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Content
A listing of transcripts of the dialogue and narrative of this section.
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Structure
The list provides the transcript, info about the text, and links to references contained in the text.
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Special Report
Transcripts for Section 2 of Episode 69
| Time | Summary | | | 01:48 | The APLA submission started on a very reconciliatory note with an address by the recently elected PAC leader, Dr Stanley Mogoba. // I have supported the Truth and Reconciliation Commission at all times, even when personal hurt and humiliation was experienced, because I am convinced that this country can never break out of its cocoons of hatred and bitterness unless we reveal all the truth and seek forgiveness. The greater responsibility in that exercise of course naturally lies with the perpetrators of apartheid. It is in this spirit that I have extended a hand on behalf of my party to the St James Church so that we can try to bury the painful past and help to bring reconciliation and healing to our members and to our beloved country. | Full Transcript and References | | 02:53 | But the military men had a much harsher message; it quickly became clear that the APLA strategy of attacking white civilians was going to be a central issue. | Full Transcript | | 03:10 | It is in this context therefore that the Azanian People’s Liberation Army did not have the burden or problem of the so-called ‘soft’ or ‘hard’ target. In all honesty the terms ‘soft’ or ‘hard’ target did not exist in our vocabulary and it was a foreign concept. All that mattered was the political and psychological benefit that the organisation will derive from such military operations. It should be noted that the killing of genuine African civilians had intensified in the course of time. Africans attending night vigils, commuting to work et cetera, more especially in the eighties and nineties, were brutally massacred whilst the white community lived in harmony and tranquillity. It should therefore not surprise anyone that targets like the St James Church, King Williamstown golf club, Heidelberg Tavern, etcetera - which are more prominent or known by everybody - were selected. The leadership of the Azanian People’s Liberation Army takes full responsibility for all ...more | Full Transcript and References | | 05:10 | It was stipulated that every adult person had to be armed, white person, had to be armed. Now if such a definition is given to an armed preparedness by a Defence Act, ipso facto, every household therefore that conformed with these instructions or with these laws was a military garrison in that sense. You had commandos all over, so anything therefore that was defined or any entity that was defined in the Defence Act of the time in terms of military strategy of the regime was therefore a legitimate target. // Could you indicate by what legislation and at what point that legislation was introduced, which made it a requirement that every adult person, presumably every white adult person, had to be armed and trained? // The fact of the matter is that there was training that was conducted for white adults. Women were actually trained in target shooting, men were actually trained in target shooting and in white schools there was a regimentation of the children to raise their awareness about ...more | Full Transcript | | 06:55 | The fact of the matter is that it is a well known fact that every adult, white, unless this can be denied in this house, every white South African in this room has been trained by the law – which I think was the conscription law. // Just for your information I was not so trained, I’d have never owned a gun, I don’t know even what it looks like. So you have a benefit over me. // Mr. Mkhwanazi it’s also a well known fact that thousands of white conscripts in fact refused to participate in the South African Defence Force. Some people in fact went to prison for fairly long periods precisely because they refused. It’s also a fairly well known fact, if we’re going to use that appellation, that very large numbers of members of the white community opposed that system of militarization and conscription. How does that fact bear with the notion that every single member of the white community would then fall within the definition of a legitimate target? // Those who were opposed were ...more | Full Transcript | | 11:01 | It should therefore come as no surprise if at any stage your investigative unit here were to produce that so and so in the leadership of the PAC had an interview and he was a little taken aback with the events as they then had unfolded in this particular incident, or that particular incident. The actual selection of targets was done by the military commanders, including the commissariat, who were the representatives of the party. | Full Transcript | | 11:40 | Mister Mlambo was correct. This is what PAC central committee leader Barney Desai said in reaction to the St James Massacre. // We think that this is the work of the third force, operating in this country to destabilize the transition to democracy. We are busy discussing the constitution here and it’s no accident that this attack has occurred in Cape Town in the manner that it has. We condemn this mindless violence on churchgoing people. | Full Transcript | | 12:17 | The basis for positions adopted in respect of the legitimacy of targeting white civilians, that by typifying white civilians in the manner in which you did carte blanch, you would have violated international law. // We did not attack white civilians but we destroyed European invaders, dispossessors, criminals, because here you want to create a situation whereby our struggle is as recent as the PAC and that’s not the case. Our struggle against colonialism is as old as when the colonialists set their foot here and showed their sinister motives of dispossessing our forefathers of their land. And the whole struggle, the whole armed struggle was the continuation of that. And actually we can draw the ancient wisdom from our forefathers when Dingaan said to the Zulu warriors ‘Bulala abathakathi.’ What did he mean? He meant that those dispossessors, abathakathi, the Zulu warriors didn’t ask among themselves who were the abathakathi, who were the wizards? But they knew who the wizards ...more | Full Transcript |
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