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Commission of Inquiry Into Allegations of Police Inefficiency in Khayelitsha and a Breakdown in Relations Between the Community and Police in Khayelitsha Phase One

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Commission of Inquiry Into Allegations of Police Inefficiency in Khayelitsha and a Breakdown in Relations Between the Community and Police in Khayelitsha Phase One COMMISSION OF INQUIRY INTO ALLEGATIONS OF POLICE INEFFICIENCY IN KHAYELITSHA AND A BREAKDOWN IN RELATIONS BETWEEN THE COMMUNITY AND POLICE IN KHAYELITSHA PHASE ONE Zackie Achmat Date: 10 February 2014 Source: Pages 2351-2409 of Commission transcript COMMISSIONER: Ms Bawa, who are we going to call next? Perhaps that is question I need to put to Mr Hathorn. Mr Hathorn who is going to be called next? MR HATHORN: It is Mr Achmat up next, Commissioners. COMMISSIONER: Okay. Good afternoon Mr Achmat. I am correct that you are going to testify in English? MR ACHMAT: Yes. COMMISSIONER: And you are aware of course that these proceedings are public and that the testimony that you give may well be made public both through the proceedings of the Commission and through the media and you have no objection then? MR ACHMAT: No I don’t, thank you. COMMISSIONER: Good, and do you have any objection to taking the o ath? MR ACHMAT: I will do an affirmation. COMMISSIONER: An affirmation, good. ZACKIE ACHMAT: (Affirms) COMMISSIONER: Thank you, Mr Hathorn. MR HATHORN: Thank you Commissioner. EXAMINATION BY MR HATHORN: Mr Achmat you are employed as the d irector of Ndifuna Ukwazi. Can you tell us briefly what is Ndifuna Ukwazi and what work you do for them? MR ACHMAT: I just want to first say thank you to the Commissioners and to everyone here and I want to acknowledge my colleagues who are here today a nd I was told by my colleagues from Ndifuna Ukwazi to say “Forward to socialism” so... (Laughter) COMMISSIONER: You have limited terms of reference Mr Achmat. MR ACHMAT: I respect the terms of reference but at Ndifuna Ukwazi what we do is our primary work is to build leadership. We have a fellowship programme; we give support to organisations like the Social Justice Coalition, the Treatment Action Campaign and Equal Education and so on. We also - there is a number of things we do but primarily my wor k at the moment is based on safety and justice. We also have a Local Government research programme which looks at budgeting and so on. MR HATHORN: Mr Achmat you have provided the Commission with an affidavit which details your extensive practical exper ience of police brutality and the wrong end of the policing system under apartheid. Your affidavit is an important and powerful document and it is clear from it that you have lived through a significant part of our country’s history over the past 40 years . We are not going to be able to do justice to your life story in the limited time remaining this afternoon but could you tell us about your experiences of the police as a child and place that in the context of your childhood? MR ACHMAT: I think the first thing to say is that I grew up in a working -class neighbourhood and my family were garment workers. As far as domestic discord and so on goes I wish that we had the domestic violence laws that we have today. It was very difficult and in those times be yond one’s family, my first memories of police violence was I lived with my grandparents in Cape Town and my family lived in Johannesburg, my mom and dad lived in Johannesburg and one of the first bit of violence I saw was against African women and childre n and I can still name two of the women. One was called Sis Beauty and the other one was Auntie Emma and the child whom I played was Nomvula and the police would come and actually beat people up, chuck them in vans and take them away on pass law raids and that is an image that has stuck with me throughout my life. The second area of police brutality is my family lived in a place called Fietas and that area was destroyed by bulldozers under the guard of the police. The third area was in 1969 I was a k id and I think I was in Sub B and Imam Haroon was killed. He was a Muslim leader who was close to the liberation movements and he was killed in detention and I specifically remember the name of the policeman, Inspector Van Wyk, who was one of the people w ho later, many years later would be torturing me. MR HATHORN: And you have had personal experience of detention and torture at the hands of the police under apartheid. Perhaps can you just describe briefly what that experience entailed? MR ACHMAT: Well in 1976 I was part, a very small part of a very large generation of people who rebelled against apartheid and we joined the liberation movement and my first direct contact with the police during that time was being beaten up by what we called the “riot police” now known as the “public order policing unit” and it was very violent, very brutal, and the reason we rebelled was because of the violence in Manenberg, the way they shot down children in Bonteheuwel on Modderdam Road and so on and in Langa and apa rt from Soweto itself which had obviously made many of us just angry and so on. In 1977 I was one of the kids who tried to burn my school down. I only succeeded insofar as the administration block was concerned, which was the principal’s office but the - and I think it is good thing that I did not go further than that, I did not succeed any further than that but I was arrested along with two other colleagues with mine, Azaam Mohammed and Faida Abrahams and she wasn’t arrested, but Azaam and I were and we were held under the Internal Security Act in solitary confinement and tortured by Major Lourens and other, Captain Visser and so on, but the fact of it is in 1977 later in that year I was also detained under Section 6 of the Terrorism Act and spent three months in Sea Point Police Station which I note from the Rag has a very good ratio of police compared to Khayelitsha. MR HATHORN: Mr Achmat I would like to - you did have further experiences of police brutality, of being detained and police brutality. W ould you like to touch on those briefly or would you ... (intervention) MR ACHMAT: Sorry? MR HATHORN: You did have further experiences of police brutality and detention. Could you just touch on those briefly? MR ACHMAT: Well when I was sent to a reformatory I was among kids who were very badly beaten and at times - yes, I was also then detained in 1979 when I was held in solitary confinement, convicted and held in solitary confinement for six months in Pollsmoor. Again I went through the same process of being beaten by police, being handcuffed, not being given food and so on, so that is my experience of the apartheid police and I wouldn’t mind if we can move off it, if you don’t mind. MR HATHORN: Mr Achmat you have been involved very closely and involved in the founding of four of the five complainant organisations that lodged the complaint that led to the establishment of this Commission. Can you tell us about; we have heard people speaking on behalf of their diffe rent organisations so just outline the objectives of those organisations and the values that they share in common. MR ACHMAT: Well I think the first place I would start is to say that the history of all the organisations I work in go back to a range of activist histories from my colleagues, people like Mark Haywood, Sharon Ekambaram, Dina Bosch and Siphokazi Mthathi and Vuyiseka Dubula and many others and most of them have a history at some level or another going back to the anti -apartheid and freedom struggle and what I believe in is that or at least the way I see it is that all our organisations what we have in common first and foremost is an understanding that our organisations are about people and their rights and what I mean by that is that rights are not something that a Constitution gives to you. A right pre -exists. The right to life pre-exists; any codification of it. So fundamentally our organisations are based on everyone’s rights. The second area is that we believe that when you campaign o n any specific issue that the primary interests we represent or try to represent to the best that we can is the interest of working class and poor communities and that interest needs to be based on evidence and research. The third area is that we educat e ourselves. We try to educate ourselves as leaders; our organisations. We further go further and believe that our community needs to be educated. There needs to be awareness of very complex issues because if you take policing for instance it is a very, very complex set of questions that we have listened to here. Any community police forum will not be able to cope with that vast amount of information so having the education to educate ourselves and to educate others and to educate the community is absol utely vital. Then a critical area is engagement with the appropriate authority. If it is a corporation you deal with the corporation. If it is Government there are a range of organisations, there is a range of institutions that we deal with for instan ce Parliament is vital. We try to engage Parliament.
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