When a police van hit and killed our child

MS MAYOSI: … Ma’am, where in Khayelitsha do you stay?

MS NDUNA: I am from Site C in an area called Taiwan.

MS MAYOSI: Which police station is your area under?

MS NDUNA: In Site B Khayelitsha.

MS MAYOSI: Can you tell this Commission what kind of house do you stay and live in?

MS NDUNA: I live in a shack in CT area. It is a shack that has an electricity box. I don’t have a toilet. I don’t have water. There are no street lights in the area where I live.

“I live in a shack in Cape Town … I don’t have a toilet. I don’t have water. There are no street lights …

MS MAYOSI: So what do you use with you and your family if you want to use the toilet?

MS NDUNA: There are communal toilets but they are far, so I walk a distance of about 10 to 15 minutes. Other people use portable toilets but unfortunately we don’t have them, because you need space to have a portable toilet and we don’t have space in our house to put that portable toilet. So when the communal toilets are closed I walk towards the N2 where I help myself.

MS MAYOSI: So you say you walk about 10 to 15 minutes to go to relieve yourself in a dark area where there are no lights?

MS NDUNA: That is correct. There are no lights.

MS MAYOSI: Phumeza Mlungwana gave evidence last week in this commission. In her evidence she was saying one of the most dangerous things that happen to people in the townships is using communal toilets. What do you say about that?

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MS NDUNA: I agree with Phumeza a lot on that matter because when you are using communal toilets as I have explained walking the distance that I have mentioned, anything can happen when the area has no lights. Those toilets close at seven o’clock which means then you have to go and use the N2 and anyone who was targeting you now has a chance to follow you and do whatever they want because at that time it is dark and they can do anything and there are no visibility from the police. People get robbed. They get raped. There is nothing that does not happen in that area when people are going to the N2 to help themselves.

MS MAYOSI: One of the things Phumeza said was that the violence or the danger is not by using toilets. The danger is that sometimes you walk with a cell phone using it for light because it is so dark. What do you say about that?

MS NDUNA: Phumeza was telling the truth. The toilets we are using as I have said they close at seven o’clock. In winter at 7pm. it is very dark and there are no lights there. So I also take … a cell phone with a torch so that I can use it. Even when I go inside the toilets I also have to put on the lights so that I can see what is inside. In the last couple of years there were no security by those toilets but at least now there is a security guard there so now you would put on the light and go inside so that it would be light inside so that is also one of the things that I check if the person wants to rob you because they want the cell phone you are holding.

MS MAYOSI: The securities, what do they do?

MS NDUNA: They guard the toilets until 7 p.m. They are hired by the City of Cape Town.

MS MAYOSI: What can the police do to improve the safety of people using communal toilets because we do understand that you must use them?

MS NDUNA: I would say that there must be more visibility from the police because the only time you see the police is … down the main road but inside where we are you can’t see anything but in town I have seen policemen who are on horses … so if we could see the police visible in areas where there are no streets that would ensure that we cannot be robbed …

MS MAYOSI: You are talking about a few incidents on your statement that made you to lose trust in the police. The first one involves your niece. Can you tell this Commission about that incident?

MS NDUNA: It was the 7th of March in the morning. I left my kids at home; my two kids. … I left them with my sister and my brother. I was going to Hermanus with my younger sister to see to visit my sister’s husband who was not well. We went to Hermanus. It is not that close-by. It is very far. Thirty minutes after we arrived in Hermanus I received a call from back home. It was my brother on the other side and they had informed me that the child was knocked over by a car. I asked which child, and he said Sesethu. I was shocked and I cut the phone and then I called him back and then he said yes, this child had been knocked over by a car and they were fighting there. We then frantically looked for a car so that we could go back. My mother and father are in Franschhoek because they work there. We were going to stay in Hermanus until the Sunday. Eventually we found transport to bring us back. Those that saw or witnessed the incident, the children were crossing the street. A microbus, a police microbus it was coming from Site B. It knocked the child. She was in front of the others. Then it dragged the body of the child and they did not stop so the residents they took stones and threw at this van.

A police microbus knocked over Sesethu and then dragged him with the front wheel.

MS MAYOSI: When you say the car dragged the child?

MS NDUNA: It means the car hit the child and then dragged the child with the wheel, the front wheel, so the community members tried to stone the police microbus.

This was the fifth child that had been knocked over by police cars in one year so when that incident took place the residents hit this police car. I am sure the residents must have called the police, because there were police there and there was just chaos in that place at that time because there were also rubber bullets flying everywhere.

While on our way I called my older sister who also lived in a different section in Site C. So she was the one that was there and after the fight had died down then they took the child’s body out from under the vehicle. When we arrived there the body had already been removed. The person that went with the police and the body with my sister, they went to Site B. She informed us that she could not open a case because the State would open a case against the police. We said that is okay.

The next morning a police car came. They were in private clothing. They asked who lived in the house. I told them and they asked me if I could give a statement. I told them that I was not there at the time of the incident. The only thing I can tell them is something that I have seen and something that I heard. So I gave a statement of what I knew and my sister-in-law, the mother of the child, who was in Franschhoek, also gave a statement. The uncle of the child also gave a statement. I also then took them to a lady who was an eye witness because these children were going - crossing the road to buy fish from this lady, so this lady witnessed everything that had happened. She wrote everything on the statement. They left and told us that they would give us feedback. We buried this child and they had not come. I then left, went to the Eastern Cape. I also had a problem with my kids when they were at school. They were crying at school.

MS MAYOSI: After this incident did the children who were also victims of this incident get trauma counselling?

MS NDUNA: The police from Site B never went back to our house. I took the kids myself to a doctor and the doctor told me that he could not help a child who was in shock. I should take the children to social workers. Maybe the social workers would refer them to Red Cross. So I got a social worker there and I was told that I should come the next day. As there was a funeral the next morning I could not go back to the social worker, but the police just never helped.

We buried and there was nothing still. Eventually I just took my children to the Eastern Cape where my mother is because now they were no longer able to concentrate at school. They were under a lot of trauma. They kept seeing the child that died. For example sometimes if you are walking with them down the road and a car comes up they get scared. So because their emotional status was not right I took them to the Eastern Cape. I decided to send them to a school there. In the Eastern Cape I stayed with them a while until they could get used to the area where I had taken them.

In April I heard from my sister-in-law that there was a summons that arrived that we need to go to court as we were going to sit for this case. We went to the court, yes. The police arrived and we were state witnesses and also the man who was driving the car that hit the child was also there. It was our first time to see him. We could not look him in the eye … We were traumatised. I remember crying. My sister-in-law was also crying so the matter could not continue. We then left the court for about fifteen minutes. We then went back inside and they told us that the case will sit another time; be postponed.

MS MAYOSI: On the day they were postponing the case was the person driving the vehicle of the police that hit the child there?

MS NDUNA: Yes, the person was there because Sisi Lizeka, who was the person that witnessed everything showed us, pointed to us who the person was. Sisi Lizeka is the person that had seen and witnessed the incident.

MS MAYOSI: Did you tell them that you could not continue with the case because the witnesses were there?

MS NDUNA: No they just told us that they could not continue with the case because of our emotional state. We went back to court but I don’t remember the month. Even at that time I was still not ready because I did not know what I was going to say. What happened, when I got to court I asked if I could be removed or withdrawn as a State witness. Even my sister-in-law asked for the same thing because there was nothing we could say because we had not witnessed this incident. So we were asked how did we make the statements and then we were taken out as witnesses. We then sat down. Archie and Sisi Lizeka they kept on going for the case to court.

“The case of the child has never gone anywhere.”

The case kept being postponed. In 2011 it was the end of the year I went to Sisi Lizeka and asked her how far was the case in court. In our family ever since Sesethu died my sister-in-law did not take this thing well. Sisi Lizeka told us that the case was continuing but sometimes she could not go all the time to court because she is self-employed and she can’t always be going to court because when she goes to court she loses money and they keep postponing the case …

Lizeka told me that she does not know what happened to the case. She never got any phone calls from the police or feedback as to what happened and at that time we had not seen the police come to our house again and then last year Sesethu’s mother died in September. On her death certificate it was written “aspiration”. I don’t know how to explain it, but if you go to the internet and check those are stress related illnesses so the mother of the child died and the case of the child had never gone anywhere. That is correct.

MS MAYOSI: When last did you see the police?

MS NDUNA: We last saw them when they went to get the statement from us.