Women tell of their traumatic experiences in ‘Surviving John Vorster Square’

It has been the voices and experiences of men in the struggle, but now a group of women are telling how they survived traumatic John Vorster Square police detention.

The experiences of nine women who were detained at the police station cells are captured in a documentary aptly titled: Surviving John Vorster Square. It was released under the auspices of the National Films and Video Foundation.

The documentary is a two-year project (2019-2021) of the collective accounts of nine women with collective memories of incarceration to share as former inmates of John Vorster Square cells.

It captured the stories of former detainees Mmagauta Molefe, Sibongile Mkhabela, Maleshane Mokoena, Joyce Dipale, Nomakhaya Mafuna, Lele Abrahams, Daphney Koza, Pepe Luthuli and Unjinee Poonan in the hands of the apartheid security police.

They recorded for the benefit of the future generations in Untold Stories, without which the story of women’s contribution to the national liberation struggle would be incomplete. Some of their colleagues left torture chambers in body bags.

Stamping their presence in the trenches, the nine were an active part of fearless women leaders who put their lives on the line to stand up to an oppressive white regime.

Untold Stories traces back to when coordinator-in-chief Mmagauta Molefe approached film producers for documentation of women’s voices at John Vorster Square. Molefe said the objective was to get women to tell their stories.

“I spoke to a large number of women. It was a fright ening discussion. Most realised they have never spoken about that experience, some were scared to open the wounds, and people had to be persuaded. It was a painful experience for most of us when we visited the cells of the Square which is now named Johannesburg Police Station.”

The making of the documentary was not without challenges. The initial donor was tragically among the first victims of Covid, prompting Molefe to dig into her pension fund and support of her children to boost the project.

Commitment saw project participants contributing money for petrol to run related errands; with few friends also contributing to enable the carrying out of work to be done. It was the kind of effort not without tears though.

Molefe recalls the trying moments thus: “Some of the scenes were shot with tears, from the participants to the crew. Things got so hard during shooting that we had to ask for help from counsellors.”

Cry they did but didn’t give up, Molefe said. A difficult, tearful but joyful journey of telling a story of extreme emotional and physical violence has thankfully been traversed, by way of breaking silence, to add a chapter to the history of South Africa’s epic struggle.

This makes for the first project of Mmagauta Molefe Legacy Foundation. She said the aim is “to encourage telling of our stories and encourage intergenerational dialogue”.

“We can never succeed in our journey if our history is neglected and swept under the carpets, if the up-and-coming generation does not know where we come from and if we fail to put human faces on our history. We have to acknowledge all those who are part of this history, especially women,” Molefe said.