APLA

Valentine’s day in 1994. South Africa is run by a transitional executive council and preparations for the first ever democratic elections are well under way. But in the bustling coal mining town of New Castle however preparations of a different kind are being made.

... demonstration, just peaceful demonstrations that’s how you see how the police they come and answer with a bullet. // So even you as part of APLA you didn’t feel that the country was heading towards any kind of reconciliation process? Did you feel it was a necessary thing to go and ...

manifestations. We make no apologies, we have nothing to hide. // But there was a wide expectation that the PAC should explain the brutal attacks by APLA on white civilians. // A new pattern arose in the 1990s where civilians within the white community were attacked. In the nature of guerrilla ...

Hello. Thanks for joining tonight’s Special Report. The Truth Commission process this past week was dominated by the 1993 APLA attack on a pub in Cape Town and by a special hearing into the past role of the legal profession. Tonight we bring you the full drama of both these hearings as well as ...

you forgive me at this point in time but I can ask for your forgiveness. // My name is Walter Tanda, I come from the Eastern Cape and am a member of APLA. I got instruction from the high commander of APLA. I didn’t kill your daughter because it was my decision. I am saying sorry and that ...

... Police, the South African Defence Force, the Azanian People’s Liberation Army and Umkhonto we Sizwe. The Azanian People’s Liberation Army or APLA was the armed wing of the Pan Africanist Congress. APLA has been operating for decades, but it really only became well known in 1992 and 1993 ...

... knows who the oppressor was. // And did the white man also include young women as well? // According to the education I received the battle APLA was lodging was fighting the oppressor. Who you were or what you were was irrelevant. If you’re an oppressor we would fight against you. // On ...

APLA then was fighting, returning a bullet with a bullet, protecting the Africans in Azania and the PAC was busy using other tactics so that you people in the government could hear the cries of the children of Azania. If your ears couldn’t listen, APLA decided to take guns to open the ears that ...

Eleven people were killed and more than sixty wounded. This week, these three young men, cadres from the PAC’s Azanian People’s Liberation Army, APLA applied for amnesty for what has become known as the St James massacre. Bassie Mkhumbuzi transported the weapons from the former Transkei for the ...

... heading is ‘Transkei: Military activities of the Azanian People’s Liberation Army.’ The document identifies places in the Transkei at which APLA guerrillas were trained and it names a number of them. One of the places identified in that document is the house of Dumisa Ntsebeza in Cala. ...

APLA as a unit, that is APLA high command, is shouldering responsibility of all the activities that took place since its inception in 1961 till the cut-off date that is May 1994.

Two previous APLA operations, the St James Church and the Heidelberg Tavern attacks, had raised several questions. Those questions came up yet again this week. When exactly did APLA suspend the armed struggle and what role did race play in the attacks?

... somebody who tells you that you must be the judge and the executioner of people? // I believe that these criminals were members of the ANC, PAC and APLA. They had to pay for the ...

... Durban in 1990 killing seven passengers. The applicants said this was a revenge attack for an earlier attack on white pedestrians by youths wearing APLA T-shirts. They chose the bus as a target because it was transporting black people. The Committee granted amnesty to the two junior members of ...

... elite security branch, anti-terrorist unit in 1986 that the Benzien reputation took off. The anti-terrorist unit tracked down Umkhonto we Sizwe and APLA cadres and when they were captured the man they were handed to first was Jeffrey Benzien. It was his job to make them talk, what were the ...

... war on our borders. But post traumatic stress disorder is also a condition suffered by many thousands of former soldiers of Umkhonto we Sizwe and APLA, present and former policemen and ordinary people who have suffered conflict and violence. In Hanover in the Karoo this week two mothers from ...

... benefit particularly from the new amnesty deadlines are the Freedom Front, the ‘Afrikaner Weerstands Beweging’ and the Pan Africanist Congress. APLA, the military wing of the PAC, will now apply for acts such as the shooting at the Heidelberg Tavern in Cape Town on 31 December ...

APLA units across the country were told that we haven’t got enough money, we haven’t got enough guns, we haven’t got enough ammunition and the Boers have lots of money, lots of ammunition, lots of guns and they must go and repossess them, not steal them.

The APLA attack on the St James congregation in 1993 was one of the most vicious. Letlapa Mphahlele ordered the attack. Charl van Wyk was one of the survivors. On Friday they met in the PAC offices in Cape Town.

In this quest to reclaim the land the amnesty applicants formed an APLA unit in Botshabelo and executed their first and last operation at Wesselsdal farm. // When we arrived there I knocked at the door together with my comrades and a white lady came, that is the wife of Mr. Smith. We asked her ...