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people's warExplanation ... 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 ... ... 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 ... Perhaps I should remind you of the structure of the Truth Commission before we move our focus to the hearings at Phokeng, in North West Province. // The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is divided into 3 committees: The Committee on Human Rights Violations, the Committee on Amnesty, and the ... The Truth and Reconciliation process is not really about the past. We only need to understand yesterday so we can deal with today and tomorrow. The people of Oudtshoorn understood this; they asked the Truth Commission for a special hearing so they could express their feelings and ideas about the ... It was during 1986, I was working with my contacts from Botswana and Kenya. One of my contacts by the name of Ata Mabena, he was a person that used to visit in Botswana. One day I met him at a place where we used to meet at the border. He gave me information that he met one ANC member who told him ... Committee’s full schedule starts in two weeks’ time, but a serious problem has been that former security force members were reluctant to come forward. That could be changing. In a major breakthrough 22 former security policemen approached the Truth Commission this week to discuss the ... Queenstown in the Eastern Cape is more or less the same size as Kroonstad, but the stories the Truth Commission heard there were very different. This is Mlungisi cemetery where 11 victims of the 1985 Queenstown massacre lie at rest. The trouble began with a consumer boycott against white businesses ... ... them were family, we’re one people. So, despite of all those things we managed every now and then going back to them. We pleaded with them and towards the end of eighties then they started to realise that really these people they are not behind us. Because, we pointed out to them that on a ... Ten years ago the top five hanging nations in the world were China, Nigeria, Iran, the United States and of course South Africa. By the end of 1989 when a moratorium was placed on the death penalty in South Africa over 2500 people had been hanged in this country. The Truth Commission now has to ... Crossroads eleven years later has survived the social engineering that scorched its people and its land. Today, people live and people die, but that’s normal. The ANC had a well established route from South Africa to Zambia for ferrying people either to safety or to banishment. As Katiza’s legal guardian, Emma Nicholson confronted Zambia’s former president about this allegation and about his own involvement. Instead Champion Galela was ordered out and he was subjected to the same brutal treatment that the old man was subjected to. Because of his weak physical body it was not long before he lay dead. I think his interrogation went on for three to four hours and then he was dead. We were then ordered ... Sophiatown was truly a melting pot, a place where musicians, artists, writers and gangsters combined to create an excitement that is still remembered with nostalgia. People lived as if they were free in a time that white capital and Afrikaner nationalism gathered forces to formalize a most ... I think that the Afrikaner people should not therefore feel guilty, they should not feel bad, they should begin to take the hand of those that are saying we should reconcile, we should concile. ... and consequences on behalf of your men? // Yes. // And is that still your feeling today? // Yes, I take full responsibility from myself downward, for all my men’s actions, but not for those above me – not anymore. // Did you also expect the same from people who gave you orders? // ... Actually, it was a lie that I was tortured by ministers like the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Alfred Nzo and it was also lies that I was tortured by the late Chris Hani and also the late Secretary-General of the ANC, Thomas Nkobi. So, those were lies, but also within my statement that I made, my ... ... with the cruel story that started with the arrest of Mamelodi activist, Stanza Bopape on the ninth of June 1988. His disappearance shortly afterwards became one of the big mysteries of the last decade, because few people believed the convoluted cover-up that reached right into the cabinet and ... During the trial, the policeman which was handling the case had difficulty and committed suicide. The following day, I think two days after the trial, Zandi was killed. So you can see that there was something that is ... that the very police cannot handle it. So I did even predict that those ... The cause was just but in the process people lost their lives. And I ask of you to please, please consider forgiving me. Asking forgiveness from you would be something else. But I here now plead with you, I know it’s difficult, but I plead with you to please consider forgiving me. When one talks about torture and murder in the Eastern Cape how can one not think of Steven Bantu Biko? // No evidence on his death at the hands of police interrogators in 1977 was heard at the Truth Commission because his widow Ntsiki Biko, still prefers a criminal prosecution to the Truth ... |
