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people's warExplanation on SABC news that a group of about 30 black people clad in PAC T-shirts had attacked whites on the Durban beach front. Since we’d already declared war against the National Party and as a result of this attack I as cell leader felt that we should launch a counter attack to prove to the government ... A former medic in the SA Medical Service this week broke his silence about his involvement in the war. // The first time I ever put a stitch into a person or the first time I ever gave anybody an injection was at Tembisa hospital. As medics we were sent there on Friday and Saturday evenings to ... 1990. Ezikhawini outside Empangeni, a war zone. // It was terrible. People were dying like flies. People were dying. It was terrible. We were just sleeping in the passages, not in our beds, not at all. There was the sound of bullets all over. From six o’clock you must close the gate, close the ... That the whole of South Africa and the people of Natal can see that there was a war against the ANC. That there really was a third force… there was a third force. Senior officers can deny it but those of us who were involved in it can testify. There is no other word for it. // People who still ... ... ‘Year of Great Storms.’ During the early nineties when most political players were sitting at the World Trade Centre negotiating their way towards change the Pan Africanist Congress was playing a different sort of game. While liberation armies like Umkhonto we Sizwe laid down arms, the PAC ... …because people wanted to make war, they’re fighting us. We were only SRC students, students speaking out, and now they were fighting us. So we had to retaliate. BMW was the Youth League of MK; we were the ones who did the fighting in Bonteheuwel. ... if one can learn from other countries, and certainly the Chilean Truth Commission, they took the position that the recommendations that went forward was that people should not hold public positions where they were involved in gross human rights violations. // Even if they were fighting a just ... ... the eighties the small township of Bruntville here outside Mooiriver in the KwaZulu-Natal midlands was a relatively peaceful place, but in 1990 the war that has ripped this province apart came to Bruntville. In November 1990 the first so-called Bruntville massacre took place when 15 people were ... ... Pondoland area around 1600. In 1844 paramount Chief Faku was recognized by the British as the Lord of Pondoland. When Faku’s heir died civil war broke out and Pondoland fell back into British rule. It was only in the 1960s that Pondo people took decisive action and stood up against the ... ... limited to only 200. Only the reverend, we don’t want any freedom soldiers, no speeches. // Is it the police? // Yes, the police. It was like a war. There was a convoy with police and soldiers. ... ... with. It was a very messy situation and we had to, as we saw it, apply messy legislation without any particular crusading zeal to fight a just war or anything like that. It was a very unfortunate situation we landed ourselves in. ... ... What is your personal feeling? // I am sorry for the victims and the family of the victims. Because at the end of the day they did not fight in the war. So in that regard I am sorry. I am sorry for them, for the people who had to suffer. And I apologise. // If you look back, was it worth it? // ... ... to kill my own people, the people that I devoted my life into liberating. // We believed in what we were doing as killers, we were seeing it as a war situation. // Our job was to hunt cadres, whether PAC or ANC, and we kill them. If we think they are useless, we kill them, but if we think we ... ... AK47, hand grenades, landmines, anti-personal mines, explosives, different explosives, TNT, plastic explosives? I’m mentioning now weapons of war, not police weapons. It was military training, that’s all I can say. If the Defence Force can say there was no secret, it was an open thing, no ... Here we found the war overnight or within a couple of months completely transformed. The protection was our responsibilities. We could not send our troops in uniform into the townships because if you send a man in uniform there they are immediately seen. So we had to find some other ways of ... In war there are two aspects that are involved, if not three. One is the physical involvement where people are stabbing or shooting one another. Secondly is the question of the moral or spiritual involvement where your heart or your spirit will tell you that you’ve got to do this. So the trend ... ... satisfied with Ntombela’s refusal to testify under the present TRC Committee. // ‘He’s killing my father and my brother too in the seven days war on 28 March. Ntombela … I’m sick and tired.’ // The people of the Midlands are calling for justice not revenge. All sides have buried their ... …because people wanted to make war, they’re fighting us. We were only SRC students, students speaking out, and now they were fighting us. So we had to retaliate. BMW was the Youth League of MK; we were the ones who did the fighting in Bonteheuwel. Zambia they’d pass through Botswana but without the Botswana government’s knowledge. We had to do this, we had no other alternative, because the war was not waged in Zambia, it was not waged in Botswana but it was waged inside the country. And so we had to find ways of infiltrating these ... In war, truth and morality are the first casualties. In South Africa the brutalised sometimes became the brutalisers. // Teddy Williams, a former member of Umkhonto we Sizwe, was sent to the ANC’s Quatro rehabilitation camp for taking part in a camp mutiny. // What traumatized me most is to see ... |
