| Time | Summary | |
| 01:10 | For nearly two decades now people of this country have been witness to the story of our proud but often shameful past; a story of pain, suffering and agony, of bones emerging from the bowels of the earth of unmarked graves, of death and suffering and of unspeakable evil . | Full Transcript |
| 01:40 | Evil is the power to subvert everything which is good and moral in the life of a human being. It is a force inside the human being which brings you to do what normally you would not wish to do. | Full Transcript |
| 02:08 | It is the choice for death. It is a choice for all that is negative in the world. It is a choice to go away from the way God intended us to be. | Full Transcript |
| 02:22 | All of us have the capacity to be evil, because these powers are latent in every human being but we also, I believe, have the capacity to be good. | Full Transcript |
| 02:39 | In this programme we are looking at evil, that which the Oxford dictionary describes as ‘morally bad, wicked, very unpleasant or harmful.’ Our recent history is filled with men that did evil things. They were often the soldiers or policemen of apartheid’s armies, who went out at night to stab a knife into flesh, fire a bullet into brains or send a letter bomb into the world. | Full Transcript |
| 03:12 | This is Paul van Vuuren, former security policeman, who has applied for the killing of about 40 anti-apartheid activists. // If it was an ANC’s life it meant nothing. At that stage I was able to kill a 1000, 2000, 5000, it meant nothing to me. They were the enemy. | Full Transcript |
| 03:38 | Wouter Mentz was a Vlakplaas policeman who had killed several people including one of his own colleagues and two deaf children in a Botswana raid. // I didn’t know that there were children, and if I recall they were two deaf-numb children. That was evil in killing them, because they caused no threat to the security forces, they caused no threat. Myself, I didn’t know that there were children in that house. I only found out later that evening. | Full Transcript and References |
| 04:21 | I mean you make a braai around the person being burnt alive, being blown to pieces and … nothing! You don’t see it. That’s what I therefore think, that evil has a tendency of not only taking away from you the feeling that you’re human but it blinds your eyes, you can’t see. It blinds your ears, you can’t hear people crying. | Full Transcript |
| 04:45 | There’s many a night you still wake up, dreams, you can’t sleep, you’re aggressive; you drink too much, all that. I’ve went to many a psychologist; when I’ve been there it helps, but I have to go back, I have to go back time and time again. | Full Transcript |
| 05:06 | For as long as that evil is not confessed and not dealt with, it’ll remain with you. | Full Transcript |
| 05:13 | No, I’m not sorry for what I did. Like I said in the past, I’m sorry for the people, for the waste of human life. Because say for instance we killed another 2000, there was no difference in the outcome of this whole political incident. | Full Transcript |
| 05:36 | Personally, I mean I’m not God, I cannot really read his soul and his mind but I’m just looking at the actions of the person I can truly say they were evil, they were wicked. | Full Transcript |
| 05:47 | You can say I was nearly like a young lion then. For me to participate in this kind of, to serve my country at such a level was a great honour. I was in the security police, it was one of the elite squads in the police and we worked day and night and yes, it gave me a kick. | Full Transcript |
| 06:24 | Well, my immediate response to that we are being confronted by deep pathology. Somebody who gets kicks out of pain caused to others is profoundly ill and also maybe profoundly ill in a moral sense. | Full Transcript and References |
| 06:46 | They were fellow Afrikaners, part of my people. I knew many of them. And I have asked myself, was it possible, how is it possible that they could have done what they did and that some of them seemingly could have enjoyed what they did. Were they so deeply impregnated by this ideological concept of apartheid, a divine mission of Afrikaners, doing the will of God? | Full Transcript |
| 07:26 | All South Africans have been dehumanized by apartheid, whether we were the perpetrators, the victims, or whether we thought we were the bystanders or whether we were some combination of all of those. | Full Transcript |
| 07:390 | I think there was a certain kind of madness in me and in my colleagues at that stage. You know, you became like a small god, because if somebody … you were talking about taking him out you know. If somebody was in your way, it was easy just to take him away. Then he’s gone. | Full Transcript |
| 08:13 | But evil in a war situation, to make war, to take out your opposition, your enemy, I don’t think you can describe that as evil. | Full Transcript |
| 08:23 | You know, we were soldiers at that time and … no, I honestly don’t think I’m evil. Every human being got a skeleton in the cupboard. No, I don’t think I’m evil. | Full Transcript |
| 08:52 | It’s again the deep conviction on the part of the Afrikaner people. You have to do your duty, especially to those in authority. You hear, you listen, you obey and you’re not critical enough to ask the question. But why do I necessarily need to obey? | Full Transcript |
