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people's warExplanation 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. 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 ... ... Nelson Mandela walked out of prison Reggie Hadebe was the ANC’s deputy chairman in the troubled Natal Midlands and working hard to end the civil war. He never made it. Police say it took three snipers to finally kill him. More than a 100 guns taken in raids have been tested. The guns have ... ... 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 ... ... We should rather have stayed at home. Things would have gone better. It served no purpose. It was a waste. As far as I’m concerned the whole bush war in South West was also a waste of money and lives. They might as well have called a general election in 1948. What was the purpose? ... 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 ... 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 ... 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 ... This civil war that has become a reality of life in KwaZulu-Natal in the last decade has left many thousands dead. In areas like the south coast around Port Shepstone the concept of human rights has become as strange as killing has become familiar. People there are tired of the conflict. Yet when ... ... landed. Another came painted with army colours and dropped off some more police on the opposite side of Ngquza hill. They then all started coming towards us. We did not even expect any clashes, because none of us had weapons except Wana Johnson had a gun. He had come with his revolver, our ... ... 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 ... ... 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 ... The war in Tokoza started in 1990 but most of us were not yet involved in yet, we started taking heed of the violence in 1991. We then realized that people were dying where we stay. It was said that only Xhosa were being killed, but it was not the Xhosa only. People from our areas were also being ... ... 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 ... ... ‘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 ... saying sorry and that everyone in South Africa is ... the conflict between the oppressed people and the oppressor. Now that thing now, I think that war is over. Thank you. // Please no killings, that’s not necessary. I know she died not for nothing, so please don’t kill ... ... about the conflict between the Inkatha Freedom Party and the African National Congress in KwaZulu-Natal. More than 10 000 people have died in this war since the early 1980s. During the past few weeks the Truth Commission has paid special attention to KwaZulu-Natal with two amnesty hearings and a ... ... 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 ... There was still a war between them and us. There’s no reconciliation in fact yet, but I hope there would be next time. // People do not have energy of fighting daily. You can’t have that energy. Fighting is not a sweet thing you know, it’s not Bar One, because we lose friends, we lose ... 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 worse even in some ways than Vietnam in that I’ve seen a number of people who talk ... |
