MS MTSINGWA
I am Ms Irene Mtsingwa my home is at Whittlesea.  I come from Whittlesea, I got married in the Transkei at [indistinct].  Thank you very much I am from Whittlesea, I got married in the Transkei at [indistinct] in Butterworth.  I have nine children but the ninth one is the subject today he is the one we are talking about today.  end of Tape 7, side B... - about the matter of the funeral Ms Ngewu has already covered that one, I am just going to talk about my own child.
 I was from work that day, it was on a Monday.  I just heard that some children have been shot.  There were seven of them, but I didn't know that one of those was my own child.  He didn't come back on that day, on Monday but usually he wasn't a person who usually comes back.  But just because he is a - you know he is a teenager some of them usually don't come back at night, that was one of those nights.
 But that day, I didn't really think that there was anything going to happen to him, because he wasn't naughty.  He wasn't well, the reason why he wasn't so well is because he had a terrible shock which he got because of the illness of his father.  Like I said I heard that there were seven, there were children who were shot at Guguletu but I wasn't - I didn't know that one of those was my child because I couldn't think why my child would be there in the first place.
 After a long time, after several days we were looking for him even in hospitals.  There were mischievous things that Mr Barnard who as a policeman use to do to the children, who use to be - who use to insult them.  But now we just thought that okay he may - he may be in the hospitals or even in prisons.
 During this period, one of my grandchildren was very ill and she was at Somerset Hospital.  When I saw him, I saw that no his or her days are numbered.  Some of my relatives helped me to look for my child who has gone - who has disappeared, nobody knew what happened to him.  We tried to look in the prisons and hospitals and my grandchild on Thursday passed away.
 In the meantime we still didn't know anything about the one has just lost, we just heard that somebody heard - saw him at Guguletu, so I just thought maybe he just visited at Guguletu, and I sent somebody to - to check - to check him out at the mortuary.  I gave them his ID, so that they can identify him at the mortuary.
 One of my neighbours who was my husband's friend, and also a friend of the family who is now in the rural areas, that's when now they found him in the mortuary.  That's where they identified him.  That's now how he was also numbered as one of the Guguletu 7 as how it is now called.  Well I accepted that because anyway that time our children didn't tell us anything about their activities because they were afraid of the boers.
 He wasn't so well even though he was serious, now when all this pain came back about the death of my child, I didn't even know where I was at that time.  But the worst part was to actually see this in the newspapers and the TV's where we saw our children lying on the ground and I saw the bullet wound on the left side of his head.  I saw this on the day of his funeral, I saw that the bullet wound was on the left side of his head.
 We also saw this even in the picture - I also saw this, he also had some wounds which I am not sure if they were bullet wounds on his back.  What happened was after they've been - they were shot, the same guns which were - were used to shoot them where put on the bodies, now I don't know how this was done.  Now the purpose of this was that the police wanted to accuse the victims themselves to say that is the victims who wanted to kill the police.  I asked myself something that I couldn't even answer it myself.
 I said why did the police shoot everybody, what will the police gain for shooting our children.  And why were they being killed, why were not - why were they not arrested.  They could have been shot even on the legs, or just anywhere in the body, where they wouldn't die of the wound.  I asked myself those questions, but I couldn't answer them.  But I was terribly hurt by this whole thing, because even I just heard - I just lost my grandma - my grandchild.
 We had two funerals in one week on Tuesday and on Thursday.  That's something that made me to be disorientated all together.  I forget some of these things, please forgive me.  You can just forgive me because I am old, I forget some of these things.