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people's warExplanation There is a danger that truth commissioners and the public could start suffering from torture fatigue. At every sitting of the Commission so far people who had been tortured came to tell their stories. But in Kimberley this week a very disturbed young man, whose life had been destroyed by torture, ... Hello. It was a grueling week. The Truth Commission in Gauteng this week delved deep in the worst evils of our past, like the assassination of activists. In tonight’s report we look at the assassinations of David Webster, Abram Tiro, Beki Mlangeni, Jeanette and Katryn Schoon, Ruth First and ... The Ciskei puppets skilfully undermined all those litigations by arresting and detaining the lawyers who were defending those people or some who actually had civil claims against the Ciskei government. Of course when they were told, it was interpreted in a political way that you are taking the ... Not all self defence unit action was this benign. In the townships around Johannesburg self defence units were involved in day to day combat with amongst others Inkatha members and the internal stability unit. Many people lost their lives in the ever spiralling violence and for many the self ... St. James today looks like any other church in the suburbs. Inside its quiet, sun slanting down onto pews, hymn books neatly arranged for the next service. On Sundays more than a thousand people file into its vast interior, but on a stormy Sunday’s night in July four years ago, shortly after the ... 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. I literally didn’t believe it. I thought that not even this government’s that stupid and when it sank in it was a terrible shock and we all, all of his friends, apart from the tragedy of it there was a sense of anger, a lot of anger. // It’s a long time, but it’s like yesterday, because ... The former Defence Force was also the topic of the controversy this week stirred up by a report of the investigation task board. The board was appointed in September 1994 to investigate organized hit squad activity in KwaZulu-Natal. A few significant facts emerged very clearly from this report. The ... The 1953 Bantu Education Act, separated schools and curricula for white and black, inferior education for black communities. It began with the National Party’s rise to power and the policies this man, Dr Hendrik F Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid. He was determined to deny black people, ... know that there were hundreds of children that were killed and when we make a finding, are we only saying that it’s only those 15 that can come forward, and get whether it’s urgent interim relief, or can all those people and I think the pendulum if you like is swinging to the position that we ... Is it true that people were decorated for the London bomb? Were you decorated? // No. // Why not? // Maybe they didn’t think I had any part in it. They didn’t give me a medal, but all the rest of them got the SOE. // You were however involved in the breaking into the ANC offices in 1984. // I ... Edmundt Zondi came to the Commission this week to tell how his sister and his son were killed, his house was looted and set alight and his livelihood, his taxi, burned out. // On the 25th of March 1990 IFP had a rally in Durban, so on their way back one of the buses stopped there. My son alighted ... He might not be forgiven but Trust Feed killer Brian Mitchell was granted amnesty and set free in December. It was not a popular decision. He had served less than five years of his 30 year sentence for the killing of 11 people in the Natal Midlands. It was a tragic mistake as the four policemen ... In the Commission’s witness protection programme safe houses are however not an option for amnesty applicants serving prison sentences. // It’s a normal atmosphere in prison that if somebody speaks everybody else hears about it and there’s obviously going to be danger to the person. We have a ... ... dwelling house, I was just securing the area around the house. Quite a while after the operation, I will say approximately three or four weeks afterwards, Willie Nortje came to me and handed me an envelope. All the other people involved also received such an envelope. If I can remember correctly ... ... is incidents of St James’s and the Amy Biehl ones. // The question, which was a simple one, remains unanswered. Was the leadership of the PAC aware of what took place in the incidents that it itself has brought to us. And if it only became subsequently aware of these incidents, did the ... Over the past 18 months the Truth Commission’s Amnesty Committee has heard 250 applicants tell their stories in hearings. They include the men in uniform who served the previous government and the liberation forces as well as right wingers and civilian supporters of the ANC and PAC. Many of them ... What was it in our people or our history that made this ghastly practice possible and so popular? // There’s a whole process that leads finally to the brutality of the necklace as a method of murder. And that for me is actually what we should have recorded in the eighties and it never got ... So they are the people who know about what happened that evening. Why don’t they come out truly and tell the whole truth, because they are still lying and they let their lawyers lead them what to say and what not to say. How can we believe such people? How can we reconcile with people who are not ... It is difficult to see my brother in this … like this. I mean it’s hard, it’s hard. There’s nothing I can say at the moment. It’s hard. I cannot even think anymore. If you look at white people, what they have done to our brothers, it’s bad. It’s really bad. |
