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 ...

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 ...

... 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 ...

... 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. ...

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 ...

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?

hearing. For the victims, survivors and families this was the first time they were together as a group. As they faced each other and the three young APLA men all the harsh realities of the past flooded into 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 ...

... 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 ...

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.

... 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 ...

... 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 ...

senior police and army officers should also be hold accountable for the orders they gave to the men who killed. So certainly it should also apply to APLA. But the Heidelberg amnesty hearing was almost overshadowed on Wednesday and Thursday by another controversy. Shortly after the Helderberg ...

Hello. Welcome to the Special Report. Tonight we deal with the bloody conflict in KTC Crossroads in 1987, the vicious APLA attack on an Eastern Cape hotel in 1992 and the death of 11 commuters during the 1983 Mdansane bus boycott. But we start in the Cape Peninsula. The dreaded pass book had always ...