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Special Report
Transcripts for Section 3 of Episode 51

TimeSummary
13:20We all wish Tshidiso courage on the long journey he’s just started and the other child victims of our bitter past. Now to another unfortunate chapter of our history. After Umkhonto we Sizwe was formed in 1961 it established camps in neighbouring states: Zambia, Angola, Tanzania, Uganda. Suddenly in the aftermath of the Soweto uprisings in 1976 thousands of young people joined the ANC in exile. The ANC could not cope, not in facilities to accommodate and feed the tidal wave of newcomers nor in training them. The ANC’s next crisis followed shortly afterwards. The apartheid government recruited, bought and blackmailed hundreds of people to infiltrate the ANC camps. Soon, the ANC was overcome by a wave of paranoia. Their judicial and security systems could simply not deal with spies and suspected spies. The uprisings of unhappy and frustrated guerrillas and the rough treatment of everybody vaguely suspected of being an informer combined into the ANC’s biggest human rights disaster ...moreFull Transcript and References
14:52‘The Dark Side, The ANC in exile’ // What traumatized me most is to see people being tortured. // ‘Torture, Quatro Camp’ // Lots of people, others beaten, their jaws broken and some… there’s another colleague of mine who was one of the mutinees. He had his skull opened up, with a bayonet during torture. // They used the ropes here on this part of the foot [ankle] then I was hanging upside down, my head was facing down. // ‘Torture Quatro Camp’ // My feet were up, then they would beat me under the feet with that thick pin and then they would kick me on the face, I think that’s how I sustained the injury on the jaw.Full Transcript and References
15:56By the time I recovered, after seven months, my left arm was not working and I could not speak. // ‘Torture Quatro Camp’ // I had wounds all over my body and I could not stand on my feet. I could not even move. That’s what I can remember. I was just sitting in the corner, not knowing where I am.Full Transcript and References
16:19There isn’t anything to hide about these camps. There ought not to be the notion of a dark cloud as the Commissioner was saying, because you have a sense that there was something that was hidden, that we should be ashamed of, that needs to come out during these hearings. The overwhelming majority of the South Africans who joined Umkhonto we Sizwe, whether they went out of the country or stayed in the country were not traitors. They were not traitors, they didn’t sell out, they didn’t become subject to investigations, didn’t become subject to abuses either, of being beaten and tortured.Full Transcript and References
17:09But the ANC is not denying that there were what they called ‘excesses’ in their camps, in fact a lot of what we know of the violations in these camps come from documentation given to the Truth Commission by the ANC and from several commissions of inquiry the ANC itself had appointed. The ANC gave a list of 37 people executed by order of military tribunal. Internal ANC reports also chronicled the cruel beatings and torture in some of the camps. Many, probably most of the people suspected by the ANC were informers, but some were completely innocent. One such a person was Doctor Pallo Jordan, Minister of the Environment now, who was detained for six weeks by Mbokodo, probably because he dared criticize their brutal methods. And then there was the case of Muziwakhe Ngwenya, popularly known as Thami Zulu or TZ. TZ was a senior MK commander when Mbokodo suspected him of being an informer. His friends in MK and his family deny this vehemently, but to this day the accusation lingers ...moreFull Transcript and References
18:30I challenge whoever says TZ was a police agent. The ANC is a free movement now; they should institute a commission of inquiry headed by a judicial officer where we are all represented. I challenge them to prove that he ever was or my family ever had any connection with the special branch. I challenge them, I challenge them, I challenge them.Full Transcript
19:14What the ANC has done is they have made available to us a report, which was a commission of inquiry report done on the matter of Thami Zulu. Now there are a number of stories that are floating around, there’s a story that possibly he was an informer, there’s the story that he might have died of AIDS, there’s also the story that he could have died because of the bad treatment he was given while in exile. Thami of course represents a very … there’s a soft spot because Thami was one of our ‘76 people who went into exile and he was well-known as a commander of a unit operating in the KwaZulu-Natal area and so we want to unravel the circumstances relating to Thami’s death. We are in the process of an investigation, we’re preparing subpoenas in respect of witnesses for Thami’s matter and I think that once we have dealt with all those subpoenas we will be able to give a more fuller picture of the circumstances relating to Thami’s death. I think that it’s fair to say ...moreFull Transcript
 
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