N’WA-MUKANSI, (first names not given)

It is often assumed that a religious person will be a man of peace. In that case something went horribly wrong with Zionist bishop Mbekezeni Khumalo of Tokoza after his daughter was raped in 1992. Khumalo formed a vigilante group in revenge, as well as for profit. As the Khumalo gang was soon side ...

We know what unbelievable mechanisms of repression, of forgetting, of distortion perpetrators use of justification in order not to remember what they have done. When the victims come and tell their stories it reminds, it can remind the perpetrators of what they have done and it is a very difficult ...

Hello. Our focus this week is entirely on prisons. The Truth Commission held a special hearing on prison conditions over the last three decades in the Old Fort in Johannesburg this past week. We also bring you a profile on a rather forgotten hero of the 1960s, Bram Fischer. It is often been said ...

There have been many women before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Till now they have been in the background speaking mainly about human rights violations against loved ones. This week, a special session in Cape Town was dedicated to hearing the stories of women who have been directly ...

Victims of police attacks did not always have famous names. Richard Carolissen and his brother ran into a block of flats to escape a police shooting in a Stellenbosch township in 1976. That’s where Ronald Carolissen was shot dead in cold blood.

We heard the anguish of widows of mothers and the victims themselves telling tales of disappearances, of torture, murder, and of suffering. We listen to their pleas for more information on the circumstances of the crimes and the names of the perpetrators. Who will tell their stories tonight, ...

Reference book, pass book, dompas, stinker, different names for the same thing. The hated document that determined the life of every black South African for decades, where they could sleep, live, work, visit and for how long. The main aim of the pass laws was to control the movement of black South ...

When we look forward we want a monument to be erected whereby all the names of those who were shot in 1960 must be written on it, including the committee members so that children and their parents can know about the fight for freedom by their great grandfathers and this is where they’re ...

The blast happened in the first few hours of Friday morning. By that afternoon it was on the front page of the daily news. The crime reporter didn’t have the names of the dead but wrote that the three were believed to be responsible for a recent spate of blasts in the Durban area. The SABC said ...

With the birth of the Truth Commission last year a voice was finally given to the thousands of South Africans who’d been brutalized during the conflict of the apartheid years. For months people from every part of the country poured their hearts out before the TRC’s Human Rights Violations ...

In fact by then the situation was very, very tense so that I thought that to stab her was the only way to get what she’s got, like that list of our names. If I couldn’t do that maybe those people who were named could have been also killed. So, I was trying to save the community on what she was ...

Late last year the Truth Commission started a reconciliation register, an opportunity for all South Africans to sign a book with their commitment to reconciliation. The Special Report team this week went to the Gauteng offices of the Truth Commission to sign their names in the register.

Hello. Welcome to the fiftieth edition of the Truth Commission Special Report. We appreciate your company every Sunday evening. If you were to ask us what the most serious shortcomings were of the Truth Commission we would have to say the lack of coverage of the conflict in KwaZulu-Natal, but this ...

For us as a team it symbolized committing ourselves to reconciliation, the fact that we’ve come in, the fact that we work with the TRC on a frequent basis, we are also committed to reconciling South Africa as a whole. But what’s the symbol behind it from the TRC’s perspective? // Well for us ...

Sipho Mutsi knew that beating and torture were in store for him. What he couldn’t know was that this time the [inaudible] than routine. // On this day, the 4th of May, it was just after breakfast, I saw comrade Sipho passing by the door. It was this steel door. The door was still open but the ...

The police occurrence book at John Vorster Square … warrant officer Mostert is one of the people who took Stanza out for the investigation, during which it was alleged that he escaped. We can only infer that those were the people that were actually involved with this interrogation and who would ...

This is the Vaal Triangle, home of Eskom, Sasol and many other big industries. Also home to millions of people who work at these industries and their families. They live in grim townships such as Sebokeng, Sharpeville, Bophelong and Boipatong. For some, mostly men from KwaZulu-Natal, this is only a ...

The Naidoo’s of Doornfontein have been involved in the struggle for four generations of their family. Their involvement in politics dates as far back as the 1920s. // Our family has actually been involved in struggle for well over a century. My grandfather already in the latter part of the last ...

South Africa watched in anger and in shame as the dead bodies of yet more security police victims were exhumed from secret graves in KwaZulu-Natal the last few days. The families have known for a long time that the police had killed the women and men in the graves. But this is what the truth and ...

That’s the area that I am finding a little bit difficult in giving a one and definite answer. I can only say, since I say also in my affidavit, that this is not new to me. I’ve just been handed in, in fact, from my office I’ve had it faxed. In 1992 there is a press statement which apparently ...