Special Report Transcript Episode 15, Section 3, Time 15:39

And at the time our base was Air Force Base Waterkloof, so I arranged to leave there a little bit earlier to first go via Air Force Headquarters so I could collect a certain documentation which I wanted to use for recruiting purposes. I was a fighter controller instructor. We proceeded to Air Force Headquarters but didn’t allow enough time for the traffic on a Friday afternoon, arrived there just on half past four. At that time the Air Force use to work until half past four, so by the time we arrived there were already people leaving the building. We were looking for parking, we eventually reversed and found the … decided to park in the loading zone directly in front of the entrance to the building. I was still trying to decide whether it was now worthwhile to go up into the building to go and fetch the documentation I wanted or whether to proceed on our way when what sounded to me was a click sound and that apparently was the explosion. At the time we were parked about a meter behind the car which contained the bomb. Fortunately I was to a large degree protected by the car but I sustained shrapnel and glass injuries to my face resulting in blindness and also some damage to my eardrums. A few seconds later I felt myself being pulled out of the car and I was laid down on the pavement and at that stage I couldn’t see. There was a stinging sensation in my face from the cuts and lacerations and also from some initial burns. And one of the people that were in the area helping the others that were injured told me that there’d been a car bomb and that I must just lie still and wait for the ambulance. I accept my disability as an almost unavoidable, although regrettable consequence of the so-called freedom struggle. I realise that I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. What I can’t accept and what leaves me somewhat bitter unfortunately and very, very angry is the fact that for the last 13years I have been attempting to obtain compensation as would normally have been due to me through the Workman’s Compensation Act. Now, throughout my Air Force career and specifically as an officer in the Air Force, it had been drummed into me day in and day out that an officer is on duty 24 hours a day, and whether its midnight on a Sunday evening if you’re called to duty you would come and come on duty. However, on the 20th of May 1983 or shortly thereafter I was to learn that if you are injured or killed by the people against who you were supposed to be fighting and it happens to be just after half past four, in the case of the Pretoria car bomb explosion, then suddenly you are no longer treated as an officer who are supposed to be on duty 24 hours a day.

Notes: TRC testimony: Neville Clarence

References: there are no references for this transcript