IN 1985 South Africa was experiencing extreme turbulent times on the political front.
Consumer boycotts were the order of the day and many people lived in fear and political instability.
SANDF vehicles patrolled the townships and the firing of tear gas and rubber bullets could be heard night and day. Fort Beaufort was no exception.
Mid-Karoo Express visited local resident, Phinda Baartman (58), at his home in Tinis location on the eve of the 34th anniversary of his life-changing ordeal – an incident which left Baartman maimed, jobless and with a multitude of emotional scars.
Baartman described in an interview how he was walking down a section of Fani Street in Tinis location on Sunday, April 13, 1985. At the time he was in his mid-20s.
“I recall seeing a mob advancing towards me and someone shouting about an impimpi, which is the Xhosa word for an informer. The next moment I was surrounded and pelted with bricks, stones and empty bottles.
“I lost consciousness and cannot recall what happened afterwards.”
According to Baartman, he would later learn that he was also assaulted with sticks, pangas, spades and stabbed with a screwdriver just below his heart.
His assailants then necklaced him with a truck tyre and placed another on his hip where he was lying motionless in the street. Petrol was poured over the tyres and they were set alight.
“I do not recall any of this,” Baartman said.
“I was told long afterwards that an unidentified woman waved a white pillow at a Defence Force Hippo. They responded by driving to the scene and dispersing the mob with tear gas. They used a fire extinguisher to put out the flames engulfing my entire body. A light drizzle also assisted them.”
Baartman spent several months in the intensive care unit of an East London hospital. At the time of the incident, he was employed by a bakery company and had a wife and child to provide for. For the duration of his hospitalisation they were cared for by his mother. Baartman spent a full year in hospital, undergoing a series of operations.
He said that his life had been turned upside down by the incident. Apart from the physical scars he is now also being haunted by emotional ones.
“People stare at me as though I am an alien. Children stop me in the streets and ask why I have only one ear. Then they laugh and run away. If only they knew what I have been through. What happened to me goes beyond the suffering by stoning of the biblical Stephen,” Baartman said.
His entire body bears testimony to his torture and he now has to survive on a disability grant.
Baartman showed Mid-Karoo Express a letter from the late president Nelson Mandela, who thanked him for his courage to have shared his moving story with the TRC.
He was paid a small amount in reparation from the President’s Fund and was also promised in a letter from the Department of Justice that they were looking at further reparation in the form of welfare and educational needs, as well as physical and mental health treatment.
According to Baartman, he is extremely lucky to be alive. “I really think God spared my life with a purpose – for me to be living proof of how cruel and evil people can be. A church minister once told me to forgive them and allow God to do the judging. That is exactly what I have decided to do.”
