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people's warExplanation 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 ... ... 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 ... ... 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 ... ... about his freedom than he was about a sense of justice. He wants South Africans to accept that people like him had played a necessary part in the war that had engulfed the ... 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 ... 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. 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 ... ... 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 ... ... 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 ... The policy of apartheid has made South Africa much poorer than the country and its people could otherwise have been. Lost and unutilized human potential, wasted resources, people and capital that left the country, growth that did not occur and jobs that were not created; all these, and many more ... There is a perception amongst NGO’s and amongst certain members of the legal fraternity that a large degree of impunity exists in KwaZulu-Natal in terms of the lack of prosecutions and a lack of convictions. What’s your response to that? // I would like an opportunity to discuss that with the ... ... and say we found nothing, there is nothing that happened there when we would have liked to see people who were actually in those camps coming forward and testify. And give a chance to those who have lost their loved ones to come and say yes I lost my loved one through this manner and that way. ... In order to succeed what you need possibly is the stick of the courts and the carrot of the Amnesty Committee or of the Commission. And these two ought to be held in tension. The moment you drop one or the other then I think you’re in trouble, in terms of searching for the truth. Because a whole ... It was me who was there; I gave Major Mbina an order to make a single fire at the people who were coming towards you. They took me to Sotwai at number 9. That is a place in Khayalitsha. That was at night. And when we got there, still handcuffed as I was, there were some people that were dressed in big coats and they had sjamboks, they had some arms with them. And they stood in front of this house. There was also ... Welcome to the Special Report on the Truth and Reconciliation process. It is Monday morning; this is Mayfair, in the heart of Johannesburg. This is where Winnie Madikizela-Mandela will face the Truth Commission this week. It is likely to be the most crucial week of her entire life. She’s the ... Although Van Zyl was more forthright, disruption obviously included assassination and his first task when he took up his post in Cape Town in 1989 was to hire people with special skills. Are you prepared to say to the Zimbabwean people you are sorry for what you did? // Yes I would. // Are you really sorry for what you did? // Yes I am. Well it was something that I didn’t want to get involved in. You get put into a situation where you think well let me help get this thing out of ... be compiled now at the exclusion of evidences of other parties. Now we have a situation where we are seated with all the victims that are looking forward to be given reparation at the end of the day, which they are going to miss as far as I’m concerned in the sense that the Tokoza massacre, ... One disappointing thing for many people in George is the fact that PW Botha, after the magistrate had made his ruling, went on record as saying that he doesn’t feel it necessary to apologise for anything outside the courtroom where people from Lawaaikamp, from Pacaltsdorp, from Thembulethu from ... |
