The killing this week of a young South African who had recently spoken out on detention and torture to international television audiences, bears chilling resemblances to the murder of Pretoria doctor Fabian Ribiero just over a year ago.
Eighteen-year-old Sicelo Godfrey Dhlomo, a volunteer worker for the Detainees' Parents Support Committee (DPSC) and a member of the South African Students Congress, was found shot in the head in Soweto on Monday. Like Ribiero, Dhlomo had featured in foreign television programmes, relating horrifying accounts of torture while in custody. He had appeared in the CBS documentary "Children of Apartheid", as well as on the BBC and a Dutch television station. He was briefly detained by the police only days before his death.
The Reverend Frank Chikane, general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, yesterday raised questions about "the coincidence" of his death coming so soon after his detention. Speaking at a DPSC press conference, Chikane called for a full police Investigation into the circumstances of the death. "The coincidence, if it be that at all, that Sicelo was murdered shortly after his persecutors had briefly detained him …. is so glaring that it would be difficult for any reasonable person not to suspect a link between the two incidents until evidence to the contrary is brought out. "Unless this is done immediately and the murderous culprits brought to book," 'he said, "speculation about the probable perpetrators is bound to prevail."
In their statement about his death, police pointed a finger at the DPSC and unnamed foreign television correspondents. Police said that when Dhlomo was taken into custody- shortly before his death, he said he had been invited to a DPSC tea-party where he was interviewed by "a certain news agency director, who instructed him to tell, into the camera, how and when he had been detained and to say he was manhandled and beaten".
Dhlomo had said what had been dictated to him, police claimed. However, yesterday the DPSC and CBS hit back at the police. In a statement released yesterday, a CBS representative in New York, Tom Goodman, categorically denied that Dhlomo was "coached" for his interview. "Under no circumstances does CBS instruct interviewees, or this interviewee in particular, Sicelo Dblomo, as to what to say. Indeed this will be contrary toall CBS codes of conducts and all recognised standards of journalism," he said.
The DPSC dismissed the allegations made against the organization that they had dictated to detainees what to say to the media. "The ex-detainees conduct interviews with them (foreign journalists) freely without any instructions from the DPSC and what they say is their experience in detention," a DPSC representative said. A fellow worker at the DPSC advise office described Sicelo as "a brave young man. "He was industrious and he had a mature political commitment. He had been rubbed of his youth, and forced tutu adulthood by the, political situation. In a short time he became everyone's friend and we are devastated by his death."
Dhlomo's Mother, Sylvia Jele, said: "My son had no quarrels with anyone to warrant such a cruel death."
This article originally appeared in the Weekly Mail.
