| Time | Summary | |
| 02:45 | ‘The Violated’ // On the 15th of April 1996, almost exactly two years ago, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission took its seat for the first time in the East London City Hall. The road ahead was an unknown one. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu symbolically opened proceedings a solemn hymn swept through the audience. Over the next 14 months hymns and songs and prayer would become the familiar and comforting rituals in the many moments of great stress or sadness. The first victims to speak before the Commission came from the struggle womb of the Eastern Cape. Widows who carried the names of men, who had become icons of liberation. But then there were the other brave pioneers of the South African truth process: the ordinary people who spoke about lives that had changed forever after torture, bullets or bombs. As they spoke the first words in the great telling of our past their words were relayed by television and radio to millions of South Africans and the world. For the next year and a ...more | Full Transcript |
| 04:37 | … Turned me on the other side. He opened my trousers at the back and then they took these electric wires, put them through my anus; they inserted them deeply. | Full Transcript and References |
| 04:55 | I think it was the seventh day. I was very hungry. I have no food you know. They left me in that small room here at …so I would just crawl into the toilet and drink from the toilet sink. | Full Transcript |
| 05:16 | If you cut a person’s hair, you don’t cut the scalp. But I want you today to see Commission that we have his hair together with the scalp. | Full Transcript and References |
| 05:30 | There were those who spoke of loved ones who never returned from their cells. | Full Transcript |
| 05:38 | It is 25 years now and that I will not forget what happened. // What we do know is that if he hadn’t been detained he wouldn’t have died | Full Transcript and References |
| 06:05 | The heartache of the past was illustrated too by the agony of betrayal; those who broke in the torture room or on apartheid’s battle field. | Full Transcript |
| 06:14 | … Asking the same question, who sold me to the police? Who sold me to the police? Anton died with that question on his mouth. | Full Transcript |
| 06:42 | I just destroyed the people around me, my friends my family. And I think it’s enough now. | Full Transcript and References |
| 06:52 | There was the horror of the sudden death that came riding on the winds of midnight raids in two neighbouring territories. | Full Transcript |
| 07:01 | We watched from under the bed as they pumped bullets into his brother and his wife, bullets penetrating them simultaneously. They turned them over, face upward and one asked ‘is hulle dood?’ [Are they dead?]. ‘Morsdood’ [Stone dead] was the reply. Bullets were pumped into Joseph who was hiding in a wall unit. | Full Transcript |
| 07:31 | It was disgusting, brutal, deceitful, treacherous, cold blooded murder. | Full Transcript and References |
| 07:36 | Can you please investigate who really killed my son or maybe God may help you and find him. | Full Transcript and References |
| 07:45 | I remember pain of a scale that I didn’t think a human being could ever experience. | Full Transcript and References |
| 07:55 | There was the confusion and desperation of disappearances and abductions and rumoured executions. The pain of still not knowing and the hope of truth. | Full Transcript |
| 08:04 | I’m having nightmares, dreams. Sometimes I hear knocks on the door thinking that it is Lolo. When I’m sleeping I can see him flying from the sky, coming home. Saying that mom, I’m back home. Then I’ll open my arms and try to hug him and say welcome. | Full Transcript and References |
| 08:27 | He took me to where my child was lying. He was full of blood on the one side of his head. He was lying there. I told myself that was it; that was the end. | Full Transcript |
| 08:43 | I found the body lying in the backseat of the car; he was lying upside down on his stomach. His head was put near the petrol tank to make sure he’d be burned completely. | Full Transcript and References |
| 09:05 | There were those who had seen their friends and family leave to join the resistance, never to return alive. | Full Transcript |
| 09:12 | The telegram stated that he met with an accident, but it was not stated what kind of an accident. The telegram was signed by comrade Alfred Nzo. | Full Transcript |
