Special Report Transcript Episode 22, Section 3, Time 13:18

The history being told and made by the Truth Commission is not without its ironies. Here in Thohoyandou the Venda came to tell their stories in what was once the Venda homeland’s Parliamentary assembly room. This was the seat of power for the regimes of Mphephu, Ravele and Ramushwana, rulers of the Bantustan from independence in 1979 to reincorporation in 1994. Throughout the seventies and eighties political issues in Venda mirrored the issues current for its big brother, the Republic of South Africa. Black consciousness and the UDF focused above ground opposition, while Venda’s proximity to the borders of Mozambique and Zimbabwe made it an area of semi-underground activity too. This week the Commission heard how the methods used to counter opposition during Patrick Mphephu’s reign also echoed those methods popular amongst the security forces in the Republic.

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