Special Report Transcript Episode 4, Section 3, Time 10:26

Cross-border raids, a way for police and soldiers to earn medals. To exiled South Africans living in neighbouring states, it only meant death and destruction. This is the tragic story of Jaquiline Quin, her husband Leon Meyer, also known as Joe, their daughter, Phoenix and a close family Quin. The place, a suburb of Maseru, the time 4 days before Christmas, 1985. // Two days after Phoenix’s first birthday, the family were at home together. Obviously preparing for Christmas in a week’s time, because the present Jackie was making for Phoenix was at the sewing machine. In the middle of the night, under cover of darkness disguised, camouflaged men with silencers on their guns burst into Jackie’s home and murdered her; an unarmed, defenceless women in the supposed sanctuary of her home. They murdered Joe too, who survived long enough to drag himself to the neighbours and tell them what had happened. They left 12 month old Phoenix, traumatized, and alone with her dead mother in their home spattered with blood all over the place. It was disgusting, brutal, deceitful, treacherous, coldblooded murder. // On that morning I went to Maseru, stayed at the local hotel, what was the hotel’s name I can’t remember. Whatever, a hotel in Maseru, and Jackie wasn’t there to meet us and we waited and waited. And eventually some friend came and told us that Jackie and Joe had been shot the previous evening. The first thing was, we assumed it was the … the neighbours they told us that Joe had said ‘it’s the boere’ or something, that’s all he managed to get out before he passed out or died. So, we naturally assumed it was a hit squad from South Africa. // The next morning I think we were taken to the mortuary to identify Jackie. And the hospital had been looking after Phoenix, they were very good, because we didn’t know whether she was safe or not. And, eventually they could see by Phoenix’s reaction to Debbie that she knew us and they gave us Phoenix. // I want to ask society to redevelop the moral attitude that to kill another human being is a totally and absolutely unacceptable sin. I’d don’t care what they’d been through in their lives or what they’d been taught as children to believe, etc. they were adults who murdered my sister, they made their own choices, and like every other human being they had a duty to be conscious people, striving to be something better than [inaudible] or animals. Why else do they have life? And I want our country to be a place that never again allows people to damage the lives of others, especially not because of their colour or because of their living belief in justice and goodness, which is ultimately the reason why Jackie herself was killed.

Notes: Burnt vehicle; Destroyed home; Family on video; TRC testimony: Jane Quin (sister); Police photographs; TRC testimony: Philip Quin (father); TRC testimony: Patricia Quin (mother); TRC testimony: Jane Quin