Since I started to work for the Linking Solidarity team I have been faced quite regularly, directly or indirectly, with the families of the disappeared. These families, often wives, mothers or grandmothers, but also brothers, fathers, sons and daughters, are, particularly in case of enforced disappearances, direct victims. In fact in the new Convention Against Enforced Disappearances they are officially recognised as such, according them many different rights, most importantly the new right to know the truth. These are aspects we give them information on in the form of training or other types of advise. Sometimes we face them directly. Sometimes also we face the group of people directly assisting them, these may be lawyers, priests, local NGO’s. It is not often that, besides through the stories of the families, we directly face the other victims of an enforced disappearance: those who disappeared.

The Bantu Education Act of 1953 effectively led to the separation of races in all educational institutions in South Africa. It was an important piece of legislation among all the different laws that sought to forcibly separate the races in South Africa. It meant that the already low budget that was allocated to the education of black South Africans (and poor white South Africans), was diminished even more. Schools were Spartan, lacking tables, chairs, books and other tools in education. Black teachers’ salaries were extremely low, and only certain skills were taught at black schools. Political, economic and social consciousness was not among the topics promoted. However it is particularly within the black school community that political activists were formed ready to make the step to the ANC (and take up arms against the oppressor). Mamelodi, a township just North of Pretoria, was home to ten young school activists aged from 15 to 21.  The boys were agitated and politically conscious teenagers, who rebelled against the injustices they were facing in their environment, particularly at school in Mamelodi. They instigated the occasional revolt against the regime. On 26 June 1986, they were approached by Joe Mamasela, who told them he was a recruiter for the ANC. The ANC had military training camps in neighbouring countries to South Africa (such as Botswana and Angola). They would recruit political activists and take them to these camps. Joe Mamasela told the boys to come with him in his van as he would take them to a military training camp in Botswana.

On Friday, after the conference on the Convention Against Disappearances, Ewoud and I were invited by the Missing Persons Task Team (MPTT) of the South African National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) to come along to Winterveld Cemetery, some 40 kilometers north of Pretoria, to witness the search for two disappeared persons under the Apartheid regime in the cemetery. The MPTT works on cases of disappeared that came before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and for which no remains have been found so far. The MPTT had been working on the site trying to recover some fourteen bodies of disappeared persons since 2005. These persons had been arrested, or abducted by South African security forces and assassinated in various ways. They had then been buried as paupers. We would assist in the digging up of two graves in order to make an identification of the skeletons inside the graves. This rapid identification should give an indication of whether these were people the MPTT were looking for. One thing we would be looking out for were severely burnt bones.

The boys were crammed into a van, driven by Joe Mamasela, they were probably excited at the prospect of going to Botswana in order to get their military training even though the youngest were only fifteen. After some time they past a place called Zeerust, some 240 kilometers north of Johannesburg towards the border with Botswana. The van pulled over and within seconds the van was surrounded by uniformed security officers. Joe Mamasela had lured the boys into an ambush. The boys were forced out of the van and made to lie on the ground. They were injected with an unknown substance leaving them unconscious. They were put back into the van. The van was subsequently driven into a tree by the side of the road, thus faking an accident. Petrol was poured onto the van, the inside of the van and onto the boys. Two guns were placed into the van and the van was set alight. A passer-by alerted the local police about a burning vehicle. Upon arriving at the scene the police discovered the gruesome scene of ten charcoaled bodies.  The bodies were taken to hospital and then moved to a mortuary. Later they were removed from the mortuary to be buried in Winterveld cemetery.

The two graves we were going to open were selected from a map with many colours indicating where graves had already been opened, where some of the disappeared had been found and where they had not been found. Twelve disappeared persons’ remains had already been found in Winterveld Cemetery. Eight of these were from the Mamelodi 10. Two paid gravediggers starting digging at the first indicated site. At a depth of about 1 m. 80 they hit pieces of the original coffin or pieces of plastic bodies were wrapped in. Then the MPTT teams’ work (and in this case our work) started. We slowly started cleaning the place where the head was supposed to lie. This was done rather brusquely until the first signs of the skull started to appear. At that point the places around the skull were cleaned and dirt on the skull was brushed of. This meticulous work continued until the skull was largely into the open thus permitting a primary investigation. This process was repeated for the other grave. Unfortunately the two skeletons we found were not those of the two remaining boys from Mamelodi.

Adriaan Johannes Vlok was Minister for Law and Order in South Africa from 1986 until 1991. It was a particularly repressive period in South Africa, including crimes such as those committed to the ten boys from Mamelodi. During the TRC Vlok was the only cabinet Minister who admitted committing crimes under the apartheid regime. He was subsequently granted amnesty. In 2006 he came forward to apologise to a number of victims of crimes committed when he was a Minister, amongst these crimes were the assassinations of the ten boys from Mamelodi. He did this in dramatic fashion by going to Mamelodi to wash the feet of the widows and mothers of the Mamelodi 10.

Four people directly involved in the murder, including Joe Mamasela, also came forward during the TRC, telling everything they knew about the events. All of them, apart from Joe Mamasela, applied for amnesty. This was granted to them. While eight bodies have been recovered by the MPTT it remains unclear whom of the ten boys these bodies belong too. Two bodies are still being looked for. Until these two are found the suffering of the widows and mothers of the ten boys from Mamelodi still continues. They know what happened to the boys, but they still don’t know where they are.

We meet George at UNISA campus where he is coming to pick us up to go to a place just outside of Pretoria. George is a taxi driver. His car is spacious, comfortable and looks from the outside quite modern. He has no map of Pretoria (“I forgot”) and he has no idea where the place is we are supposed to be going. George asks us for some patience. He wants to phone the place for directions, but his phonecard is empty so he needs to stop at a petrol station to recharge it.
 
I am growing a bit anxious when, just outside the gates of the UNISA campus he almost drives over two students. My anxiety is not so much enhanced by the fact he did not see them just before almost driving over them, but more by the fact that I was the only one of us two who saw them at all, before, during, and after the near accident.

The anxiety grew even stronger when he did exactly the same thing driving to the petrol station. This time he did acknowledge the near-accident by laughing. At the petrol station he bought a card to recharge his phone. I agreed with Ewoud, my colleague, that the trip to the petrol station, of no more than 100 meters, was quite reckless and this may be due to some problems with our taxi driver’s sight. This was to be confirmed when, upon arriving back in the car, he gave me his phone and the recharge ticket, in order to put the numbers on the ticket into his phone. He admitted, with a slightly embarrassed laughter, he had difficulty recharging the phone as he could not see what was written on the ticket. My anxiety reached a bit of a climax when I saw the size of the numbers he could not read:

Times New Roman, 24 pt 

We did arrive at our place of destination. This place was a resort where a conference was going to be held on the Convention against Enforced Disappearances. Lawyers for Human Rights organised the two-day event. We supported the conference financially as well as ‘ intellectually’. In fact one major part of our participation was to get as many people as financially possible, from other countries besides South Africa. In the end, NGO’s working on issues such as enforced disappearances flew over from Burundi, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Uganda and Botswana.

The conference intended to raise awareness on the Convention and set up a dialogue between Government and civil society actors on the signing, ratification and implementation of the Convention in South African law. It started extremely well with a key-note speech by a high-placed Government official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicating that South Africa will sign the Convention in April, and ratification procedures, as well as implementation procedures, are set in motion. A representative from the Justice Department on the last day confirmed this and said he hoped South Africa would ratify the Convention this year or else as soon as possible.

The first day was mostly a day of getting acquainted with the Convention and its implications. This was particularly relevant also for our regional colleagues. On the second day the regional colleagues and ourselves shared information on each other’s country situations, the specifics of enforced disappearances in different contexts, specific needs that still need to be addressed, the relevance of the Convention, and ways to continue exchanging valuable information in the future. It proved to be an extremely dense and interesting meeting with some very concrete results.

The recurring theme of the meeting was that missing persons is an enormous problem in the region, and enforced disappearances are part of it. It is a problem relating to colonial times, the various independence struggles, post independence political violence and, even in states where there is relative calm, it remains a current issue. All these disappearances have proper dynamics and because of the specific historical perspective (liberation and post liberation struggles) the issue differs from the more ‘classic’ way it is defined based, primarily, on Latin American struggles.

Tomorrow we will be back in the South African context when we assist in the exhumation of disappeared persons from the anti-apartheid struggle. We will get our first training on forensic work related to enforced disappearances.

Just yesterday a home video by four white students here, was disclosed. It showed the four students humiliating elderly black cleaning ladies. It is highly reminiscent of the sort of racism and abuse related to it under the apartheid regime. A reminder also of the steps that are still to be taken in order for these issues to be dealt with ‘simply’ as isolated cases of racist behaviour. In the current context the incident is still seen as part of a larger problem of racism on campus, and apparently rightly so. It confronts many people with the still very alive past.

George is somehow a little symbolic of this South Africa that is still struggling to come to terms with its past. A beautiful, spacious and modern car (at least from the outside) driven by a semi-blind driver, without a map, who just laughs it all off, while secretly he may be an accident waiting to happen. Or maybe the only symbolic value is that he is a black driver, driving around white men, to a resort that could well be described as colonial…

Yesterday evening my colleague, Ewoud, and I, did a non-motorised ‘Regilio’. Regilio Tuur, once a great boxer (unfortunately also outside of the Ring), seems to pass his days on a scooter going up and down the most celebrity stricken shopping street in Amsterdam, called the P.C. Hooftstraat. He is there to see and be seen. Somewhat like him we walked up and down the 7th Street in Melville, a well-known place for young, trendy and, in majority, rather rich South Africans, and many tourists.

7th Street, and Melville in general, does not represent Johannesburg (Jo’burg) or South Africa. However there are some interesting observations to be made using this street as a basis. For example, you have to wonder why this street in particular and Melville in general, is so incredibly popular among a particular group of South Africans and so many tourists. The answer is that it is one of the safest places in Jo’Burg. In a country that is so evidently ravaged by increasing crime rates and stories of those crimes reaching far beyond the South African borders, this is obviously a great selling point. This is not to say there are no other safe places in Jo’burg, or, for that matter, that Melville is entirely safe, but Melville has gotten this stamp and it is flourishing by it. I have to be honest that I do feel safe in Melville and that other parts of this city incite a general feeling of discomfort.

An observation that is linked to that is that 7th Street is very open, with a lot of glass doors, open terraces and people moving out on the street when the temperature allows for this. While a small drive through other parts of the city leaves you claustrophobic at best, with walls, barbed wire, electric fences, guards, ‘armed response’ placards, etc… overwhelming your view.

Of course, depending on who you speak to here, you will either get an even bleaker picture of the security situation, or a shrug of the shoulders and a sneer about the general hysteria surrounding the security problems in Jo’burg. But there is one common element everybody agrees upon: it is a major problem.

Another aspect that can be seen in that 7th street micro-sub-culture is the patchwork of colours and cultures. South Africa for me, and I believe many others, remains intrinsically linked with apartheid. While there have been some generational changes in the general population and a major generational change is now taking place in South African politics, to see the mixture on 7^th Street is still something I will register and notice aloud. This patchwork, of course, in itself is an achievement of post-apartheid South Africa. Whether this is a case of what-you-see-is-what-you-get I am not so sure about, but I do not know the country enough to be able to form a well-informed opinion on that.

This observation may also be influenced by the fact that we are here to work on an issue that is still very much considered a major apartheid-related issue. We are here for an intensive 10 days of meetings, workshops, conferences and training with a great variety of people. These events all deal with the issue of enforced disappearances. We are primarily here to actively promote the new International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances.

Enforced disappearances are dealt with by many actors in South Africa. Much of the work on disappearances relates to disappearances under the apartheid regime. Some other work has to do with highly publicised cases of so-called extraordinary rendition (the illegal transfer of someone from one State to another State where this person is secretly detained for the purpose of torture). And some actors see a definite link with the Zimbabwean refugee/immigration crisis and the expulsions of Zimbabweans from South Africa back to Zimbabwe, exposing them to possible enforced disappearances.

The most intensive work will start from Monday, for now we still have some time to do a ‘Regilio’ on 7^th Street in Melville. Obviously there are some notable differences between a classic ‘Regilio’ and our version of it. Of course, we are not here to be seen. As we are absolutely not trendy and can hardly say that in comparison we are young. And finally, as human rights activists, we can hardly be called rich. Hence also our primal mode of transport: on foot. Still while Regilio Tuur can sometimes pick up a lovely young lady (I suppose), I was able to make some interesting social observations… I am not sure whom you should envy more…

• Jan's Iraq blog (December 2007)