Special Report Transcript Episode 51, Section 3, Time 13:20

We all wish Tshidiso courage on the long journey he’s just started and the other child victims of our bitter past. Now to another unfortunate chapter of our history. After Umkhonto we Sizwe was formed in 1961 it established camps in neighbouring states: Zambia, Angola, Tanzania, Uganda. Suddenly in the aftermath of the Soweto uprisings in 1976 thousands of young people joined the ANC in exile. The ANC could not cope, not in facilities to accommodate and feed the tidal wave of newcomers nor in training them. The ANC’s next crisis followed shortly afterwards. The apartheid government recruited, bought and blackmailed hundreds of people to infiltrate the ANC camps. Soon, the ANC was overcome by a wave of paranoia. Their judicial and security systems could simply not deal with spies and suspected spies. The uprisings of unhappy and frustrated guerrillas and the rough treatment of everybody vaguely suspected of being an informer combined into the ANC’s biggest human rights disaster. It was worst at the Morris Seabelo rehabilitation centre, also known as Camp 32, or Quatro, 200 kilometres north of the Angolan capital Luanda and among the most brutal perpetrators was the ANC’s security department, Mbokodo, the stone that crushes.

Notes: Max du Preez