Special Report Transcript Episode 50, Section 2, Time 01:52

‘Bearing the Brunt: the night of the assegais. Report by Anneliese Burgess.’ // For much of the eighties the small township of Bruntville here outside Mooiriver in the KwaZulu-Natal midlands was a relatively peaceful place, but in 1990 the war that has ripped this province apart came to Bruntville. In November 1990 the first so-called Bruntville massacre took place when 15 people were killed. It happened after IFP residents from the two small hostel compounds here behind me attacked the township residents. Less than a month later an even more horrific massacre took place. In the space of two days 18 people were killed. It all began on the 3rd of December after shots had allegedly been fired at the IFP aligned hostels injuring some of the residents. ANC members were killed in the skirmishes that followed, but tensions boiled over into a full scale attack the next day when hostel dwellers swept down into the township in the early hours of the morning. Ria Madlala’s story is that of so many Bruntville residents who survived that terrible day. As the IFP men came into her house, she jumped out of the bedroom window with her children and hid in an outside toilet.

Notes: Bruntville township