TRC Final Report

Volume 5

Chapter 9

Subsection 12

41 Mr Nundlal Rabilall gave testimony on the death of his brother, Krish, who died in Mozambique in the 1981 Matola cross-border raid. At the East London human rights violations hearing, he said:

This had a traumatic effect on the entire family. I will briefly relate the effect it had on me, because it symbolises what – the same kind of effect it had on other members of the family. I became bitter towards white people, and the fact that the majority of them voted for the National Party election after election. I could never understand how they could sleep with an easy conscience at night, knowing that black children were dying in the homelands, when black people were given the most menial jobs, and that the Government they voted for used every conceivable kind of dirty trick and brutality to suppress the legitimate resistance of black people against the oppression of apartheid.

In short, I became anti-white, and this attitude was reinforced by an incident I also had when I was travelling in a train to Durban. I had accidentally walked into a white compartment, and the white conductor came and swore at me, called me a ‘coolie’, and told me as soon as the train stops at the next station I must get into the next coach, which I had to do.

I taught at an all-Indian school and had no white friends. I became ecstatic whenever a black boxer knocked a white boxer down, or when the South African rugby team lost its rebel tour matches. This anti-white obsession grew, and I would dream about burning down white businesses and farms, but it was sheer fear that prevented me from doing these things. I then began to fantasise and, while this may seem laughable, I sincerely prayed to God to make me invisible for just one day so that I could do the things I dreamed of, and when God did not comply, I reduced the time to one hour, and in that one hour I was determined to go to Parliament and shoot every one cabinet minister.

As time passed, however, I realised that this would negate everything that my brother stood for, his ideal of a non-racial, non-sexist, democratic South Africa. I grew to realise that hate is a boomerang that circles back and hurts you. The turning point came when I read in Martin Luther King’s book called Strength to Love – now, I cannot remember the exact words used in the book, but it goes something like this: “Hate for hate multiplies hate. Darkness cannot destroy darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot destroy hate, only love can do that." I also started reading books on Mahatma Gandhi…

So, I changed my philosophy of life. I realised that I could not hate white people. It dawned on me that most white people were to a large extent by-products of apartheid, just as much as the freedom fighters were. I learned also that there were many white people who sincerely hated the obnoxious system of apartheid, and that some of them had lost their lives fighting it. I admired people like Rick Turner, Neil Aggett, Joe Slovo and Beyers Naudé. I also realised that I wasn’t being true to my religion if I hated somebody. Knowing the power of vengeful thoughts, Mahatma Gandhi had said, "Fight without malice". This meant a great deal to me. We have the right to fight injustice without hating the personalities or circumstances involved and, to taste the sweetness of life, one must have the power to forget the past.