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Content
A listing of transcripts of the dialogue and narrative of this section.
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Structure
The list provides the transcript, info about the text, and links to references contained in the text.
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Special Report
Transcripts for Section 5 of Episode 43
| Time | Summary | | | 19:57 | During the past week, in fact the past year, we’ve heard a lot about police atrocities during the 1980s, but we have not heard much of the role of the military during those times of upheaval. This week, victims from Phalaborwa told of the terror they experienced at the hands of Five Reconnaissance Commando stationed in this Northern Province town. The unit was established in 1981 by the then Minister of Defence Magnus Malan, and included foreign mercenaries from Angola and Mozambique. Its express aim was to hunt and kill so-called terrorists. This week, some of the victims of these soldiers told their stories. | Full Transcript and References | | 20:38 | By 1986 the people in the townships around Phalaborwa were increasingly being harassed and terrorized by soldiers from the nearby army base, housing Reconnaissance Five Commando. On Good Friday, 1986 a hand grenade attack on a meeting of township activists shook the community of Lulekani. The lives of six young people were taken and seven more were seriously wounded. One of them was the brother of Owen Mabunda. | Full Transcript | | 21:10 | I think those who have done this to our brothers are the people at five rank, those mercenaries, soldiers from outside countries who were brought in here to harass us as citizens of this country. And you know, just to kill so that we must surrender. | Full Transcript and References | | 21:40 | Komape Molapo is a survivor of another grenade attack at the hotel in the Namakgale township in the same month. He believes that soldiers from the same unit were responsible. // Three shots were fired and after that hand grenade, hand grenade, hand grenades were thrown in. It got me on the soldier and leg. I then fell and crawled on my stomach to the next room where I lay there from six o’clock till twelve o’clock midnight. Yes, I was hurt and bleeding. Luckily, those people did not enter the hotel, because had they done that they would have found my blood trail and killed me. | Full Transcript and References | | 22:21 | Today, 11 years later, the families of the victims and the survivors of both of these attacks still live in the dark. They don’t know who was responsible, who killed their loved ones. No one has ever been brought to book. // Because there was a state of emergency at the time we couldn’t investigate. // The Attorney-General gave a recommendation that investigations should continue, but the cases, the documentation is still lying in the magistrate office. There was nothing, now it is almost 11 years, there was nothing done. And you know, it’s better to know that this person did one, two, three, whether he was charged or acquitted, or he apologized, or applied for amnesty. That’s something, an explanation was there. | Full Transcript | | 23:12 | For Owen Mabunda his pain is mixed with guilt. // I was still very young. I thought maybe it was going to be better if the bomb killed me, because I was still at school. Me as his brother, his elder brother, I should not have allowed him to be involved in all these things. He died, there’s nothing that I’m doing now to make him happy where he is sleeping now. | Full Transcript | | 23:48 | For the families of the victims the pain has never stopped. // I want the government to help me, because it was the government’s agents who killed my son in the first place, it was not thugs, but government employees. Even the hand grenades that were used belonged to the government. // The way they died is very painful. It takes away your happiness. It takes away your peace, every time the memories of the children come back. There’s no tombstone, there’s no flower and worst of all there’s no one who comes forward and admits to the killings. The pain in my heart makes it difficult to go on and tell the story. // This death is no different from that of a dog. When a dog dies it’s not necessary for anyone to come forward and confess to the killing, just like when our kids died. All we know is that they were killed by soldiers, which ones we don’t know. The manner of burial makes them seem like foreigners whose real identity was unknown and because of that the pain and hurt ...more | Full Transcript and References |
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