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people's warExplanation Over the fourteen months the South African truth process developed its own unique identity. Even while listening to the most harrowing testimony people could still laugh. People also sang, gave comfort to others and when there was nothing more to say, they prayed. In October 1985 the world got to see an amazing piece of television footage shot in South Africa. A number of policemen hid in boxes on an open truck and provoked angry young people to throw stones at them. Like in a violent movie the world watched the policemen jump up and mow down the stone ... In stark contrast really to what have taken place in the business sector hearings where on the whole you found people in a self justifying mode. Here, extraordinarily, virtually every single one of those who testified from the different faith communities and the different Christian denominations ... I did report to Dr Lang, as one following dutiful procedure, and his attitude was basically look give these people the treatment they need, you know if they need a Panado give them a Panado, if they need an X-ray have them X-rayed but that’s where our job stops. It’s not our job to find out why ... ... with the Imbali support group. // We were sitting in the house, the Gabela house, that has experienced unspeakable terror, even from ’86 onwards because Sipho her son was a UDF member and a spokesperson for the youth. In ’89 Sipho was so severely injured by white policemen and Mama ... I mean you make a braai around the person being burnt alive, being blown to pieces and … nothing! You don’t see it. That’s what I therefore think, that evil has a tendency of not only taking away from you the feeling that you’re human but it blinds your eyes, you can’t see. It blinds your ... ... 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 ... Poverty, repression and police brutality in the 1980s. The townships on the East Rand were seething. Six COSAS leaders died in July in 1985 after being lured into launching an attack with hand grenades, booby trapped by Vlakplaas policeman Joe Mamasela. At one of their funerals Maki Skosana was ... ... the activities of you and your associates you label them, as informers and working with the system. What is your reaction to that? // I am not aware of people I have falsely accused of being informers whenever they are working against me. // Well you are yet to prove any evidence that they ... Tell me about the Aliwal North exhumations, do you have strong evidence besides forensics evidence about whether those were members of a MK unit. // Well, the evidence seems to be sufficient. I wouldn’t say it is conclusive, but it seems to be sufficient, because one, it is a consequence of ... We’ve heard a lot of evidence about how you people went into houses and you saw some person there you didn’t know so you killed them. // [We heard such evidence] // So wasn’t it important to find out who was in a house? How many people were there? Whether there were innocent people there or ... ... hear evidence on the reign of terror of the Toasters gang. You may have seen that the Special Rreport team was given the foreign correspondence award for outstanding journalism. Tonight we want to dedicate this award to all the people who have appeared before the Truth Commission, the people ... You were there to protect not to attack, not to kill. // Yes it is so sir. // Can you explain how you can possibly think you were protecting anybody when these four people were being beaten by a vast crowd? Why should it be necessary for you to join in beating them with an iron rod? Our intentions were to take these people and hit them. And that happened, but while we were beating them we found that … while this thing was happening the people were very angry, people were singing freedom songs and they were toyi-toying as well and there was just chaos. And you could not say ... On the 28th of October this Lieutenant from the security police visited me again. He alleged that the security police had a file on Jurgens. And his words to me were, if we find him, we’ll shoot him, we’ll kill him. // On the 8th of November Hester Grobbelaar heard a radio news report of two ... The room was full of blood, on the walls, and they said to me ‘do you see the blood on the walls?’ They said ‘this is the blood from the people like you, people who do not want to speak the truth.’ Before they could grab me they said, they asked me about Tsepho, that’s my aunt’s child. ... In his evidence at the judicial inquest Eugene de Kock said that while he was firing bullets into the activists he prayed that they would live. He never wanted to kill them. // They could have been just ANC activists for all I know, but there was absolutely no weapons found on these people. These ... During the 1980s the township Chesterville, south of Durban, was UDF territory. One of the people that mobilized the community was Thandi Memela. She motivated the youth, including her own son, to join the UDF and was involved in getting people out of the country and bringing in weapons. But things ... A think a white person should actually come to a hearing, not watch it on TV, not read about it in the newspaper but actually come and share in the process. I think some of the people who have attended hearings have been overwhelmed by what they have felt, by the pain they are seeing, but have also ... A memorial service brings conciliation but for many it can only dress the wound. For healing and for the pain to stop it is necessary to take leave of the bones and the body, to bid farewell to the only real reminder of a life that is gone. // A human being is not an animal, a beast, to be killed ... |
