A letter of apology to the Mpumalanga premier has turned out to be nothing of the sort, reports Ferial Haffajee
After receiving a much-publicised apology, African National Congress Premier Mathews Phosa dropped a threatened defamation action against a fellow veteran who had described being tortured and raped by colleagues in exile. But it now turns out that the veteran, Rita Mazibuko, did not know that she had apologised and only learnt about it through a radio news bulletin.
Phosa issued his defamation threat after Mazibuko (57) had told the truth commission that he was among those who had tried to dissuade her from testifying.
Mazibuko was placed in witness protection by the truth commission before appearing at last week’s special women’s hearings.
She told the commission that she had been threatened by two male employees of the ANC who work at its Shell House, Johannesburg, headquarters. She alleged they were among the men who had tortured and repeatedly raped her while in exile.
Mongezi Tshongweni, the head of the ANC’s truth and reconciliation desk, told the Mail & Guardian that, although Mazibuko was a member, the ANC was not aware that she was in witness protection.
The party has not instituted an inquiry into her allegations, he said, nor does it have a transcript of her testimony.
The M&G has learnt that the ANC did not check the veracity of Mazibuko’s “apology” nor speak to her. But it did this week issue a statement on Phosa’s behalf.
“I knew all along that my integrity, but more importantly that of the ANC, was beyond reproach in this matter,” the Phosa statement read, adding: “The matter must now be put to rest. Both she and I must now get on with our lives within our commitment to the ANC.” Mazibuko told the commission that she had been accused of spying in 1988 and then subjected to a campaign of rape and torture by fellow ANC members. She gave the first names of five perpetrators.
On Wednesday, Phosa received a letter from a lawyer in which Mazibuko apologised for what she had said. But the M&G’s investigations reveal that Mazibuko did not know about this letter. According to her, she had not spoken to Barry Kotze, the Pretoria-based lawyer who drafted “her” apology.
Instead, she told the victim support group, Kulumani, that her police minder – Captain Ebert Koch – had told her Kotze was too busy to take a statement from her and had spoken to Phosa on her behalf. Kotze claimed he had met Mazibuko, but admitted that he had not read her testimony. He said that “it wasn’t really an instruction [from her], it was more a request. I was technically never her attorney. I was simply mediating between two parties.”
A beleaguered Mazibuko refused to say anything further: “I’ve got asthma and heart problems. I just want to leave it. He [Phosa] is my comrade and my premier. I’ve got his number. I’m going to talk to him.”
Phosa has maintained that he has never met Mazibuko. She, however, has vivid recollections of meeting him in exile and again during the ANC’s election campaign in 1994.
In her testimony to the truth commission, she said she had often cooked for Phosa and Zola Skweyiya, now the Minister of Public Service and Administration, while they were in Zambia. She also said Phosa hugged her when he recognised her at an election campaign rally in Kinross.
Mazibuko said she worked for the ANC in Swaziland, checking routes for exiles, but fell out of favour in 1988 when nine people were killed on an apparently safe route near Piet Retief. The organisation had been highly infiltrated at the time and, like many, she was accused of spying.
She alleged that she was tortured in Swaziland by commanders trying to find the leak, then moved to Mozambique and Zambia. She said she was twice imprisoned in a hole (what appears to be a basement) – the second time for three months.
“I hadn’t been given any blankets and they would pour water into that hole. And when I sat on top of the stairs that I used to descend … JJ would come and put some stick through . to move me away from the stairs so that I should go down to the area that was drenched in water.”
Mazibuko claimed that she was severely assaulted and repeatedly raped by ANC members at the Sunset prison in Zambia. She named her rapists as “Desmond” (who allegedly raped her nine times), “Mashego” and “Tebogo” who inflicted the worst violence when “he raped me and also cut my genitals … and he put me in a certain room and he tied my hands, my legs, they were apart, he also tied my neck and he would also pour Dettol over my genitals”.
The full names of the three are known to the commission and two of them have allegedly applied for amnesty. But the ANC’s Mongezi Tshongweni said he had not received such notification.
Although Phosa vowed to “take Mazibuko to the cleaners” when he issued his defamation claim, he would not have got much should he have pursued the case. Mazibuko is wearing clothes donated to her by the Wits Law Clinic, members of Kulumani and a benefactor who listened to her story at the hearing last week.
At the hearing, her final plea to the truth commission was: “I would appreciate it if the commission could help me because I am suffering. I can’t make ends meet. I live like a wild animal. At times I do not have a place to sleep. I do not have clothes to wear. If I could be helped in that regard?”