TRC Final Report

Volume 3

Chapter 6

Subsection 2

Overview of violations

13 The gross human rights violations recorded for this period reflect the particular form of the contest between government and political opposition during the 1960s. Torture rather than killing was the dominant form of violation during this period. A distinguishing feature of the information collected by the Commission was that many of the people who made statements to the Commission about their detention and torture occupied leadership positions in the resistance movements, were largely male and were comparatively older than victims of torture in subsequent periods. This age profile of torture victims was unique to this period. Over the next three decades, the largest category of torture victims was consistently the 13–24 age group.

14 Despite the fact that the PAC played a central role in events during this period, the majority of gross human rights violations were reported by people identifying themselves as ANC members.

15 It is to be noted that the Commission recorded the lowest number of violations (473) for this period, roughly half the number of violations recorded for the next period (1976–82) and a small proportion of the approximately 4 490 violations recorded for the peak period of violations in 1983–89. The relatively small number of reported violations for this period is ascribed to factors such as the distance of the events that have been overshadowed by more recent political conflict, the death of potential deponents and the fading memory of deponents.