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Personal testimony on interrogation by the police
Sinini Mhlanga, WOZA Member
March 08, 2005

Sinini Mhlanga - (35yrs) Mother of two

It was approximately 1230pm; five of us were sitting in the shade outside St Patrick's Church. Suddenly a police vehicle stopped beside us. They ordered us to open the placards we were carrying, they read the message. One placard read - Our pots are empty, please vote wisely. Another - Please abstain from Sex, ukuzila amacansi. We were told to get in the Defender and were taken to Ross Camp police station, whereupon we were thoroughly searched by male police officers.

They interrogated us demanding the names of the leadership, when we refused they told us that we are being used by France (The Country?). They threatened to detain us for three days. They demanded to know how much we were paid since France is giving WOZA a lot of money. I think they made this up because they like to say MDC support Blair so maybe they though France suits WOZA?

After about fifteen minutes ten more WOZA women joined us, then the arresting officer phoned his boss and excitedly told him that finally he had managed to arrest WOZA, only to be disappointed when the boss said that he was only keen to interrogate the leaders.

We were then separated into two defenders and driven to our homes and they conducted an illegal search. They said they were not interested in MDC material as they could campaign but were interested in WOZA material. They of course found our WOZA scarves, which they took. They took us back Ross Camp where they read the fliers (Woza Moya March edition) we carrying. They demanded to know the political party we are aligned to, or whether we are a political party ourselves - we told them we are a women's organisation. They then said there was nothing wrong with our fliers, we must reveal the source, and we were not naïve to fall for that.

At one time when they were interrogating us, they took us into the cells and kept Nolwandle, the youngest, back for questioning. We were worried about this but when they brought us back, they told us that we should discipline her are she is very cheeky. Eventually we were released one by one, because they had failed to charge us, even though one female officer was advocating that we should be detained without a charge.

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