Ida! News Notes
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
i. d. a.! news notes Published by the United States Committee of the International Defense and Aid Fund for Southern Africa P.O. Box 17, Cambridge, MA 02238 October, 1984 ~~ "No Peace Without Justice" by Dean T. Simon Farisani On June 21, 1984, the Reverend T. Simon Farisani testified at ajoint hearing of 1982. My ear drums had been perforated.I.4:tad-woUilds orr-my knees the Congressional Subcommittees on Human Rights and Foreign Affairs. The and my whole body was swollen from the torture. After 106 days in hearing, which was also addressed by Elliott Abrams, the Assistant Secretary of the hospital, I was released onJune 11982. I was later hospitalized for State for Human Rights, and by Kenneth Carstens, the Executive Director of further treatment and most recently had an operation last March on UJAFIUSA, was convened to examine the state ofhuman rights in Zaire and my vocal cords. It is a miracle that I am now generally fine except for South Africa. Dean Farisani's statement at the hearing is given below. (For Mr. slight pains. Carstens'testimony, please see the August issue ofiOAF News Notes.) Two other pastors and myself brought a civil damages claim against I speak for millions when I ask the United States government to do the government for the torture we suffered in incommunicado all it can to insure that South Africa no longer merely pretend to be a detention. The suit was settled out of court March 5,1984. democracy, when the vast majority of its population is not allowed to Throughout all of this, several international organizations played a vote. I speak for millions when I ask you to use your influence to vital role in protesting the treatment I received. Without their support pressure South Africa to stop the torture and imprisonment of my chances for survival would have been nil. Representatives of the prisoners of conscience. International Committee of the Red Cross visited me in the hospital I am a Dean of the Evangelical [Lutheran] Church in South Africa and complained to the government about the abuse I'd suffered. and my district includes the "homeland" of Venda. I was leader of the German and United States churches communicated their concern and Church and had just completed a sermon, when I was arrested March support. Amnesty International also took action on my behalf and 13,1977. For the next 93 days I was kept in incommunicado detention some of their letters actually reached me in the hospital. Knowing we with no charges ever brought against me. Of course, Iwas imprisoned are not alone in our struggle strengthens the courage and because Iwas a pastor who spoke out against apartheid. Day after day I determination of myself and my people. wore the same filthy clothes as Isat alone in a wet, stinking, filthy cell. The German and United States governments also sent letters of They beat me, hung me upside down, made me sit for hours in what is protest to the South African government. Since my release from called "the imaginary chair." I could not close my ears to the screams of prison, the United States Embassy has visited me regularly. others being tortured nearby. All of this has no doubt provided me with a protection the majority of apartheid opponents do not have. d A few months after my release I was imprisoned again from Octo contInue on page 2 ber 21,1977 toJanuary 21, 1978. This time I was not alone. The others were school inspectors, magistrates, and other influential people who were said to be creating an atmosphere for rebellion. At one point 17 of us shared a small cell. There was no physical torture this time, but Mankekolo Ngcobo Honored conditions were foul. The only drinking water we had came from the . ~'~ Ms. Mankekolo Mahlangu-Ngcobo, toilet. \: \i a South African exile and a longtime The third and last of my detentions was the worst. 20 people were member of IDAF's Speakers Bureau, arrested on November 18, 1981, shortly after the bombing of several was honored at a national conference of police stations. I had absolutely nothing to do with the bombing and the African-American Women's Polit they knew it, but it was a golden opportunity for discipline. They tor ical Caucus. The conference, which tured us brutally. In the first day one man died from the abuse. They convened at Morgan State University banged my head against the wall, beat me up, kicked my private parts. in Baltimore on A~gust9, presented her They used sticks and chains to hit me. They applied electric shock. with an award in recognition of her con Two weeks after the shock I suffered a heart attack. A week later a tribution to the struggle for liberation in second. After a third heartattack, they hospitalized me on February 19, Southern Africa_ Similar awards were also bestowed on Mrs. Albertina Sisulu lOAF Welcomes New Trustees and on two members of the South West Africa People's Organization lOAF/USA's Annual General Meeting was held on September 27. We Mankekolo Ngcobo (SWAPO). are happy to announce that two new members have joined our Board of Trustees: Bishop John B. Coburn of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, The conference was addressed by, among others, Dorothy and Professor Willard Johnson of MlT. Height, the President of the National Council of Negro Women. "No Peace Without Justice" continued from page 1 1 strongly urge that the United States government denounce the practices of torture and incommunicado detention in South Africa. Embassies and consulates should make it their business to get the real facts about the inhumane treatment of prisoners, instead of accepting the government's lies. The United States should increase its contact with .victims in order to protect them against further abuse. Your New Books Available from lOAF governmentshould insure that the UnitedStates notexportequipment used in torture. It is crucial that your government place more emphasis South Africa at War by Richard Leonard traces the history of black on human rights in determining foreign policy. resistance to apartheid, documents South Africa's military and financial Torture and other human rights involvement in Namibia, Angola, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe, and violations are part of a persistent evaluates the impact on South African citizens of the "garrison state" nightmare in South Africa. They will mentality. not be done away with as long as pub. 1983, Lawrence Hiil & Co. apartheid demands draconian practices 280 pp., $12.50 paper to survive. To abolish torture we must abolish apartheid. There can be no , peace without justice. The non-white Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation by Alfred Moleah details the his population is allowed 13 percent of the tory of the Namibian people's resistance to German colonialism and land. About 14 percent of the popula South African domination from 1884 to 1983, and discusses the Reagan tion is white and they have 87 percent Administration's impact on Namibia's efforts toward independence. of the land-because they are the ones (See the review in the December 1983 issue of IDAF News Notes.) who vote. South Africa is not a democracy. You must support us in pub. 1983, Disa Press becoming one. 341 pp., $10.00 paper $20.00 hardcover We are hopeful. We cannot afford not to be optimistic. One day things will be right. Change will come. How it T. Simon Farisani will come remains up to the govern- ment. BREAKFAST IN CAPE TOWN AndNight Fell: Memoirs ofa Political Prisoner in South Africa by Molefe Pheto. never been arrested." But arrest by the Security Police is different, 218 pp., $15.95. Allison & Busby, London 1984. Distributed in the USA by transporting the victim into a kind of night-world where objects give Schocken Books. way to elusive impressions. Pheto is baffled at his first arrival at John Vorster Square, simply trying to keep track of the many police and AndNight Fell is another addition to the rapidly growing Twentieth their captives. "Just faces passing by," he says, "like bees or flies in sum Century genre of the prison memoir. Many of the elements will be mer cascading over a dead dog, like shadows coming in and out." familiar: the night arrest, the beatings, the cramped cell, the endless in Despite Pheto's family connections with the police-he tells us that terrogations, the smell of the slop bucket and the rattle of the jailer's an uncle who was a police sergeant had been buried in a coffin draped key. Molefe Pheto was unlike most "politicals," though, in the private with the South African flag-the educated and sophisticated Pheto ness of his concerns and in the mental and aesthetic detachment he was cannot puzzle out his cruel interrogators. Even their Afrikaner pronun able to preserve-even, it seems, while being beaten. Pheto's main in ciation never stops striking him as alien: he renders it with k's to replace terests are artistic: drama, music, poetry. As far as one can tell from his the hard c's and indicates the long rolled r's by doubling the letter, thus book, it was the injustice done to black artists by white promoters and creating an English that looks as barbarous on the page as it must have entrepreneurs, rather than national issues or ideology, that led him into sounded to his ears. Colonel Visser repeatedly asks him if he knows a his Black Consciousness viewpoint and into his work for MDALI, the certain Zabane. Pheto knows a Zabale, he says, but not a Zabane.