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people's warExplanation Can a Truth Commission be an effective instrument to extract the truth about the past? // That depends on what powers the commission is given. In some cases there’s great frustration, you can have a commission that’s very effective but in the end it really only has the powers to speak to ... People who must have an opportunity to register their regret at not preventing human rights violations and also to give them an opportunity to register their commitment to reconciliation. During his amnesty hearing Dirk Coetzee hopes to tell his story for the last time. But he will not be able to bury it. // There’s one thing I will have to live till the day I die, is the corpses that I will have to drag with me to my grave, of the people whom I’ve killed. Remorse I can assure ... It was an operation that was done by myself entirely in cooperation with the riots unit. There were two operations. There was the cleanup operation before four in the morning and then that evening it was four special constables and myself. // Who gave you the instruction to kill? Was that Major ... I got off by the corner over there from the car that fetched me. When I was coming up this way I saw about two or three dead bodies. As I came I passed a hippo next to one of the corpses. When I arrived, I discovered that the house was already full of people. My mother was lying between the bedroom ... Even the most hardened opponent of the Truth Commission process will have to agree, these people have the right to know the full truth and it seems if we might just get there by the end of the year. The flood gates have truly opened with the torrent of new applications for amnesty from former ... And then obviously the question around medical treatment, people who still have bullet wounds, people who still suffer at a physical level should be given medical treatment and those people also suffering from psychological continuing problems, they should also be given help. A common worry is that the Truth Commission should not become the forgiveness commission. // You know, we have attended a case of, you know just recently, de Kock’s case. He didn’t appear sorry for what he did, and he expects people to say, okay we forgive him … which is very … you know we ... 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. 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 ... June 17, 1992. About 300 residents at the Kwamadala Hostel and members of the security forces turned Boipatong into a place of terror. 49 people died that night. News of the massacre reverberated throughout South Africa and the world. This week, some of the survivors told the Truth Commission their ... Having been overcome by the colonialists because of their superior weapons, mobility and fire power the African people correctly decided to resist the unholy alliance by setting up political organisations, drawing up petitions, organising protest marches as well as involving students and workers in ... 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 ... ... You did not disband that unit. You say now that you did not have enough evidence. How much more evidence did you need? // I was at no stage aware of any unit carrying out assassinations. The Vlakplaas unit as it was explained to me had a totally different objective, a totally different ... ‘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 ... ... 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? // ... 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 ... ... 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 ... I gave the instruction for them to flatten the huts with a casper and that we would open fire at the same time. It’s the overkill situation that was typically Koevoet. We would shoot as much as concentrated fire into a space as possible. We didn’t know how many people might be in there with ... |
