This question was,

It's interesting now to read the judgment in that case, where the Court, presumably with the concurrence of the Assessor makes the following finding on page 10, line 12.

This should be compared with the passage supra in line 28, line 30 where I say it's very difficult to argue with this kind of finding, plucked out of the air and supported by no evidence. The Police had a problem, namely with a contact shot, no tests that they produced could support their position, and in order to sustain their version they had to falsify the experimental design and this was done without a murmur from the assessor and indeed with the active connivance of the Bench. When the Magistrate pulled the legal rabbit of the particular nonsense about the torn edges of the wound out of the hat, there was nothing that anybody could do about it.

It just shows what anybody who opposed the State were up against in those dark days.

And one is reminded of that hard-pressed advocate of Louis XVI who commented wryly when he came to court to seek judges, and he said "I found only prosecutors."

There were many other problems with the marks on Ashley Kriel's body. The angle of the burn was incompatible with the angle of the pattern on the skin. The size of the mark should have been smaller than were measured. There were many. They were none of them commented on. And there was bland evidence put before the Court in order to exonerate the Police position.

We must remember that the weapon used in this killing was at the very lowest end of power of firearms. It was a calibre .22 automatic pistol. And we must consider this piece of evidence when we examine the next case where the goalposts were subtly changed and moved in favour of the State, again without any comment, adverse, from the State experts who were sitting in these hearings.

In particular it was important that in the Kriel case a burn mark had been produced on the skin of Ashley Kriel with a weapon that had been discharged through two layers of clothing and this produced no adverse comment from anybody, any of the medical experts in this particular inquest.

Before leaving the Kriel inquest I want to just mention that the post mortem refers to "circumferential abrasions involving both wrists of the deceased". And there was little doubt that these were produced by the handcuffs and furthermore it was very unlikely, in my view, that the marks were produced after Ashley Kriel had been shot through the heart.

And so the position that we had was, that, and it should have been explored, as to how a man with handcuffs on both wrists could have put up such a ferocious fight and why in the fight the officer of the Police didn't throw away the firearm that he had firmly clutched in his hand to allow him to participate in the attempts to subdue Kriel more effectively. I don't know. Like the many people who slipped on soap, fell out of Police windows, all the other explanations, we are never going to know for sure.

Lastly, we should see the harsh censure of the presiding officers in cases such as these being reserved for anybody who attempted to oppose the State juggernaut. One should see the remarks made by the same presiding officer about the collusion between the Police to produce their sanitised sworn affidavits, line 28 in the judgment makes it quite clear that the Police have sat down to prepare the affidavits in this matter which were word-for-word copies of each other, and the best that the Court could do in that matter was to launch an earnest appeal for this never to happen again. And that slap on the wrist must have really hurt the Police. All of this without murmur from the professionals involved in the State side of the case.

Let me turn now to another event which this Commission has already heard evidence about. It was an event known as the Guguletu 7 shootings where 7 young men were shot at the Crossroads near Guguletu.

Briefly, the case arose as a result of certain counter-insurgency actions allegedly performed by the Police at the Crossroads in Guguletu. The alleged results, if we are to go by the Police report, is that a sharp action was enjoined in which 7 alleged terrorists were killed. Unfortunately Tony Weaver, from the Cape Times, did his own investigation and reported a somewhat different story which did the Police no credit. His story was of the police executing, out of hand, alleged terrorists.

By the time that I entered the matter an informal inquest had already been completed and the findings of this informal inquest, before the same magistrate to whom I referred earlier, were exculpatory of the Police. The State then launched a prosecution of Tony Weaver for publishing these vicious and untrue reports.

I was involved, with others, in the Weaver defence, and after a consideration of the Police statements, which were again of the sanitised version, it became quite clear that the analysis of the ballistic evidence on the bodies could not support the Police version. Suffice it to say that in the Weaver trial the State called no experts whatsoever and Weaver was acquitted. And the nett result of this was the ordering, by the Attorney General, of a second inquest, this time a formal inquest.

It will be tedious to cover in detail the whole of the forensic evidence, and so I shall concentrate on two of the deceased and show how the Court dealt with this particular piece of evidence.

The first individual I shall refer to by the death register number of 700/86 was allegedly shot by the Police

at a distance of approximately six to seven metres. That can be seen from the transcript of the Weaver trial on page 154. The Court heard evidence that a four centimetre irregular bullet entrance wound was found on the right side of the head and a felt wad, I repeat that, a felt wad was recovered from the brain tissue. A second wound of four centimetres diameter was noted at the angle of the jaw.

I would like to hand up to the Commission photographs of the individual concerned and I would like to discuss it briefly. And before continuing with this evidence, if I may, with your permission, I would like to say a little bit about shotgun ballistics.

When a shotgun is discharged the variable number of lead pellets are blown out of the muzzle of the gun and together with these pellets a wad is blown out at the same time. The wad in the cartridge keeps the pellets separate from the shot and allows for more efficient operation of the cartridge. As the pellets exit from the muzzle of the weapon so they start to spread and that spread can be used to give an indication of the distance between the shooter and the target at the time of discharge. The wad is ballisticly very inefficient and doesn't travel very far and loses energy very, very rapidly after it leaves the muzzle of the gun.

Now that's important because when you find a wad in the tissues, embedded in the brain, what that means is that it suggests that the shot is fired from close range. When there's a lack of spread of the pellets from the same firearm it supports that contention that the shot is fired from close range, and above all if you look at the head of that deceased you will see that the jaw is virtually blown apart. That supports a close range shot and the discoloration of the tissues supports a close range shot. All of this tends to indicate that this individual shot at close range by two shots from a shotgun.

Let us examine how the expert for the State deals with this piece of evidence. Again an eminent member of the forensic profession in this town. Firstly, he fails to discuss the wound number one, the jagged wound in the man's head and it is clear from the evidence that the police shot the man with the shotgun. And in the evidence at the Weaver trial the Police make it quite clear that they fired the shots with the shotgun. The only other policemen who could have fired a shot, which would have hit this man in the way that we see, was unable to explain the nature of the wound because he was armed with an R1 rifle and none of the wounds on this individual, in the face area, indicate that they were with an R1 rifle.

In the original affidavits before the first informal inquest the Police statements are strongly supportive of the position that the deceased was shot by a shotgun. And now in the second inquest we have the State trying to discredit the evidence, which the family led, by trying to prove otherwise, despite the evidence.

The State expert goes on to justify his views and to justify the nonsensical report of the State pathologist which was inaccurate and sloppy to the point of ridicule, by saying,

It's also very interesting that if these individuals of these so-called State experts really did believe the things that they were saying, it's most illuminating that none of them came forward at the Weaver trial to say these things.

The reason for them ignoring the first wound in this particular individual is very, very clear. They wanted to avoid the inescapable conclusion that the shotgun was used at close range in contrast to the police evidence given at the first inquest and the Weaver trial. And it was an example again, in my view, of the State experts attempting to bail out the Police when they were in trouble.

All of this was conducted with no comments from the Bench or Assessor about the pathetic nature of the post mortem reports and about the attempts made to confabulate the evidence that we have before us.

Let us now look at deceased number 702. He was a man that allegedly had been killed in the midst of this sharp action, where there were people running all over the place and shots were being fired. It was a mini war.

The pathologist who described the post mortem described it as follows:

At the Weaver trial my evidence was quite clear, namely, that this was a close range, probably contact shot, from an R1 rifle which had produced the burn mark and the two wounds in the buttock and I differed only from the State pathologist in my view of which was the entrance wound. My views were based on sound forensic evidence to be found in any forensic textbook.

The mark was described as a burn in the original report, it looked like a burn, and I hand in a photograph of that particular shot. You will see it is photograph no.13. And the mark looked exactly like the burn from a flash protector and the bullet traversing the skin would not produce such a mark but would produce a linear abrasion which was quite easily distinguishable from the mark that you have before you.

The Assessor in this hearing, the second inquest, then chipped in to the inquest and suggested that as one bent over the hollow of the back would disappear. Now the hollow of the back is very important because a bullet, which is what the State was suggesting, they were suggesting that a bullet had followed the contours of the back in order to produce the mark on the deceased. But in fact if one understands that, the back is hollow and a bullet would not follow those contours, whereas a smoke burn would.

But not only that the Assessor then jumped into the fray to try and rescue the situation by saying that if the man had bent over it would have produced a flattening of that hollow and so the bullet could have done that. But it is such a nonsensical proposition. It has no merit other than to rescue the Police from an untenable situation that was developing.

Let me turn now to the way in which the State expert handled the evidence. The State expert in fact agreed with my findings and the other family experts that the entrance wound was the upper of the two wounds. He did that initially. But he goes on to say, and I quote from the record exactly:

I want to show the Commission a photograph of what a peri-mortal bullet wound of the skin, skimming over the surface of the skin, looks like. If one looks at the photographs that I give there those photographs of a deceased who was shot by the Police when they again went to arrest him. There are a lot of bullet holes in him. But one of the bullet holes you will see extending across his right thigh, and an enlargement of that bullet mark along the skin is seen on the bottom of the page. With respect, learned Commissioners, you don't have to be an expert to see that there is no similarity whatsoever between the mark produced by that bullet over the skin and the mark on the back of the deceased in the Guguletu shooting.

The expert in this particular case goes on to say, and here I refer to the goal post shift that I referred to before, and his answer to the following question which was put to him. The question is:

But the point that I wish to make is that this expert had been present at a previous trial where he saw no problem with a very much weaker weapon producing a similar effect. So the goal posts were shifted and it became very difficult because those goal post shifts were always done with the weight of the authority of that particular expert behind them.

It's quite clear that this State pathologist had trimmed his evidence to favour the State line and in so doing had had to virtually abandon his previous views. And he even went so far as to say that he had never seen a burn like that and yet he offered up, without any experimental evidence, all sorts of explanations.

And again I say we have a senior State pathologist lending his stamp of authority to shore up this disgraceful performance that was masquerading as an impartial inquest.

Now what is the relevance of all of this? The relevance is that Tony Weaver described, and was prosecuted for describing the Police shooting unresisting men. And what this evidence would have shown, had it been accepted, was that the Police had walked up to an individual lying on the ground, put the muzzle of a high-powered rifle onto the man's body and pulled the trigger.

I just for completeness want to say this, and I want to read to you what the Magistrate says in his findings, and I will read in the vernacular.

The fact that the wound did not kill the deceased was irrelevant. It went to the heart of credibility as to how the Police had gone about this particular interaction.

These are by no means the only cases which I could use to illustrate the extraordinary failure of the men and women in the employ of the State to give impartial and honest evidence under oath. They may have acted stupidly, or ignorantly, or dishonestly, I don't know, but underlying all the failings there was a dark, evil and malignant thread which ran through all the evidence. The State line was always favoured and punted to the derision and exclusion of all else.

I am aware that a head of the Forensic Science Laboratory in those dark days had issued an order that his staff were forbidden to assist me, to talk to me, to have any dealings whatsoever with me. That information was relayed to me by several of his staff.

During the case known as the Mandrax Factory case in Johannesburg I arrived home one evening to find the inspectors of the Medical Control Council from their head office in Pretoria who arrived on my doorstep and accused me of every contravention in the book relating to my licence to have Schedule 7 drugs in the course of my work. Those charges were dropped by the Attorney General.

But it was no coincidence that a member of the Forensic Laboratory had spent time the previous week closely closeted with that head of the Medicine Control Council in Pretoria. And one can only but see that that was an attempt to intimidate people who were in any way prepared to act against the State.

It was also no coincidence that the Police were sent by the head of that infamous laboratory, as it was then in Pretoria, to harass me in terms of the Firearms act. Those charges were swiftly dropped by the Attorney General with much anger expressed by the Attorney General incidentally. I am pleased to say this, that in the road to recovery in South Africa that laboratory, since the departure of that odious individual, that laboratory has moved a long way on the road to self-healing and it provides a better service now than it ever did in the past.

There was, learned Commissioners, in my view, a conspiracy which was to be found in all the organs of State which acted in a concerted way to disable and discourage any attempts to investigate it in an impartial way, and to discredit those who failed to be discouraged. This conspiracy was found in all walks of the Civil Service and could never have happened without the passive or active cooperation of the Bench, together with other branches of the Judicial Service. This was most apparent in the Magistrates' Courts although there were instances in our Superior Courts which did not escape the apartheid ethos. It was alleged for many years, and this Commission has heard untold evidence that torture was the standard method of police investigation. It was never commented on by the forensic practitioners in this country. And when your Commissioner Wendy Orr raised her lone voice the chorus of support which she got from her colleagues was deafening in its non-existence.

When John Gluckman said the same thing later in the decade he was vilified. He was insulted. Not a word was raised by his colleagues who, incidentally, had sworn the same oath of fealty to their patients.

The Courts could have stopped all of this torture in its tracks if they had been a little more willing to cast the sceptical eye over the large numbers of confessions in serious cases, together with the constantly recurring theme of confession by torture. I am shamed to tell you today it has not stopped, it still goes on. Peter Jordie has uncovered evidence today, in the New South Africa, of torture by electric shock, the method which I refer to as the Eskom method. You can get a confession out of anybody as long as you just connect them up to Eskom you will get a confession, I will get a confession out of you if I were to do that. It's still going on.

The professionals in this country owe the people of this country and owe the people of this country a duty of care and they failed singly to discharge this duty. They shored up and gave succour to a system as monstrous as any in the dark annals of human crime.

Every time they failed to censure the excesses of the Police; every time they failed to see the growing evidence for torture; every time they allowed bland exculpatory decisions from the Bench to go un-commented on and uncensored they added another clause of tacit approval to the bullies charter which enabled the Police in this country to make that cap badge into the mark of Cain, into a badge of shame.

We have, in the New South Africa, to guard against this ever happening again. The allocation of power must be measured and carefully checked with the necessary counter-balances. The Police, the Bench, together with all organs of State should be subjected to the minutest scrutiny. And the freedom of speech, which is enshrined in our Constitution should be used to the fullest effect to prevent a repetition of our shameful past.

We must never again allow the powers that be to bring about the conditions in which the State organs could, with impunity, commit that vast squalid catalogue of crimes that came to characterise the apartheid regime.

During that time I many times wanted to go to the Press with issues which troubled me, and every time I was persuaded to work through the courts. I am saddened to say that this was a mistake. Because my experience of the courts, particularly in courts involving political crimes, was this, that they were not courts of justice, they were courts of law, National Party Law.

Thank you for having listened to me.

ADV POTGIETER: Thank you Dr Klatzow. Thank you for bringing a forensic perspective on some of the matters that this Commission is seized with. And bringing into contention the situation about the administration of justice which is another issue that will receive attention from the Commission. Once again, thank you very much.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you Denzil. Any questions? Thank you very much Dr Klatzow. We have to be even-handed and we have found in the submissions that have come before us and the testimonies of different people that there has been a pattern such as the one that you are describing, and all we can hope for is that those who make the laws in this New South Africa will take very seriously into account what did happen when considerable power was vested in a few hands, where a concentration of power led to its abuse. Thank you.

We should have broken at one o'clock. It's just past quarter past one and so I think we should maybe - quarter past - let us try - she has to be obeyed says two o'clock. We will try and be back at two. Those with blue and yellow stickers, unfortunately budgetary constraints make it impossible for us to have an African feast and so we have to engage in the invidious thing of inviting only a few people, those with blue and yellow stickers please the seventh floor and we will resume here at two o'clock. Thank you very much

HEARING ADJOURNS

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