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people's warExplanation ... we allowed ourselves to be misled into accepting a social, economic and political system that was cruel and oppressive. We should have been more aware, more vocal and more insightful, but we were not. For this we are ... I wake up at night then small fat men with bald heads chase me. They chase me and pin me down. When I call for help no voice comes out. There was a time people said I was mad because they regarded those of us who came from the border as mad. The worst part of it is that one couldn’t get out of it, you will just disappear like Ace Moema, we don’t know where he is. Many other people that were in Vlakplaas, they just disappeared. Even if you asked … if you posed a threat to the security, you’re gone. According to me more people could have been killed that night if it wasn’t to the quick reaction of the people. The white guys basically, well all of them who’s got military training, so when you pick up a shot or when you hear shots going off you know automatically what to do. And you’ll find that with people knowing that it is possible to burn a person. I mean, that kind of coverage developed psychologically in the minds of other people whereby people felt now that it is a good strategy, it’s a more popular strategy to burn your enemy and in these rural areas most ... There is a whole range of complicity we’re dealing with. Various countries such as Chile and Uruguay, which went through authoritarian regimes, have documented quite flagrant participation in torture. But they’ve also documented, as have other countries, that quite often what happened is very ... Poverty, repression and police brutality in the 1980s. The townships on the East Rand were seething. Six COSAS leaders died in July in 1985 after being lured into launching an attack with hand grenades, booby trapped by Vlakplaas policeman Joe Mamasela. At one of their funerals Maki Skosana was ... ... with the Imbali support group. // We were sitting in the house, the Gabela house, that has experienced unspeakable terror, even from ’86 onwards because Sipho her son was a UDF member and a spokesperson for the youth. In ’89 Sipho was so severely injured by white policemen and Mama ... We’ve heard a lot of evidence about how you people went into houses and you saw some person there you didn’t know so you killed them. // [We heard such evidence] // So wasn’t it important to find out who was in a house? How many people were there? Whether there were innocent people there or ... Why aren’t you making it public? This … // All in time, all in good time. // On whose decision? This is meant to be a transparent process, it’s meant to be for the people who have been oppressed and deprived. // This whole thing about transparency, there’s nothing about transparency that ... You were there to protect not to attack, not to kill. // Yes it is so sir. // Can you explain how you can possibly think you were protecting anybody when these four people were being beaten by a vast crowd? Why should it be necessary for you to join in beating them with an iron rod? The Truth Commission process is not about the Commissioners or the politicians. It belongs to the citizens of this country. While we were looking back at the Truth Commission’s first year we took our cameras to the streets, the townships, the suburbs and the shopping malls and we asked ordinary ... ... hear evidence on the reign of terror of the Toasters gang. You may have seen that the Special Rreport team was given the foreign correspondence award for outstanding journalism. Tonight we want to dedicate this award to all the people who have appeared before the Truth Commission, the people ... Under the heading ‘special projects’ support for anti-Marxist liberation movements, Mortimer talked about SADF support for UNITA in Angola, RENAMO in Mozambique and the Lesotho Liberation Army. And then he dropped in this insignificant little paragraph. // Inkatha. In 1985 chief minister ... Police claimed that the crowd of people who were shot at were armed with sticks, stones, petrol bombs, and bricks with which they had intended to attack the white inhabitants of Uitenhage. Minister of Law and Order, Louis Le Grange immediately appointed judge Kannemeyer to head up a commission of ... And at the time our base was Air Force Base Waterkloof, so I arranged to leave there a little bit earlier to first go via Air Force Headquarters so I could collect a certain documentation which I wanted to use for recruiting purposes. I was a fighter controller instructor. We proceeded to Air Force ... Meanwhile the search for three escapees and two accomplices who shot and wounded a policeman during a daring escape near Otjiwarongo, Namibia has been extended to the South African Namibian border. The wounded policeman, Constable Ricardo van Wyk may have to be transferred to a hospital in Cape ... It began in November 1978, a warm summer’s day that began like any other for Susan and Jaap van der Merwe on their farm Swartklip at Thabazimbi near the Botswana border. Susan left for a teaching job and Jaap went to a nearby farm to shoot a buck. He left a note saying he might be late, but he ... ... security forces that I have spoken to say, there’s a carrot but they don’t believe the stick. They don’t believe that if they don’t come forward that they will ever be caught. Is that a problem for the Truth Commission; that the investigators are not efficient enough or there are not a ... For the past three days we’ve been listening to sometimes conflicting but nevertheless extremely damning evidence about kidnapping and vicious assault on four young people. We should also not forget that Madikizela-Mandela was convicted of kidnapping by a court of law and there’s very little ... |
