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people's warExplanation With the birth of the Truth Commission last year a voice was finally given to the thousands of South Africans who’d been brutalized during the conflict of the apartheid years. For months people from every part of the country poured their hearts out before the TRC’s Human Rights Violations ... ... explained to them what the problem was that we were faced with. I can just mention that Mr. Niewoudt and Mr. Van Zyl at that stage were completely aware of the activities of Pebco. // Is it your evidence that these three people, the so-called Pebco Three, that they were extremely dangerous? // ... ... him from near and he fell down. What precisely happened there I can’t remember. At that stage I thought my life was in danger. // It’s a bit awkward but just give us the details. When you shot this man, what did you see, where did you shoot him? // I shot him on the side of his head; that is ... Apart from the moral repugnance with which some of us recoiled at the activities of what people in the township tended to generally regard as ‘Winnie’s boys,’ one of our major concerns at a political level, was the extent to which the activities of these ‘boys’ were beginning to detract ... When you carry out operations and you are congratulated, decorated, honoured and given all the accolades of a successful officer in the struggle against communism and insurgency and counter revolution, you believe that the people who are honouring you know what you did to be honoured for. There is something we do not understand. We need to know who it was who pulled that trigger. We know that the events of that night are known to the people who watched us. // It seems to me more than strange that the Durban murder and robbery unit, a unit with an excellent record of solving crimes ... One was of course aware of certain steps that were being taken, people who were being murdered. We did know about it, and we were very upset and worried about that, because we didn’t think that that was the way to go about. // Did you at any stage give this information directly to Mr. Botha? // ... Welcome to the Special Report on the Truth and Reconciliation process. It is Monday morning; this is Mayfair, in the heart of Johannesburg. This is where Winnie Madikizela-Mandela will face the Truth Commission this week. It is likely to be the most crucial week of her entire life. She’s the ... One disappointing thing for many people in George is the fact that PW Botha, after the magistrate had made his ruling, went on record as saying that he doesn’t feel it necessary to apologise for anything outside the courtroom where people from Lawaaikamp, from Pacaltsdorp, from Thembulethu from ... Reference book, pass book, dompas, stinker, different names for the same thing. The hated document that determined the life of every black South African for decades, where they could sleep, live, work, visit and for how long. The main aim of the pass laws was to control the movement of black South ... Apartheid was an option or a choice for death, carried out in the name of the gospel of life and that is why it was an issue of faith, for people of faith, to say no to apartheid. It was a spiritual question in its most fundamental form. The policy of apartheid has made South Africa much poorer than the country and its people could otherwise have been. Lost and unutilized human potential, wasted resources, people and capital that left the country, growth that did not occur and jobs that were not created; all these, and many more ... There is a perception amongst NGO’s and amongst certain members of the legal fraternity that a large degree of impunity exists in KwaZulu-Natal in terms of the lack of prosecutions and a lack of convictions. What’s your response to that? // I would like an opportunity to discuss that with the ... TRC Commissioners emphasize that this week’s health hearing was just a small step in a long process of healing, which should be followed up by the medical profession and human rights organisations. // If we achieve anything through this process I do hope that we insure that human beings are never ... And at night you’d lie in your bed and you’d listen to these bizarre screams and shouts and behaviour and people going quite mad in the ward next door. And it was kind of, well ‘daai klomp is bossies’ [that lot is ‘bossies’]. And it was sort of left at that you know. And I don’t think ... The Bonteheuwel Military Wing started precisely because we needed to respond to the manner in which the state operated. We needed to one, defend ourselves, defend our community, because it appeared as if our community were under siege. We had a situation where there were, police put patrols – and ... You have to see the state’s relation with the media as a macro continuum. It goes right from the owners of the media, the people that own the newspaper, the editors who control the policy of the newspaper, right down to the chap who can clean the dustbin at night and stuff it all in an envelope ... Col Van Rensburg words to me were that a drastic plan should be made very quickly with these particular people and that I accepted to mean that they should be eliminated. But there have also been many lows. // I remember at a hearing when somebody talked about just walking daily with her child down the street and so on and this most overwhelming sense of sadness… I just felt I wanted to weep no end. And often I think it’s when things resonate with one and often ... But maybe the most useful to the Truth Commission’s search for truth was the ANC’s list of more than a 1000 ANC members who died in exile. This included the names of 34 people executed by order of the ANC’s military tribunal. But questions around the mysterious death of MK commander Thami ... |
