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people's warExplanation As far as our collaboration and resistance to the system is concerned there is the community at large. In truth, the community at large was a complacent community, feeble in its responses and going whichever way the wind was going at that particular moment. In 1979 Imam Abdullah Haron was murdered ... But there have also been many lows. // I remember at a hearing when somebody talked about just walking daily with her child down the street and so on and this most overwhelming sense of sadness… I just felt I wanted to weep no end. And often I think it’s when things resonate with one and often ... The request that I want to make is that in all that I have done I did it because I was tempted by a very clever person who was older than me. And after such a long time that the Asvat family has been troubled, wanting to know as to the circumstances surrounding their relative, their father or their ... But the message that was given many people was you’re a coward or there’s something wrong with you, and again there was the attitude of almost a joke, bossies was a sort of a joke. People joked about whether they were or weren’t or whether other people were or weren’t, without really ... The Truth Commission can, according to the Act of Parliament that governs them, investigate the gross human rights violations perpetrated by Vlakplaas, but there are other apartheid practices that did even more damage to generations of our people that cannot be narrowly defined as individual human ... It was a group of people who were violating the community. It was a group of hooligans who were attacking people and they got my husband and stabbed him to death. When we got there we got the Three Million Gang. I saw him; he had been attacked by the Three Million Gang. When I tried to tell him the ... 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 ... Even the most hardened opponent of the Truth Commission process will have to agree, these people have the right to know the full truth and it seems if we might just get there by the end of the year. The flood gates have truly opened with the torrent of new applications for amnesty from former ... I got off by the corner over there from the car that fetched me. When I was coming up this way I saw about two or three dead bodies. As I came I passed a hippo next to one of the corpses. When I arrived, I discovered that the house was already full of people. My mother was lying between the bedroom ... And then obviously the question around medical treatment, people who still have bullet wounds, people who still suffer at a physical level should be given medical treatment and those people also suffering from psychological continuing problems, they should also be given help. ... You did not disband that unit. You say now that you did not have enough evidence. How much more evidence did you need? // I was at no stage aware of any unit carrying out assassinations. The Vlakplaas unit as it was explained to me had a totally different objective, a totally different ... ... in the CCB, Military Intelligence. This amnesty is one that would expunge any criminal or civil liability you are likely to have. Please come forward because this is an opportunity to put the past behind you, to help in the process of your own healing and the healing of this beautiful land. ... During his amnesty hearing Dirk Coetzee hopes to tell his story for the last time. But he will not be able to bury it. // There’s one thing I will have to live till the day I die, is the corpses that I will have to drag with me to my grave, of the people whom I’ve killed. Remorse I can assure ... It was an operation that was done by myself entirely in cooperation with the riots unit. There were two operations. There was the cleanup operation before four in the morning and then that evening it was four special constables and myself. // Who gave you the instruction to kill? Was that Major ... This sleepy holiday resort was the unlikely venue for testimony that one Commissioner described as among the most harrowing he has heard. People came to tell their stories inside a cordon of heavy security. This time the police were there to protect the witnesses as much as the commissioners, for ... 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 ... 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 ... We are looking for measures which will restore people’s dignity which has been lost. We felt, we are looking for measures which will somehow assist people to more or less be able to live a life they would have lived was it not for the violation. A common worry is that the Truth Commission should not become the forgiveness commission. // You know, we have attended a case of, you know just recently, de Kock’s case. He didn’t appear sorry for what he did, and he expects people to say, okay we forgive him … which is very … you know we ... My life since then has been very, very difficult. It’s had a big element of self destruction. I’ve been through two marriages. I have a daughter. But really I’ve just destroyed the people around me, my friends, my family and I think it’s enough now. |
