unbearable
Thokozane Mtshali
Last Saturday Sylvia Dlomo-Jele died of a broken heart, her friends say. She had believed her activist son, Sicelo Dlomo, was killed by the police and for 10 years she campaigned for justice.
Three weeks ago, she watched the killers testifying before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s amnesty committee. But they were four former comrades of her son – young men who had stayed in her home.
Dlomo-Jele was diabetic and her health began to deteriorate after her son’s death. But in November, when the four applied for amnesty, she became so ill she had to go on sick leave, according to a colleague, Ntombi Masikare. She managed to hang on until the hearing last month of John Itumeleng Dube, Clive Makhubu, Precious Zungu and Sipho Tshabalala – African National Congress cadres who confessed to killing her son.
“These children made me live,” she said before the truth came out. “They were coming in and out, saying `Mama, our hero has died.’ That was something which soothed me.”
In 1985 Dlomo made headlines when he was arrested at the age of 15. For the next three years he was on the run from the police and working with the Detainees’ Parents Support Committee (DPSC). In January 1988 his body was found next to a tree on the outskirts of Soweto. There was a bullet hole in his head.
Dlomo’s death made his mother a reluctant activist. In a video filmed by the Khulumani Support Group, Dlomo-Jele said she had opposed her son’s involvement. Before Dlomo died, he had told her that the police wanted him dead. “I will die,” he said. “The police are right after me and you must remain to be a strong mother.”
Dlomo-Jele pleaded with her son to “quit this politics. I asked him, `What is your Mandela going to do for me if you die?'” she recalled.
When news of Dlomo’s death reached her, she was convinced the police were responsible – and she went to warn his comrades.
“The first thing [Dlomo-Jele] did when she was told that Sicelo was found dead,” remembers Masikare, “was to ask for a car. She went straight to Clive [Makhubu] and told him, `Sicelo is dead, the police got him and you must run away.'” She didn’t know that it was Makhubu who had pulled the trigger.
Maggie Friedman, Dlomo-Jele’s colleague and co-founder of the Khulumani Support Group, said: “SylviaE[Dlomo-Jele] lived in the hell of her own tragedy. For a long time she had half-known that the answer to the riddle of Sicelo’s death was not simple.”
Dlomo-Jele joined the DPSC, working with many parents in her situation, and giving them comfort and courage. She also launched her international campaign to find her son’s killers.
In 1994, the debate for a truth commission gained momentum. A parliamentary select committee on justice was working on the draft legislation for the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Catherine Mlangeni, mother of slain ANC lawyer Bheki Mlangeni; Friedman, partner of the late David Webster; and Dlomo-Jele were worried that the commission might grant amnesty to those who had killed their loved ones without first hearing the voices of the victims. Thus the Khulumani Support Group was formed.
In 1996, Dlomo-Jele gave her testimony to the commission. During the investigation preceding the hearing, she told the committee, “When I saw Sicelo sleeping here,” pointing to an old tree, “I remembered when one white policeman said to Sicelo: `When I find you, I’ll shoot your brains out.’ It happened exactly the way he said it.”
But Friedman noted: “The real truth came out in little pieces over a period of three years [from 1996, when the TRC began, until 1998].
“Sylvia was confused when Xoliswa Falati first alleged that Winnie Madikizela- Mandela was responsible for the death of her son,” Masikare noted. “That shocked her, but she never believed it. She was convinced Sicelo was killed by the police. She remained a staunch ANC supporter.”
But surprisingly, Masikare said, “she was isolated by the ANC. Last year, she became scared. She told us she’d had a call from those boys [Dube, Makhubu, Zungu and Tshabalala] who used to sleep in her house while Sicelo was running from the police. She said they told her they were the ones who had killed Sicelo. They wanted to meet her and asked for forgiveness.”
That was the first shock. “She felt betrayed by the ANC. She felt she had been a fool for all these years. An ANC representative came here to the Khulumani offices and took her home where they had a meeting. But she wouldn’t tell us what they discussed.”
Masikare said Dlomo-Jele told her only that she was afraid for what the ANC had done to her and her son. She was admitted to hospital in November, leaving only to attend the amnesty hearing. When it was over, she returned to hospital, where she died. She was 56.
Her friends believe Dlomo-Jele’s death is a result of the hurtful revelations that her son’s death was not the work of the police but his own friends and comrades. Dlomo- Jele couldn’t endure the fact that “those young men she had welcomed in her home, had trusted as comrades of her beloved boy, were responsible for his death”, says Friedman.
Dlomo-Jele will be buried on Saturday. Her ordeal is over but the commission has still to decide whether to grant amnesty to her son’s killers.
On the Khulumani video, Dlomo-Jele makes her views clear: “Myself, I disagree with amnesty. I am the sufferer. I’ll never forgive those people who killed my son. This pain will never come out. We are unable to work because the pain [inflicted on us] is too much.”