10 August 1987
I should like to greet members today in the name of all those women in South Africa whose voices have been silenced through death or incarceration. We should like also to thank the Committee for giving us this opportunity to address it.
I should like at the outset to explain that for us in South Africa it is important to try to send black people to speak and address the international community. However, the situation in our country is such that as soon as one is a known activist the Government restricts one's movements both within and outside the country. We had chosen a woman to come and speak today who during her last period of detention was, unfortunately, tortured very badly, and who has been advised by her lawyers not to leave the country.
In South Africa we generally talk about women facing triple oppression. They face oppression, first, because they are women; secondly, because they are black; and thirdly, because they are workers. Women in South Africa are paid the lowest wages of all.
For many years, since the early 1900s when South Africa became a national self-governing State, women have been involved in the struggle for liberation. They have organized around a number of issues that affect them in their daily lives and that concern the greater political struggle for rights. In 1950 and 1960, when the first state of emergency was imposed in South Africa, women's organizations were dealt a severe blow with the banning of the African National Congress of South Africa (ANC) Women's League. Many women were detained and gaoled. Since the early 1970s we have seen a resurgence in South Africa of women's involvement and participation in the struggle against apartheid.
Today, women are involved equally in all aspects of our struggle. Women are involved in trade unions, in community organizations, in youth and school congresses, in anti-removal and anti-eviction campaigns, in the progressive service organizations such as the DPSC, and in professional organizations. Women have stood side by side with their children and their men in the struggle against ghetto education; they have refused to pay rent; they have organized around forced removals. For example, in the northern Transvaal area of Batlokwa, when the Government forces arrived to remove the people forcibly it was the women who drew a line in the dust and, with their farm implements in their hands, faced the might of the South African forces. They were not removed; they won.
Even though under the emergency, there is incredibly and increasingly harsh repression in our country, women have been able to organize and strengthen their organizations. Earlier this year we saw the formation of a women's congress in the United Democratic Front. The congress's main task is to ensure that women have maximum participation in all campaigns that the United Democratic Front runs. While women's groups themselves are very important in our struggle, we are seeing a new determination by all activists to include women at every level.
Recently a decision has been taken within the political movement in South Africa that all activists will fight sexism alongside racism and economic exploitation.
As I am from the Detainees' Parents Support Committee my main focus will be on the repression that women face in South Africa. Repression takes two forms. Traditionally it has taken the form of formal repression, which is actions by the police and the army. Now new elements are involved in what the South African Government refers to as the security forces; these are municipal and council police. Increasingly we in South Africa are faced with informal repression, which is repression conducted by vigilantes and death squads. Women are affected by repression in two ways: either directly, through being detained in prison themselves, through their houses being petrol-bombed and through assault and torture, or by the detention of their husbands and children and the death of their husbands and children.
Before the national state of emergency was imposed women were detained under section 29 of the Internal Security Act, which provides for indefinite detention, with interrogation and solitary confinement. In 1984, of the 280 people detained under that section, 21 were women. In 1985, 37 of the 320 detainees were women, including two who were aged 14 and 16 years respectively and who both spent 77 days in solitary confinement. In 1986, 28 women were detained under section 29. They included Sister Bernard Ncube, who is still in detention; Phinda Molefe, who is the wife of Popo Molefe, the United Democratic Front member who is now on trial in Pretoria for treason; Marion Sparg, who was sentenced to 25 years for furthering the aims of the African National Congress; and Greta Apelgren, who was recently sentenced to 21 months imprisonment and whose lover, Robert McBride, was sentenced to death. So far in 1987, 15 women have been detained under section 29.
Under section 31, which provides for detention as a State witness, a greater proportion of women than men are being detained. This is particularly iniquitous as women are then used to testify against men. It must be explained, however, that in South Africa one does not choose to become a State witness; the State makes one a State witness. Most women refuse to testify when they get to court, for which they face sentences of up to five years' imprisonment.
In June 1986 the first national state of emergency was declared in South Africa. Of the 10,446 people we know to have been detained under that section, 1,271 have been women - that is, about 12.5 per cent. That figure is misleading because the sex of the person detained is often not known and we have only the name. That figure is therefore lower than the real figure. Of the 1,271 women, 40 per cent are children, that is, under the age of 18. More important, 32 per cent of the people detained are under the age of 17. The youngest female detainee is 12 years old. Five women have given birth in detention thus far. Their children are held with them.
The conditions under which women are detained are particularly horrendous. Both men and women are held in cramped, over-crowded cells. Women, however, face a lack of toilet facilities. They are often held in incredibly dirty and damp cells. There are never enough blankets. The food is often rotten and there is never enough of it. Women also face torture and assault. We know of one case in which a woman submitted a statement via a doctor explaining that the security police had tied her to a chair, which they then proceeded to hang upside-down, and shocked her on her lower abdomen. There have been reports of rape in prisons, but these have not been made in the form of statements and we cannot present them to the Committee. The reason for this is that anyone disclosing such information may be prosecuted under the Prisons Act of South Africa. In addition, women in detention have been told that they will be killed if they ever give that information to lawyers or to the Detainees' Parents Support Committee.
Young girls are also frequently tortured. We know of cases in which girls of 12 and 14 have been given electric shocks to their nipples to force them to give information to the security police.
However, the women in South Africa continue to stand together and continue to refuse to allow the Government to silence them or to halt their activities.
Source: United Nations document A/AC.115/PV.607.
Ms. Eliot represented Ms. Audrey Coleman, a founding member of Detainees’ Parents Support Committee, which had been active in providing assistance and counselling to detainees and their families. The Pretoria authorities refused Ms. Coleman a passport.