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Wednesday August 8 1990.
It’s a beautiful morning.
It’s sunny, not uncomfortably cold for mid-winter, and uncharacteristically there is no wind worthy of mention.
In the Neethling household it is another working day – my husband Clifford and I are off to work, and our four children, Lance, 13, Trevor, 11, Abigail, 10, and Carolynn, 7, are heading to school.
We are somewhat aware of the news of growing unrest in parts of the northern areas and Uitenhage, but haven’t really been affected and so it’s business as usual around this part of Gelvandale.
Around 11am, as news of the rapidly deteriorating situation spreads – our management tells us to head home.
We’ve heard that buses and taxis have suspended services, prompting our Irish manager, Ruth Chivers, to offer us a lift home.
She is not afraid of the violence, she tells us – she grew used to unrest on the streets of Belfast during the Catholic and Protestant conflicts that gripped Northern Ireland.
The kids are sent home from school at about 8.30am and when I eventually meet up with them at home everything is eerily calm. I wonder if my husband is safe. He’s a signwriter who paints shop signs across Port Elizabeth, mostly walking to his gigs.
That morning he had planned to canvass a few shops in Helenvale. Then, suddenly, chaos! Police helicopters circle overhead, and a mad rush of looters, some of whom we know, pass our house carrying buckets, bags or plastic dishes filled with everything from canned goods to sugar and cooking oil.
Teens in school clothes, aunties in rollers, it’s a free for all – one man even has his hands on one of those black plastic tricycles.
Gun shots ring out.
The popular Charlie’s supermarket has been stripped bare.
Sebastian – Bessie as he’s known by his friends – a streetwise 12year-old who plays street cricket with my boys, is in pain but surprisingly impressed about being hit by a rubber bullet and shows off his navy-blue bruise.
At about 3pm, I get a call from a complete stranger: “Mrs Neethling, we need you to come to Gelvandale police station.”
I start to panic: “What has happened?
“Is it my husband?
“How am I going to get there? “Should I leave my kids alone in this chaos?”
Our neighbour Glynnis offers to take me there on her motorbike – it’s just a few blocks away, after all, and it would be easier to make our way through the line of fire.
I hesitantly agree, but as we are about to leave a man pulls up, tells me he’s a friend of my husband and he’ll take me to the place where he had been shot by police.
Caught in the heat of the moment, two of the kids overhear his grim news and burst into tears.
I can’t deal with them now – I’ve got to find out what is going on.
We cautiously navigate our way through throngs of people and burning tyres to the scene, a home in Helenvale, but there’s no sign of him or his body.
There’s a yellow police van at the scene, and a couple of white police officers ask me what’s going on – I’m in a state and all I can do is scream.
They tell me the body has been taken away by the “riot squad” and might be at the Gelvandale mortuary.
It’s not safe to go there right now and I’ve been away from the kids for long enough.
I feel helpless – there’s nothing I can do in the chaos but go home and wait until the next day.
It’s the longest night of my life. Emotionally drained, I manage to doze off for a few hours.
Thursday August 9 is my son’s birthday, but there’s nothing to celebrate.
I start to call family and friends, but they can’t get to me for days, too wary to brave the unrest.
More than 20 people are already confirmed dead, Cliffy one of them.
My cousin Cedric gets to me from Korsten and takes me to Gelvandale police station, where a policeman says I should see a Captain Steyn of the “riot squad”.
I make my way down the passage and confront a big, burly man having a meeting with some officials.
He says: “Try New Brighton mortuary.”
We get to New Brighton and for the first time I see the body.
I can’t believe this man is dead – he looks so peaceful, as if he’s asleep and could wake up at any moment.
I burst into tears, it’s all I can do. My cousin does what he can to console me and takes me away from the body so that I can compose myself.
When we return, we find that the bodies have been taken to Gelvandale police station and we are told we have to officially identify the body on the Monday morning. It’s time to focus on the children. On Monday morning August 13, it’s chaos at Gelvandale police station, with dozens of next of kin patiently, emotionally, anxiously standing around waiting to identify bodies.
When we get inside, the sight is sickening.
Dozens of bodies are laid out side by side and you’re expected to walk from body to body to see which one belongs to you.
My brother-in-law is here from Cape Town to support us and volunteers for that job; I am relieved.
After several minutes he comes out, guides me through the temporary graveyard and takes me straight to Cliffy. He is a sight now.
The once peaceful sleeper has one eye drooped open, he’s bruised and his face is skew – they must have piled them all on top of each other during the drive here, I think to myself.
We wait in queues for the death certificates.
Captain Steyn instructs his staff to first help those who want the state to bury their loved ones in a mass funeral.
I’m not one of them but I’ve had enough, and I force my way to the front where I get a sympathetic ear from a young detective whose name I forget.
Captain Steyn takes issue with him for not following orders, but the detective is more concerned with helping me.
I’m thankful – it’s the first show of sympathy by a policeman in the five days of anguish.
At last we can start funeral proceedings, lay him to rest and, more importantly, help these four children to heal.
Two weeks later I am visited by two detectives who’ve come for a statement.
I have no idea how the murder happened and am of as little use to them as they are to me.
Seeking answers, God forbid justice, I make my way to the ANC offices in Main Street and speak to a Miss Moodliar, a lawyer.
She advises me to find out what happened on that day and to track down any witnesses, but I’m in no frame of mind to play detective.
I have a job and four children to care for, and I leave the investigation there.
Between six months and a year later, the inquest comes up.
I attend, but the detectives who interviewed me have been replaced by new ones.
I find out that the policeman who shot my husband is an Officer Grootboom – one of two brothers in the force at the time.
The wrong brother attends the inquest as the shooter apparently was serving on the border – they don’t say which.
There are three witnesses – one is the woman who helped my dying husband into her house where he took his last few breaths – the other two I don’t remember.
I get the sense the police witnesses are lying through their teeth and I can’t sleep for days after the hearing.
I take the decision to rest my case and leave it in the hands of the Almighty.
Twenty-nine years later, I don’t regret my decision.
I worked for my children – it was hard raising them as a single parent – but looking back it was the right thing to do.
They’re grown up now and have wrestled their way to a better life.
But one thought lingers from time to time – will we ever see justice for that August slaughter which we can never forget?