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people's warExplanation Let’s move to Cape Town for the last evidence by the five policemen whose amnesty applications have served before the Truth Commission’s Amnesty Committee the last few weeks. Together, they killed at least 65 people in the name of the apartheid state. We’ll tell you about 21 of these murders ... Some crucial moments have passed. In the beginning of last year when you got to know the legislation you realized that it was unfairly weighed towards the perpetrators. No one did anything. You didn’t request to ask that the legislation be changed. After the first six weeks of hearings people ... Lunchtime January 25, 1980. Three Umkhonto we Sizwe storm into the Silverton branch of Volkskas bank, but it wasn’t a robbery. It is one of MK’s strangest operations. They kept 25 people hostage for six hours. Eleven people died in the Trust Feed massacre. Captain Brian Mitchell is serving a 30 year sentence for this crime. Four special policemen who were also convicted have since received indemnity. Cape Town waterfront on a Saturday afternoon. I am talking to David Bilders, a convicted right wing terrorist, who has alleged to have confessed to killing my father. He does not know we are being filmed. // Did you ever come across a guy whose nickname was Rooibaard? // Most certainly. // You ... During the trial, the policeman which was handling the case had difficulty and committed suicide. The following day, I think two days after the trial, Zandi was killed. So you can see that there was something that is ... that the very police cannot handle it. So I did even predict that those ... On the farms for example the children were violated by being used as labourers in the lands of the people that were on the farms that is the owners of the farms. Children had to work, some of them as early as ten years old were ploughing and reaping and weeding in the fields were the order of the ... Innocent victims of the massacre, like Mrs Francis Joli, and Lindiswa Ngwenya told the Human Rights Violations Committee how they were mistreated after they had been caught in the crossfire. // I heard gunshots and I fell down, due to the gunshots. I don’t know who did this. I tried to ask for ... ‘On 2 December 1988, New Hanover police Captain Brian Mitchell ordered the elimination of a group of UDF members. The operation went wrong. Eleven people attending a night vigil were killed.’ // It was just I think the driving force behind it, behind the motives of the security establishment ... This is a matter of concern to the entire leadership of the ANC. Our people are being killed and violence is escalating. There’s been a loud outcry from our people for arms and for the setting up of self defence units. The National Executive Committee is looking into this issue. If they are able to tell the story, the entire story, of their activities in Zimbabwe, the bombings that took place at Nkomo Barracks, the attempts on our president’s life, etcetera, and tell us why they did it. Who was behind it all? And when the nation is informed of that then I suppose ... ... We told them we had come to find out why our son was in detention. They told us that our son was not detained. Of course, this was proved afterwards to have been a lie. Six months later, his wife phoned me to say TZ was now in an ANC cell and in solitary confinement. And that he was being ... Black resistance in South Africa during these years were partly inspired by the spread of ‘uhuru’ in the rest of colonial Africa. By the mid-sixties many African countries had cast off the colonialist yoke and became independent states. // The PAC organised a massive protest against the pass ... Gideon Niewoudt is now on trial in the Port Elizabeth Supreme Court for murder. // The Motherwell bombing case: the state alleges that he was involved in the murder of other policemen. // At an inquest in 1993 into the murder of four other Eastern Cape activists, Niewoudt once again denied that he ... Pedro had a letter with the names of his contacts in Lesotho. Benzien wanted those names, badly. // I was given instructions to carry a letter which I should not open until such time as I’d cross the Lesotho border and then I would find out who these people were and where I was supposed to meet ... Gentlemen what do you say to the proposition that your statement that you issued on the 16th of February 1989 is part of a STRATCOM operation? // All I can say, for me, that’s a ridiculous proposition. I’ve made the point here that arising out of the events in Soweto I was part of the drafting ... I wish to comment on crimes committed by security forces. Up to 1994 when I was given the job by the then state president in the TEC, of going into the recommendations and findings of the Goldstone Commission, I never realized what was happening in this country in reality. I had a good idea, but ... have to come, but you have three days to decide. So here I am. I came and it started in a sense one of the most difficult but also one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. The most important part of the work of a Reparation and Rehabilitation Committee is to draft policy for reparation ... ... it was your prerogative to say, if this means arrest, let it be … in those terms because we don”t want a situation arising afterwards that people will eliminate people, in the sense of killing them, when in fact what was meant was that they should be arrested or be detained. ... My life since then has been very, very difficult. It’s had a big element of self destruction. I’ve been through two marriages. I have a daughter. But really I’ve just destroyed the people around me, my friends, my family and I think it’s enough now. |
