| Time | Summary | |
| 16:59 | And suddenly at about this point, 50, 60 yards out, the shooting starts. Instinctively we all duck and we dive for mother earth. We lie there and after an indeterminable time, it seemed like 10, 20 minutes, it turned out to be a one minute, 90 seconds or so. The minute passes, there’s silence; few heads start looking up. Ten seconds go by and then bang, bang, bang! Another 30, 40, 50 seconds of intense fire. It stops. In terms of that period though we hear some … voices and I realize they’re launching grenades at us. Three, four explosions take place. And I think, goodness, they really are insane. | Full Transcript |
| 17:49 | Things happened at that place. There was a shot, presumably fired from the crowd and there was no time for warning or anything but that is all I’m prepared to say. | Full Transcript |
| 18:02 | After the incident, only one 9 mm pistol with two still full magazines was found in the vicinity of the shooting. According to the police memorandum not one shot was fired by the crowd. When at last the shooting stopped 29 men and women did not get up. | Full Transcript |
| 18:25 | These are the names of the dead. The questions unanswered for four years now are why did the different actors act as they did and who is really to blame. Crucial to any understanding of the Bisho massacre is the one man who did not come to the Truth Commission this week, Brigadier Oupa Gqozo. At the time of the Bisho march he had been the military dictator of the Ciskei for five months and had already survived one coup attempt. | Full Transcript |
| 19:02 | As for anybody else contemplating plotting against us, they should realize that we will always remain ahead of them and we’ll reform with severity. | Full Transcript |
| 19:13 | But what lay behind his strong arm tactics and where was his power base? | Full Transcript |
| 19:19 | Oupa Gqozo came to being and got created by nobody else but by the South African Defence Force, a Military Intelligence undercover operation that fed him information that made him more paranoid than he normally is or was. I mean the man is now so sick mentally, that he can’t even come and give evidence. International researchers came to being round about August of 1990 and this became Gqozo’s sole information gathering centre in a covert way. It was always denied that any of these individuals had links with the SADF and is still denied. But Jan Anton Nieuwoudt sued the SADF for compensation and his court records spell out that all the time he was a member of the SADF and this was an undercover operation to fight the enemy, that Military Intelligence at that stage was deemed to be the major problem, the returned exiles, the militants in the form of Hani and Holomisa. He wanted to listen to international researchers, what they managed to gather by tapping phones, by recruiting ...more | Full Transcript |
| 21:04 | The atmosphere in Bisho by the time of the march was by all accounts one of heightened suspicion and paranoia. It was Oupa Gqozo who took the decision to stop the demonstration at all costs. Confidential minutes of a meeting between South Africa and the Ciskei Council of State a few days before show that even South Africa advised Gqozo to allow the protest. // ‘Renier Schoeman // RSA Dept of Foreign Affairs: // ‘If we knew how to stop it we would have stopped it all over the country. But we don’t have a way of stopping them.’’ // But to what extend was South Africa still fiddling behind the scenes? Was there an ulterior motive? | Full Transcript |
| 21:39 | It was convenient for the RSA and that’s why they sent in … to say ‘we’ve got nothing to do with this.’ But using their forces and the covert operation not from RSA soil to launch attacks against that that they deemed to be a big problem at the time. And then how do you counter a mass movement? A mass movement that just started rolling and it became so spontaneous and this is a big fear to you? By making one example. And using an example like the Ciskei to say to the masses ‘you do it again, it can happen somewhere else again.’ Just to get that fear down. | Full Transcript |
| 22:22 | It was the Ciskei Defence Force that was told to stop the march from reaching Bisho: Gqozo’s symbolic last outpost of power. In charge was Brigadier Marius Oelschig from the South African Defence Force. It was his order to shoot that filtered down a shaky chain of command and resulted in the indiscriminate shooting spree. He says he was simply a soldier following orders under difficult conditions with an undisciplined army. | Full Transcript |
| 22:53 | I believe that the ANC wanted, in fact engineered the whole incident. | Full Transcript |
| 23:00 | Had we known the consequences then obviously we would have not advanced as we did, but we couldn’t know. | Full Transcript |
| 23:09 | I am not proud that troops under my command were involved in a calamity of this nature. | Full Transcript |
| 23:16 | He was responsible for the actions of the troops. It’s good and well to say I convened the board of inquiry and I voluntarily helped everybody else. But where’s the man accepting responsibility for the actions of the troops? And where is he saying ‘I am sorry that my troops stepped out of line.’ Which clearly they did. | Full Transcript |
| 23:36 | But were the soldiers responsible for deliberately luring the marchers into an ambush? This allegation was repeated and denied at the Truth Commission this week. | Full Transcript |
| 23:48 | But I, as I’ve explained, must really strongly check from deep in my heart that this issue was a set up ambush because that means that we, not only the soldiers sitting here, all soldiers who were from your community, who are related to you, who are part of this region are just happy killers who waited for the kill to destroy. And that is wrong, that is wrong. From my point of view and for the soldiers of the Ciskei Defence Force I can speak. I say we are sorry. I say the burden of the Bisho massacre will be on our soldiers for the rest of our lives. We cannot wish it away. It happened. But please, I ask specifically the victims, not to forget, I cannot ask this, but to forgive us. To get the soldiers back into the community, to accept them fully, to try to understand also under the pressure they were then. This is all I can do. I’m sorry. That is my plea to you, through the Commission. And as I say, I request the Commission I think on the behalf of the soldiers of the Ciskei ...more | Full Transcript and References |
