closet
Ann Eveleth
Joseph Mdluli’s death in detention in Durban 20 years ago made international headlines. His son, who was in detention at the time, later told a judge during the trial of the late Harry Gwala he had heard the name “Joseph” being shouted round the prison one night. It was only later he discovered it was that night his father had died.
This and several other high-profile skeletons crept out of KwaZulu-Natal’s apartheid cupboard this week, as the Truth and Reconciliation Committee (TRC) heard testimony around some of the most pivotal human rights abuses in the province’s history.
One of South Africa’s most notorious deaths in detention will be the focus of Friday’s hearings in Durban when Khanyisile Mdluli (63) testifies about the 1976 alleged murder of her husband, former Umkhonto weSizwe commander Joseph Mdluli, at the hands of security police.
Mdluli will tell the tale of the fateful night when a group of security police came and took her husband away. First hearing of his death two days later from the local rumour-mill, Mdluli found his battered body in a box in Durban’s Gale Street mortuary.
Official reports first linked the death to a fall from a chair and later to a heart attack. But an undertaker had taken a picture of Mdluli’s terribly battered body which underground African National Congress members smuggled out of the country. Harassed by police after the picture focused international attention on South Africa, Mdluli waited three years for four policemen cited by the inquest magistrate to face trial for her husband’s murder.
The policemen — then captain David Van Zyl, lieutenant Andy Taylor, sergeant Mandlakayise Makhanya and constable Zablon Ngobese — were let off by Natal’s judge president. In a bittersweet irony, however, Taylor now faces charges for the 1981 murder of Durban human rights lawyer Griffiths Mxenge, who acted for Mdluli after her husband’s death.
Earlier this week, the TRC also heard testimony related to the bloody aftermath of the 1985 murder of Mxenge’s wife, Victoria, in Umlazi.
Former United Democratic Front (UDF) activist David Gasa, and a former Umlazi cinema owner, Josiah Dlamini, told the commission how the massacre of 15 UDF supporters during Victoria Mxenge’s memorial service at the cinema unleashed a “reign of terror” in the sprawling township and wreaked havoc on both their lives.
The men alleged an impi of Inkatha Freedom Party supporters led by the late IFP Umlazi warlord Winnington Sabello, and recently expelled IFP MP Thomas Shabalala, invaded the cinema during a prayer service organised days before Mxenge’s funeral and killed 15 people with assegais. They alleged police and soldiers assisted the IFP in the attack. Truth commissioner Richard Lyster said the massacre was one of the most important events of the 1980s, after which “this province entered one of its darkest eras as the State of Emergency was declared”.
Gasa testified that when he returned home from the funeral four days after the vigil and went to sleep, he awoke to the feeling that “heaven was falling on my house … the house was on fire”.
Gasa said he found himself covered in flames and he and his wife barely managed to escape by hooking a hose to the kitchen faucet.
He blamed televised statements made by then IFP secretary general Oscar Dhlomo for “unleashing the irritation of the IFP” on his family, which he believed led also to the second arson attack on his home, the stabbing death of his daughter, and ultimately, to the death of his wife six months later: “I think my wife would still be alive if it weren’t for Dhlomo’s statement,” he said.
Dlamini said he had lost a son and suffered harassment at the hands of the IFP after allowing the UDF structures to use his cinema for Mxenge’s memorial service. He also alleged his son was killed by IFP supporters who attacked him while he waited for a taxi in Lindelani: “He mentioned my name. That’s when they decided to kill him because they said I organised a memorial for Victoria Mxenge,” said Dlamini.