Special Report Transcript Episode 56, Section 4, Time 26:03

This was a clear case; racism is not an acceptable political motive, but what of the seven young applicants this week? Lawyer Norman Arendse gives his impression. // It’s a matter of locating what they did in the political context at the time. And clearly the political context at the time was that we were being ruled by a white minority government which was illegitimate as far as the black majority was concerned and it’s in terms of that that you understand what they did. // Does one, because how do you move from that sense of politics to an understanding that goes every white skinned person is the enemy. // Yes, it’s very important to qualify that and I think Judge Ngoepe during the hearings made the point very nicely and very clearly. You can only understand the anger against white people, you can only understand the fact that in this case, I mean we agree here that we’re only talking about APLA operations, you can only understand the anger against whites and the fact that only whites or the instruction rather that only whites be killed in the context that as far as APLA was concerned, as far as the PAC was concerned they had been dispossessed, the African people had been dispossessed by white people. And it’s only by targeting white people that they were going to get their land back. What on earth could the murder of Amy Biehl achieve in getting you your land back and you heard those questions being put repeatedly by Mr. Brink and by other Committee members. You can only understand that if you see that as part of a process, as part of a broader picture, that greater picture was ‘Operation Great Storm,’ which APLA adopted at the beginning of 1993 and which resulted in St. James, Amy Biehl, Helderberg, King Williamstown, a whole range of things and was happening while negotiations were taking place.

Notes: Norman Arendse; Reporter; Arendse