Special Report Transcript Episode 56, Section 1, Time 00:30

Since the first white people from Europe set foot on the beaches of the Cape of Good Hope 350 years ago race has been at the heart of most of the conflict in our country. Colonialism and later apartheid meant the subjugation of darker skinned people by light skinned people, but this week the Truth Commission focused on two cases where black people were the perpetrators of terror and white people the victims. The 1993 slaughter of Christian worshippers at the St James Church and the killing of American student Amy Biehl. We let the killers and the survivors and family of the victims speak on tonight’s Special Report and we ask the question, can racism be a political motive for murder? We start in July of 1993 on Sunday evening the 25th. APLA gunmen burst into an evening service at St. James Church in Kenilworth, Cape Town. They lobbed two hand grenades into the back pews and sprayed the congregation with automatic gunfire. Eleven people died and 60 more were wounded. The images of bodies and blood amongst the pews and prayer books sent shock waves through the world and through a South Africa where political change was finally coming to its people. This week the young killers of the St. James massacre asked the Truth Commission for amnesty.

Notes: Max du Preez

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