SNARED IN APARTHEID'S WEB: THE JAILED CHILDREN
By SHEILA RULE, Special to the New York Times (
JOHANNESBURG, Sept. 27 – 1985 —FanieGoduka, 11 years old, dreamed the other night that he was still locked in a prison cell that echoed with his screams of fear.
The nightmare reflects what to Fanie has been a bitter reality. Before he was released recently on bail, the pencil-thin child spent 57 days in jail, charged with ''public violence.'' He did not understand the words, and asked the 13 adults sharing his cell what they meant. The men told him he was being held for throwing stones. He still could not understand.
According to Fanie, he was walking home from school in the township of Alexandra outside Johannesburg when there was a sudden downpour. He sought shelter in a shack, he said, and a white policeman who was passing by arrested him.
'So Much Afraid'
''These things are making me so much afraid,'' he said the other day in a small voice, clasping and twisting his hands. ''I don't know why.''
Fanie was arrested on July 11, nine days before a state of emergency was declared in 36 magisterial districts. Under the emergency decree, which augments and strengthens South Africa's security laws, more than 3,000 people have been detained, among them hundreds of children. Many of these have been imprisoned in adult penal institutions.
Children are granted no special protection under this nation's vast body of security legislation and, as a result, may be detained indefinitely without trial. The emergency powers allow people to be detained for up to 14 days, after which time the detention may be renewed by the Government.
Behind the Statistics
In the shadows of the statistics are families whose children did not return from school one day or were taken from their homes. Parents learn through word of mouth that their sons and daughters are being held by the authorities.
They also learn that, under the state of emergency, the authorities are not required to tell them where their children are or the condition they are in. Nor need the authorities allow visits. The parents go from one police station to another to locate their offspring or, as one father said, to ascertain whether they are still alive. The police generally turn them away, the parents say, adding a layer of humiliation to their anguish.
Parents speak of a peculiar madness that descends on a family when their children spend their nights in jail rather than at home. Many do not know what to do, whom to go to for help or whether they have any rights. To them, justice remains a foreign concept. They say they fear the authorities and, as a result, feel they have no recourse to the law. Thus they are left to sit and wait, wrestle with sleepless, anxiety-laden nights and trudge through seemingly endless days.
'I Feel Lost'
The mother of a 20-year-old youth -the police took him from home in the black township of Soweto at 4 A.M. on July 21 and he remains in detention -said she learned of his whereabouts from a friend a month after he was detained. A neighbor suggested she contact the Detainees' Parents Support Committee, a civil-rights monitoring group.
''The police told me they did not know when I would see my child again and now, every day, I feel lost,'' said the woman, in the committee's office in Johannesburg. Like other parents who are fearful of retaliation, she spoke on condition that her name not be used.
''I go through the days without thinking; I read without understanding. When the police came, they did not identify themselves, they did not have on uniforms, so I did not know who they were. If I had asked them to identify themselves, I would have been in trouble. They were white men, after all.''
'Destroying Our Lives'
''I can't explain how I go on,'' she continued. ''The younger children cannot sleep, they want him to come home. Before, they were not afraid of white men but now they are because they say that white men took their brother.
''I am worried. No, it is more than the word 'worried' that I feel. This is destroying our lives; this is changing me very much. But in life, one places the child first and you as a parent come next. So I must wonder first how this is changing my son and how he will be when he returns to me.''
According to a preliminary report on detention and torture in South Africa made public this month, a person who is released from detention may carry with him psychological damage. The study, by the Institute of Criminology at the University of Cape Town, said common problems included difficulties relating to friends, family and other people, sleeplessness, anxiety, tension and depression.
The study also found that 83 percent of the 176 former detainees in its samples reported some form of physical torture, including beatings, forced standing, electric shock and strangulation.
Changed by Imprisonment
Fanie, who was finally released to the custody of his parents, is to appear in court on Oct. 16 to enter a plea, according to the Detainees' Parents Support Committee.
He said he had changed as a result of his days in jail. After his court case ends, he said, ''I am now going to throw stones.'' He alsospentsome time fashioningcareergoals.
''I want to be a karate expert so I can defend myself from the police,'' he said in the Support Committee's offices, turning his large eyes toward the floor and exhibiting the restless energy of youth. ''And I want to be a doctor to help my comrades when the police have shot them.''
For now, according to his mother, he cries out in the night and may have to be treated by a psychiatrist.
Grim Days in a Cell
On Fanie's first day in jail, he said, the police beat him and knocked his head against a wall in an attempt to make him confess. Fanie shared his cell with men accused of such crimes as car theft, robbery and murder.
He said the men put him in a corner and forced him to sing along with them at times. At other times, they would make him roll a blanket along the floor and pretend that he was driving an automobile. An older cellmate would stop him and ask, ''Where is your license?'' When the boy said he did not have one, he was kicked in the back. Then he was told to clean the cell.
On better days, Fanie said, he and the men would sit and talk about movies they had seen. According to members of the Support Committee, Fanie's mother was able to see her son only twice in 57 days, 'An Electric Shock'
''I was afraid there,'' he said. ''I was very afraid of the police because I thought they might put an electric shock to me because I heard they did those things. Once when I was playing karate in the cell with the older men, one of the men kicked me and I fell down. I had a twisted arm but the police captain said he does not have anything to do about such an injury.''
A study last year on children in prison in South Africa noted that children may be kept in police cells or prisons if they are awaiting trial, have been sentenced, have been transferred from a reform school or have been admitted with their mothers who are prisoners.
The report, by Fiona McLachlan, a lawyer involved in children's rights cases, showed that 570 unsentenced juveniles and 403 who had been sentenced were in prison in March of last year, Bail for Fanie was refused four times - the magistrate reportedly said the boy might ''flee the country'' or be induced to commit other crimes - before it was finally granted after a special application was made to a higher court, according to members of the Detainees' Parents Support Committee. They said that after Fanie was released, a policeman went to his home and threatened his life.
''Now my mother must take me to school,'' he said softly. ''I don't go out to play anymore. I am afraid of the police. I am not free at all.''
As he spoke, the committee received a telephone call from a father of a 7-year-old girl who said his daughter had been detained after her curiosity led her to look into an automobile that had been burned during unrest in Soweto.