JOHANNESBURG, July 31: Male prison wardens used to get their kicks out of watching female political prisoners' menstrual blood trickle down, settle and thicken on their legs. Withholding sanitary pads was a punishment.

``As a woman, you dreaded the commencement of your menstrual period because it became so public under the notice of your interrogators,'' former journalist and political detainee Joyce Sikhakhane-Rankin told a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) special hearing on women this week. ``You had to ask them for sanitary pads. With your menstrual flow, they made you stand interminably as punishment...The feel and smell of the sticky blood was a reminder of imminent slaughter at the hands of the torturers,'' she said. She and many other women told the TRC of rape, psychological torture, slaughter of their families and the dehumanisation they suffered at the hands of the apartheid regime in South Africa during the struggle for independence.

The TRC was set up by the Parliament in 1995 to give citizens a chance to reveal the gross human rights violations that took place between March 1960 and December 1993. The commission also has the power to consider granting amnesty to those who carried out the abuses for political reasons.

As the country, through the TRC, looked back at the gross human rights violations perpetrated during apartheid, the crimes against women had still not received special citation. The apartheid machinery singled out women either for their own involvement in the struggle for democracy, or as a weapon against their menfolk. The special branch which weeded out activists and freedom fighters was dominated by gun-toting white males with no respect for black women.

Women activists argue that when no distinction is made between the experiences of women and men; the male norm and the male experience remain the unacknowledged standard or dominant point of view. Such a gender-neutral approach is not gender inclusive as it leaves out women's experiences during the times of conflict.

Moreover, South Africa has signed and ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) which calls on state parties to ``establish legal protection of the rights of women on equal basis with men and to ensure through competent national tribunals and other institutions the effective protection of women against any act of discrimination.''

As the TRC's work progressed, ``it became clear that women needed a special platform which can make them feel safe to explore gender-specific incidents of human rights violations,'' said Hlengiwe Mkhize who chaired the special sessions. ``...Women have come forward to break the silence,'' she added.

Sikhakhane, who was detained at dawn on May 12, 1969 and labelled a terrorist because of the investigative journalism she did for a morning daily in Johannesburg, continues to be haunted by her 16 months in jail.

``Twenty-six years have passed since I was among a group of seven women subjected to mind-breaking torture by the apartheid security police, and yet I often find myself back in the dungeon of solitary confinement ready to take away my life for no explicable reason,'' she said.

``This all happens without any conscious thought on my part. I hate it when my mind brings those terrifying memories -- but my mind just does it for me, it was orchestrated to destroy me,'' Sikhakhane told the TRC.

Nozibonelo Mxathule spoke of how she was arrested, assaulted and nearly raped by the police. Journalist Jubie Mayet, a widow with eight children, was detained and placed under a banning order, forcing her into under-paid odd jobs. Lita Mazibuko, an African National Congress (ANC) activist, was raped nine times by a colleague in the organisation who was young enough to be her son. She was also raped again by another who mutilated her genitals with a knife. She claims the ANC, now ruling South Africa, merely referred her back to one of her assailants when she reported the rapes.

Often young girls would go home after detention and find they had become pregnant from rape by the wardens. No more dehumanisation could surpass being pregnant with a child of the ``enemy'', the TRC heard. ``When people see us walking in the streets they don't know how much we have been broken inside,'' said Deborah Matshoba. Her marriage failed to outlive the long periods of absence she served in prison or under banning orders. Her trauma lives on. ``When it comes to males and whites I am very sensitive, I react very sharply,'' she said.

Sheila Meintjies of the Centre for Applied Legal Studies said the country needs a special peace body, aside from the gender commission, to address such needs of women. ``Women need a safe place in which to speak out. They need to know there are safety nets to hold them when they fall with their pain,'' she said, recognising that the commission did not hear the stories of many women who either could not make it to the hearings, or who still find it hard to talk.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.