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people's warExplanation ... of about 20 policemen, people with counter insurgency training. // That’s correct. And I approached people who had fought in the Rhodesian bush war and perhaps also in Namibia and who had been in the task force; I didn’t go there with a group of administrative staff. I used people who had ... ... 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. ... 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 ... ... after the unbanning of the ANC, SACP, PAC and other organisations the AWB started flexing its military muscle and threatened the government with war if the ANC ever came to power. // ‘The intention of the ANC is to destroy my people, to destroy everything in sight. My message to the ANC ... ... section 29 to subpoena people but bring them to a public hearing. // You have worked well with the Attorneys-General in pushing people to come forward and apply for amnesty in the case of the police and you are also working with the Defence Force. You don’t get that idea, that there is a ... come you are looking for Glad here? Why don’t you go and look for him at his house? They said we are not here to play. I said, you are coming with war. // Mister Mokgatle came from the bedroom and he had a panga in his hands. It was sharpened on both sides. If I have to give the measurement it ... ... was almost inevitable. The word ‘amnesty’ is derived from the Greek word ‘amnesia’ which means to forget. Well, we cannot forget. A just war is understandable, but granting amnesty to people who killed indiscriminately will be condoning the actions of every single individual worldwide ... ... die, could be tortured, could be abducted, could be buried and many of them; and people like yourself and others just didn’t know, weren’t aware of that these people were acting unlawfully or illegally or misunderstood. Help us, I mean how is it possible for that to take place? // I think ... ... 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 ... It was a brutal and chaotic war that lasted for nearly five years and many of its battles were fought in and around the hostel compounds of the South African townships. Many people have told the Truth Commission about the terror associated with these fortresses and their inhabitants. ... who took part in the KwaMakhutha killing were not members of the VIP unit, they were members of the offensive unit and they were not involved in a war situation as you earlier described. They attacked a house and they killed 13 people, most of whom were women and children. // Therefore they were ... In 1986 a bloody civil war erupted in KwaNdebele and neighbouring Moutse. To make the small poor homeland of KwaNdebele viable for independence the South African government planned to incorporate two non Ndebele regions. One of them was predominantly Pedi speaking Moutse. But the people of Moutse ... one we need to learn a lot about in our country because the parallels are very dramatic. Some things do seem to make it worse, being in an unpopular war, an unpopular conflict is a problem. Our men had a problem even worse in some ways than Vietnam in that I’ve seen a number of people who talk ... …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. It’s very difficult to know how many deaths are on the hands of these people and that’s because of the very nature of the secret war. The conflict in Matabeleland cost between 5 and 10 000 lives and at least one of the people who is in Chikurubi now as a convicted prisoner was very directly ... ... in this country, because he’s talking peace. People wanted all the time the image of chief of staff to remain on him so that he must be a man of war, betrayed forever, but Chris died for peace. How shall we convince people about ... ... of ideology, of power structure, almost every one of us could become to some extent a perpetrator. Aspsychologists, especially we became aware with the years that this need to create a character which is a typical perpetrator is too simple an assumption and we have to think about that ... I don”t want to be involved in a semantic level regarding the meaning of certain words in this document. I want to emphasise that words like ”eliminate” and ”take out” for the members on the ground, who were in a war situation, referred only to killing people. Shaun and John who fought this war were told they were protecting their country and their people against the threat of communism. The church and its chaplain said they were fighting for the Christian faith. The politicians said they were killing and dying on foreign soil because their country ... We’ve come to the end of our Special Report. This coming week the Truth Commission will investigate the seven day war in the Natal midlands in 1990 in which some 200 people died. Key figures such as Brigadier Oupa Gqozo will also give evidence on the Bisho massacre. The Special Report will be ... |
