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people's warExplanation 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 ... ... of certain words in this document. I want to emphasise words like ‘eliminate’ and ‘take out’ for the members on the ground who were in a war situation referred only to killing ... ... 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 ... ... 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 ... ... 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. ... ... 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 ... 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 ... ... thousands of people in the street in a matter of minutes. They took seven hours in what could only be described as declaring a residential area a war zone. I am convinced that if the will was there Anton could have been gassed out, starved out if it took seven days. The impressions created by ... 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 ... ... 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 ... It was one of the strategies to suppress the UDF beliefs. The regime was at war with the black people and they knew which areas were very vigilant and the only way they could actually try and cut down on numbers was to kill, destroy those townships. And that is why the A-Team had to be helped all ... ... 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 ... In 1988 the war came back to Gaborone. The SADF raid left people dead once again. // The four people killed in the raid were buried today. // This year the South African Defence Force made a submission to the Truth Commission acknowledging the Botswana raids. // The following external operations ... ... 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? // ... 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 ... ... the guerrillas, the booby trapping of portable radios given to black Zimbabweans and brutal executions. More than 55 000 people died in that dirty war. A real pity there wasn’t a truth commission in Zimbabwe after their liberation. This coming week there will be two days of hearings about ... ... continue unabated. Third force activities and divide and rule policies by former governments are perhaps part of the reasons for the low-key civil war in this province. It certainly is not ideology or class. The disturbance of natural divisions of political support through the homeland policy ... ... 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 ... 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 ... 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 ... |
