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people's warExplanation For a person to be guilty of a crime there must be intent and we cannot therefore say citizens who had no intention to set up Vlakplaas and kill people that they should carry the burden of this. We cannot hold responsible ordinary shunters, farmers and so on who supported apartheid because they ... They were fellow Afrikaners, part of my people. I knew many of them. And I have asked myself, was it possible, how is it possible that they could have done what they did and that some of them seemingly could have enjoyed what they did. Were they so deeply impregnated by this ideological concept of ... Sophiatown happened almost by accident. The owner of the farm Waterval, one H Tobianski planned a private lease hold township for low income white people. He named the area after his wife, Sophia, but he failed to attract white buyers to the area. It became a place where black people could buy land ... Mamasela spoke very little of his own actions during this torture. This man who by his own admission helped kill more than 35 people for the security police today insists that it was all against his will. The late eighties and early nineties were bloody years in KwaZulu-Natal. South Africans became almost immune to daily bulletins of massacres and running battles in especially the KwaZulu-Natal midlands. Our next report looks at the people affected by this turmoil and how they face the future. The highs have really been very individual things and I think of specific events like workshops that I ran for victims in Port Elizabeth - also very early on in the process when I was learning and they were learning - and Brandon Hamber from the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation ... Are you saying you never did anything wrong, that’s why you won’t apologise? // No but you are always in front to do wrong things. I know that gentleman, I know that gentleman. He’s one of the gentlemen I don’t like. // Are you going to apologise for the people who died in jail, who died in ... If you want to know whether white judges who went onto the bench had, across the spectrum, a range of views which white people in South Africa entertained I wouldn’t have thought it was necessary to ask me that question. The answer is rather too self evident. They killed a lot of askaris; more than six askaris were killed, because in their own language they said these people have out used their usefulness. They have outlived their usefulness. In other words they were not productive and the only way for one to be productive at Vlakplaas is to kill ... There is an accusation that precisely because it was black labour and because of the nature of the racism, in fact that black lives were considered expendable, that the mining industry did compromise when it came to questions of safety. // Firstly I think that a suggestion that management in the ... The whole thing to us was a conspiracy. It was something that was planned somewhere that my brother must be executed because hence at the end of the day when they completed that mission of killing him they wrote on the board in the Daveyton police station that ‘Caiphus Nyoka, 999 Lember street ... ... next? Madikizela-Mandela consulted with her lawyer, but clearly she had no choice, she had to offer some form of apology. But as people asked afterwards, how much does an apology mean when you have denied so vehemently before that you had done anything wrong. ... ... And these people for me, I felt that even at the age of seven, I was losing my friends. People disappeared in the night, you never saw them afterwards, and you would go to school one morning and find that your friend is not there anymore. You know, the house is gone. I mean, the roads here, we ... The beauty of the Karoo’s wide open spaces belies a cruel apartheid past in which black people were made to survive by passing themselves off as Coloureds. During the apartheid years the Karoo became by law an official Coloured area. For black people it became a hostile place to live and work. // ... ... And while my brother was laying on the ground the policeman’s colleagues came out and congratulated him telling him it was a good shot. Afterwards there was a court case but the decision of the court was that no one was to blame, that the policeman acted in the line of his duty, so no one ... But there were some people at the party who felt MK should do more to honour its fallen heroes. This week the Truth Commission heard from a number of families whose loved ones died in exile. How did so many sons and daughters of Welkom end their days in places as far from home as Zambia and Angola? I remember two days before that fateful day my wife and I and another couple were driving to Natal where I was going to address a graduation function at the Lutheran Theological College. And on our way out we got word that Ike had been detained the night before. We thought it was one of those ... This hostel on the other side of town housed a gang called the Toasters. They were young IFP members who got out of hand. Their political and criminal activities included murder, rape, assault and robbery. The Toasters left a trail of destruction behind them. Their signature: burnt houses, property ... as heroes. We salute them. We don’t regret their deaths, because they died for the people of this country. We’ll take it as their contribution towards the liberation of our people. I don’t regret it. I know wherever he is he doesn’t regret it. Whoever did this to him I’d like him to know ... Also, on the steering committee is Sylvia Dhlomo, who lost her son Sicolo. Sylvia works in the Khulumani office taking statements, setting up counseling and arranging weekly and monthly meetings for victims and their families. // We feel pity for our own people who have suffered. That is why it’s ... |
