Joyce Mtimkulu: Resolute mother of tortured and murdered activist
1936-2014
JOYCE Mtimkulu, who has died in Port Elizabeth at the age of 77, was the mother of Siphiwo Mtimkulu, who was tortured, poisoned and “disappeared” by the security police in 1982.
For eight years Joyce did not know whether her student leader son was alive or dead. The security police not only refused to tell her, but they tortured her with the belief that he might still be alive.
They kept coming to her home in the Port Elizabeth township of Zwide to inform her that there had been a sighting of her “terrorist” son and demanding that she reveal his whereabouts.
On one occasion, when she tired of the game and refused to let them in, they kicked down the front door.
Joyce scoured South Africa and even went looking for her son in Lesotho after the police told her they had found his friend’s car near the border. She clung desperately to the hope that he had joined the ANC in exile.
In 1989, former police hit squad commander Dirk Coetzee said that the security police had kidnapped Siphiwo, killed him and disposed of the body.
But she lived in hope until the ANC was unbanned and the exiles returned home. Only when he was not among them did she accept that he was dead.
“The release of Mandela to me was the loss of my son, because he should have come back with the others,” she said.
“That hope that everybody is coming back home, the other people got happy about that, but to us it was the moment of tears because our son never came back.”
Her son, who became involved in the struggle as a teenager, was arrested for the first time in 1977 at the age of 17.
In 1981, by which time he was a popular leader in the Congress of South African Students, he was arrested again.
He had been in good health, but when released five months later he was seriously ill, telling Joyce he had been badly tortured. “They have finished me,” he said. He was taken to hospital and diagnosed with thallium poisoning. He was confined to a wheelchair and his hair fell out.
He sued the police for torturing and poisoning him. Two weeks later, a friend, Topsy Madaka, picked him up to take him to Livingstone Hospital. They were never seen again.
Joyce had to wait 15 years be-
I don’t know if I have it in me to forgive. The almighty God will have to make space for that
fore learning the truth about what had happened to him.
In 1996, notorious security police colonel Gideon Nieuwoudt told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that he and three other security policemen had abducted the young men and taken them to a remote farm in the Cradock district.
There they were executed with a shot to the back of the head and their bodies burned for six hours until only charred bones and ashes were left. These were dumped in the Fish River.
Joyce, clutching a plastic bag containing clumps of her son’s hair, which was all she had left of him, sat 10m away with a look of ferocious concentration on her face. She never shed a tear.
The only part of the evidence that clearly angered her was when Nieuwoudt said he had given the young men cups of coffee laced with sleeping pills before they were taken outside and shot.
She said she knew Nieuwoudt was lying because a man like him would not have cared enough about her son to have shown him even this amount of mercy.
Although a deeply committed Christian, she said she had no forgiveness in her. “I don’t know if I have it in me to forgive. The almighty God will have to make space for that.”
There was no compensation for her or her family or Siphiwo’s young son, but Nieuwoudt was given amnesty. After serving time in jail for another crime, he said he wanted to ask the family for forgiveness. They were all strongly opposed to seeing him, except Joyce, who made them change their minds.
A film company making a documentary arranged for Nieuwoudt to visit her.
The release of Mandela . . . to us it was the moment of tears because our son never came back
But sitting opposite him in their tiny lounge, Joyce and her husband, Sipho, repeatedly rejected his pleas for forgiveness. Nevertheless, when Siphiwo’s son Sikhumbuzo threw a vase at him, fracturing his skull, Joyce leapt to his assistance.
Joyce was born on October 19 1936 in the village of Peelton near King William’s Town. She had four sons, the eldest of whom was murdered last year. Her husband died in 2011.
Joyce was rushed to Dora Nginza Hospital in Zwide on Wednesday in a neighbour’s car after repeated calls for an ambulance were ignored. At the hospital she was left on a stretcher in casualty for 12 hours, complaining of severe pain. Four hours after being put in a bed, she had a heart attack and died. — Chris Barron