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Neither the TRC nor the Special Report has been able to find any cabinet or State Security Council documents relating to this. But what is clear is that to this day neither PW Botha nor the then SADF have told the full story of their involvement in the Seychelles coup attempt. Niel Barnard is now ...

... to attack one of the homesteads nearby. // We started… we hit the door, there was a hew in the door and we used it to hack the door. The door opened and we shot at the people and we also stabbed them with their spears and … One of them died instantly next to the rondavel; that was a person ...

Reference book, pass book, dompas, stinker, different names for the same thing. The hated document that determined the life of every black South African for decades, where they could sleep, live, work, visit and for how long. The main aim of the pass laws was to control the movement of black South ...

Satirists always get away with murder. Well that’s it for this week. The Human Rights Violations Committee will visit de Aar, Colesberg, Hanover and Welkom this coming week. We look forward to your company next Sunday evening. Good night.

I’ve met up with John earlier this year to try and understand why he did that and how that affected him. I went to visit him in Johannesburg, he still wears camouflaged uniforms, the room where he was living was covered with camouflaged netting, he’s dropped out of society, he’s on drugs, ...

The first segment of this episode reports on PW Botha, who appeared before the George Magistrate this week for refusing to appear before the Truth Commission and on his refusal to apologise later at a press conference. The second segment reports on part two of the special hearings on the MUFC held ...

The Naidoo’s of Doornfontein have been involved in the struggle for four generations of their family. Their involvement in politics dates as far back as the 1920s. // Our family has actually been involved in struggle for well over a century. My grandfather already in the latter part of the last ...

Two violent actions by ANC guerrillas shook the foundations of white Pretoria in the 1980s. The Silverton bank seize of January 1980 and the massive car bomb in Church street in May 1983. The Truth Commission’s Human Rights Violations Committee focused on these two bloody events in Pretoria this ...

In Johannesburg anyone who carried a pass would have had to visit the hated pass law office at 80 Albert Street. Here naked men would have to wait in queues for a medical examination before their passes would be endorsed. Part of this fitness examination was a public inspection of the penis.

... writers and playwrights, who’s also something of a contemporary international philosopher, is Ariel Dorfman. Dorfman visited South Africa recently and I travelled with him. He met with Archbishop Desmond Tutu and other Truth Commissioners and he was very moved by his visit to Robben ...

This episode focuses on the HRV Committee hearings held in Bloemfontein from 2 to 4 July. Segments include incidents of repression, death in exile and terror spread by vigilante mobs like the Eagles in Brandfort and the Three Million Gang in Kroonstad. The remainder of the episode comprises an ...

After Nelson Mandela’s release and after the last political prisoners left Robben Island in 1991 there were many questions about the Island’s future. After much debate is has now been declared a National Monument and Museum. More than 250 people now make this trip across Table Bay every day to ...

In about 1994 the couple were on their way to visit Barnard’s parents in Nylstroom. They stopped by the roadside, possibly to light a crack pipe, and climbed an earth dam wall. // He told me he threw the shotgun in the dam, the gun he used to shoot Webster.

On the first day of the Mdansane hearings this past week the Human Rights Violations Committee paid a tribute visit to the Egerton Railway Station, scene of the bloody massacre that took place in 1983 to say a short remembrance prayer for those who untimely lost their lives for supporting a just ...

say that we have had a very close relationship with the Mandela’s. We live in the same street in what is sometimes called Beverly Hills. Our children went to the same school in Swaziland, they call me uncle and so on and Mrs. Madikizela-Mandela is godmother to one of our grandchildren who was ...

Dr Francis Aims was head of the University of Cape Town’s neurology department when a severely ill Mtimkulu was sent to her at Groote Schuur Hospital in November 1981. // He was on discharge after five months in prison with only the police having access to him. He was ill immediately after ...

Approximately three weeks ago I saw documentation being destroyed by the police and I assume that it was as a result of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigators’ pending visit to the police station.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has often been criticized for being strong on the truth but weak on the reconciliation part of its mandate, but last Sunday gave us a glimpse of the kind of real reconciliation that is happening. Police captain Brian Mitchell went back to the community he and ...

That night what happened, I was sitting in the dining room. It was myself and there was another friend of us, Dada, he’s staying in Soweto so he used to visit us and we were playing cards in there with Stompie. It was myself, Dada and Stompie playing cards in the dining room. So we heard a noise, ...

Doctor Richard Turner was an activist and left wing academic in Durban during the seventies. The South African government found his thoughts and ideas so dangerous that he was followed, harassed, his phones tapped and house bugged. In 1973 he was placed under a 5 year banning order ending his ...