 |
News | Sport | TV | Radio | Education | TV Licenses | Contact Us |
|
News | Sport | TV | Radio | Education | TV Licenses | Contact Us |
people's warExplanation We were over 60 in number I don’t remember exactly however, we grouped into two. The others had to attack one of the homesteads nearby. // We started… we hit the door, there was a hew in the door and we used it to hack the door. The door opened and we shot at the people and we also stabbed them ... Du Plessis and Van Rensburg presented a plan to General Erasmus to have the two activists eliminated. // And what is the ultimate conclusion which the three of you reached? // Our final conclusion was that there was no other way, detention or any other thing than to eliminate this people. // And ... The Commission has documented volumes on the activities of white policemen who were hated and feared in the townships, but this week in Grahamstown it was the actions of the black municipal policemen known as kitskonstabels that came under the spotlight. // These municipal police, we know who they ... ‘Booby-trapped Hand grenades.’ // Senior members of the South African Police implicating also senior SADF officers have applied for amnesty for a number of murders committed by SAP operatives when they supplied faulty hand grenades to COSAS members in the course of 1985. At least eight persons ... We are looking for measures which will restore people’s dignity which has been lost. We felt, we are looking for measures which will somehow assist people to more or less be able to live a life they would have lived was it not for the violation. Steyn was worried that the two gang members would escape from custody, as had happened in the past and so would never be brought to justice. // I told the Defence Force people that they should shoot and if there were any queries about the deaths they should just say that they had died on their way ... ‘Unearthing the Truth’ // Perhaps the most disappointing part of the Truth Commission has been its investigations unit. They were handicapped from the start by rules restricting the kind of investigators it could employ. The regional head of investigations in the Eastern Cape was fired from ... There was this particular police who was always everywhere especially among the blacks. A certain group that would be victorious out of all this groups he would be … this policeman were just shooting at the children and he was accompanied by other police. // Are you saying some of the children ... Chief Lebone Molotlegi returned to a changed South Africa in 1994. He died a year later, before he could witness the reconciliation of his people. His eldest son, Chief Lebone II now has to unify the Bafokeng. // This is the first amnesty hearing in the whole South Africa and this is the time to ... Ironically, a few hours after this interview Niewoudt was sentenced with two other former policemen for the murder of four of their colleagues. De Bruyn stressed in his argument and litigation that his clients believed they acted in the interests of the country. // The argument was that you have ... But throughout the time of the pass laws there was always fierce resistance. It reached a peak in the Defiance Campaign of 1952 when people deliberately destroyed their passes and when a huge protest march of women took place to the Union Buildings in Pretoria. In the sixties it was again an ... The shocking images of Sophiatown, people just being uprooted and carted away much against their will and quite hopelessly struggling against this thing, the machine of the National Party Government at the time was just simply too strong. 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. 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. ... Rooigrond then on that day I was put in isolation, taken to a cell where I stayed alone for a period of almost two months. Whilst in detention the warders in jail were telling us, all of us, not me alone that ‘you people are going to be hanged; you are facing a very serious crime of ... By the end of the next day scores of people were wounded and dead. Many wounded were treated at home for fear of being arrested at hospitals. But these were the lucky ones. Some say, up to 17 people lost their lives. // I will say for people that were hurt, I will call it something like 300 to ... 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 ... ... 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 ... Bringing back the name Sophiatown might well restore some of the dignity that was stripped away in the past. But it was more than dignity that was lost; it was a way of life. // It was a fluent kind of living, vibrant community and I think longing for the kind of freedom that hopefully we’re ... |
