N`WA-MUKANSI (first names not given)

Monstrous times, monstrous deeds. State violence brought violence in reaction. The ANC’s explanation that they fought a just war against apartheid is probably acceptable to most South Africans. But sometimes one wonders if the guerrillas remembered that the people they killed were more than enemy ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Sometimes it happens that I use wrong names for the correct one. At times it was an error of referring to that name. It does happen that I write a wrong name by mistake.

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.

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 ...

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 ...

Daluxolo Luthuli, once an MK guerrilla who served ten years on Robben Island but then switched allegiances to Inkatha was the political commissar of the Caprivi group. // Training was not police training; it was military training, because if it was not military training there was no need for a ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

June, 1986 in Mamelodi. The township a stone’s throw away from the seat of apartheid power, Pretoria. The big men who make and break the laws had just declared a state of emergency across the land. Ten days after the state of emergency ten young men disappeared from Mamelodi. It is known only ...

From late-1982 and well into 1983 he’d passed top secret information from the South African military to their sworn enemy, the ANC. // Some part of the information which I conveyed to the ANC ultimately landed up on the president of Mozambique’s desk. It appears that the president of ...

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 ...

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, ...

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 ...

When Chris was abducted at Zone 12 the people I had mentioned were Hunter, Zandi as well as Themba. And when the people saw those people, these names were mentioned – three people – but Khetisi was not mentioned.