 |
News | Sport | TV | Radio | Education | TV Licenses | Contact Us |
|
News | Sport | TV | Radio | Education | TV Licenses | Contact Us |
people's warExplanation 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 ... ... 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 ... 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 ... that many South Africans haven’t taken proper notice of, the tens of thousands of young white men who were forced by military conscription to wage war in neighbouring states and against their fellow citizens in the townships. Until then, good ... 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 ... …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. There were people along the road from the Executive Hotel down to this space. These people were armed; I didn’t know why they were armed. When I came in here I found a crowd of people. // When we gathered there in thousands the police and soldiers were there in hundreds. Now, we didn’t know ... I want to ask of you, in your application for amnesty you are asking the survivors and the next of kin or families for forgiveness, but thus far you have shown no remorse whatsoever to give us some sort of comfort. You have shown us nothing. You have only spoken of the orders and the killings that ... Since Friday evening South Africans have been asking each other, do you believe Winnie Mandela? What will this do to her public career? Do ordinary people hold her responsible for the death and destruction caused by the people around her in ’87 and ’88? We don’t know. What we do know is that ... Something is right or not right, and the black people were below us, slaves and mostly used as labourers. I am totally committed to exhuming every little piece of bone that we know is existing in any part of the length and breadth of this country. But our mandated period, certainly our period of operation as the TRC, may expire before we have done all the work that needs to be done. As I speak, I’ve ... ... to members from National Intelligence, Military Intelligence, as well as the other intelligence agencies and nobody seems to be able to come forward with any shred of evidence. We are investigating this case as a murder case, be it KwaZulu police involvement, the KwaZulu government ... May God bless our country, may God bless our leaders and its people. Kgotso ayibelilina, [may peace be with you] thank you. It was not our purpose to kill as many people as possible. Our purpose was to prove that if these attacks were launched against the Boer people that we would retaliate, that we would hit back. There’s no point in just shooting people at random, then we could have done that in Richards Bay for ... Some people lost their lives in the process; some were injured, some were jailed and some had to run for their lives out of the country. But the march drew the attention of the world and South Africa was never the same again. ‘On 2 December 1988, New Hanover police Captain Brian Mitchell ordered the elimination of a group of UDF members. The operation went wrong. Eleven people attending a night vigil were killed.’ // It was just I think the driving force behind it, behind the motives of the security establishment ... Some crucial moments have passed. In the beginning of last year when you got to know the legislation you realized that it was unfairly weighed towards the perpetrators. No one did anything. You didn’t request to ask that the legislation be changed. After the first six weeks of hearings people ... On the farms for example the children were violated by being used as labourers in the lands of the people that were on the farms that is the owners of the farms. Children had to work, some of them as early as ten years old were ploughing and reaping and weeding in the fields were the order of the ... This is a matter of concern to the entire leadership of the ANC. Our people are being killed and violence is escalating. There’s been a loud outcry from our people for arms and for the setting up of self defence units. The National Executive Committee is looking into this issue. Innocent victims of the massacre, like Mrs Francis Joli, and Lindiswa Ngwenya told the Human Rights Violations Committee how they were mistreated after they had been caught in the crossfire. // I heard gunshots and I fell down, due to the gunshots. I don’t know who did this. I tried to ask for ... |
