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Special Constables

Explanation
Known colloquially as ' kitskonstabels' (instant constables), 'blue lines', or 'bloupakke' , Special Constables were recruited from urban and rural areas and were usually unemployed African men with few educational qualifications. Many were illiterate and some had criminal convictions. Training was conducted in September 1986 at the SAP's Koeberg facility outside Cape Town and consisted of a six-week course, later increased to three months. The training was perfunctory and involved only one seven-hour course in riot drill. The training presented the UDF and ANC as the enemy to be suppressed. By the end of the 1980s, approximately 8 000 Special Constables had been recruited, trained and deployed in urban and rural towns across the country where unrest was the strongest. In KwaZulu/Natal they were used to bolster Inkatha in areas around Pietermaritzburg and the Natal Midlands. Special Constables rapidly became associated with numerous violations both on and off duty, and were the subject of several interdicts. They were themselves victims of attacks by both civilian internal opposition groups and the armed forces of the liberation movements.

... him with this man. Brigadier Herzog Lerm was prepared to do what the cabinet asked of him. // Lerm of course came here and made all of Mbokodo special constables so they could proceed with their activities legally under the flag of the ...
The Commission has documented volumes on the activities of white policemen who were hated and feared in the townships, but this week in Grahamstown it was the actions of the black municipal policemen known as kitskonstabels that came under the spotlight. // These municipal police, we know who they ...
They were deployed in the flash points or the unrest areas where the violence was… // And to what would they have been attached? What unit or what section? The special constables. // To the riot unit.
Captain Deon Terreblanche was commander of the riot unit at Hammarsdale. Along with Mitchell and the Joint Management Committee he used these special constables to drive a lethal wedge between UDF and Inkatha supporters in Trust Feed.
... 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 Terreblanche? // Yes the orders came from him that these ...
... populous. The minister of law and order, Adriaan Vlok took the decision to supplement the police with an auxiliary force of kitskonstabels. These special constables were recruited from the black population, trained, armed and put back in their communities to be used as an auxiliary or third ...
... was the nucleus or was the base of the UDF. So that is where they planned to hit. If they hit us flat out then their mission would be complete. So special constables were brought by members of the Riot Unit to Trust Feed and they were deployed in strategic points. And then, on the 2nd of ...
... the large scale detentions without trial that took place in small places, even like Plettenburg Bay; was the presence of the kitskonstabels. // The special constables emerged with pomp and ceremony. They were the black face of law and order. Created by a state unable to keep the lid on large ...
... and army have not taken any responsibility for those seven days of death and destruction. It is the foot soldiers, the young riots policemen and special constables who just followed orders who broke the bonds of ...
it was a mistake. Now I want to state here, categorically, it was never a mistake, because the murder was planned with the logistics and everything, special constables brought there, put in strategic areas and they knew exactly which houses to attack. So when he says it’s a mistake I totally ...
 
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