the imprisonment under apartheid of all south africans - physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually

[Reads poem]

When they tell you

I’m not a prisoner

don’t believe them.

They’ll have to admit it

some day.

When they tell you

they released me

don’t believe them.

They’ll have to admit

it’s a lie

some day.

When they tell you

I betrayed the party

don’t believe them.

They’ll have to admit

I was loyal

some day.

When they tell you

I’m in France

don’t believe them.

Don’t believe them when they show you

my false I.D.

don’t believe them.

Don’t believe them when they show you

the photo of my body,

don’t believe them.

Don’t believe them when they tell you

the moon is the moon,

if they tell you the moon is the moon,

that this is my voice on tape,

that this is my signature on a confession,

if they say a tree is a tree

don’t believe them,

don’t believe

anything they tell you

anything they swear to

anything they show you,

don’t believe them.

And finally

when

that day

comes

when they ask you

to identify the body

and you see me

and a voice says

we killed him

the poor bastard died

he’s dead,

when they tell you

that I am

completely absolutely definitely

dead

don’t believe them,

don’t believe them,

don’t believe them.

The Truth Commission’s first-ever partial event hearing took place at the Regina Mundi Catholic Church in Soweto in mid-July 1996. The focus was the twentieth anniversary of the June 16 Soweto uprising – the day thousands of black children revolted against the apartheid system of Bantu Education and Afrikaans as the medium of instruction. All hell broke out when the police unleashed their dogs, tear gas and bullets on students armed with stones, knives and fire. The official cost a week later: more than a thousand injuries, 900 arrests and 140 corpses – the first being that of teenager Hector Peterson. He became the innocent symbol in the turning point of the liberation struggle for democracy.

["The Protecting Veil"]

Angie Kapelianis and Danny Booysen compiled this soundscape on wounds that have never healed and memories that will never die.

["The Protecting Veil" fades into "Ntsikana’s Bell"]

…I couldn’t believe my eyes…

…To me it was like a movie unfolding before me…

…Tear gas, rubber bullets…

…Vans were burning, cars were burning, buildings were burning. It was just mayhem all over. It was chaos…

…They were in the forefront of a battle that nobody had ever thought would be that day…

…Afrikaans was just the last straw that broke the camel’s back…

…The wounds have never really closed. They’ve always been open for the last 20 years, to be quite honest with you…

…I will never, never forget 1976. I had never seen such brutality. Yes, I have seen the Sharpeville massacre. It happened one day. The next day everybody went to work as if nothing has happened. But June 16, you kill one, you kill all!…

["Ntsikana’s Bell"]

…Bantu Education is a curse! They gave us Bantu Education, but never equalled that with "Boer Education". I cannot get over the fact that the Nationalist Party in particular singled out children, changed their education and gave them an inferior education so that those children could be children who were going to remain the slaves of white people in South Africa!…

["Ntsikana’s Bell"]

…Round about 10 o’clock, we heard that … um … a child was killed in Orlando West…

…As we were driving back to Orlando West, that is when we noticed this young girl with agony and anguish on her face come running up the street. Next to her was this young man in an overall and carrying a young boy in his arms…

…I took s… six sequence shots of that picture of … of the chil… a student whom we later discovered that it was Hector Peterson…

…And suddenly on the lips of every child you met was Hector Peterson, Hector Peterson, Hector Peterson! That young boy on that day, yes, he died. He was killed by the police. But overnight he became a hero and you had to ask: Who is Hector Peterson?…

["Ntsikana’s Bell"]

…I will never, never forget 1976. I had never seen such brutality. June 16, you kill one, you kill all!…

["Ntsikana’s Bell"]

…Nothing else was used, except the live ammunitions, which were used to shoot the student direct. And they did not shoot on the air, he shot direct to the students. I was there, I saw that…

…He was face down. I held him by the ear, turned him over and I said: "Oh, thou fallen piece of earth, those that have done this deed shall be very sorry." So I realised, yes, it was Hastings Ndlovu, my son, that had died…

…On the morning of 16^th of June 1976, my father, Dr Melville Leonard Edelstein, drove Shana and myself to school and never came back…

…When we passed the municipality office with the white man standing outside, he was an ordinary person to us. But when we came back, he was an enemy…

…And his fight and his struggle was for equal education. He believed that all should be educated equally. He was a man who was totally against the violation of human rights…

…They stoned him and … and so on. And … uh … they burn the office and they throw him inside the office burning…

…He was in the wrong place at the wrong time…

["Ntsikana’s Bell"]

…But what I can tell you is that nothing much to affect our human lives has changed since 1976. Very little has changed. Our education is still the same…

…The ’76 rio… student riot has been the major factor in getting this freedom, this new democracy…

…I’m still angry because I feel the Nationalist Party government did never saw our children as children. Because the colour of their skin was not the colour of the skin of their children. They were not children. They were not human beings. They were children who were not given an opportunity to grow, to mature, to become adults like everybody…

["Ntsikana’s Bell"]

…I will never, never forget 1976…

["Ntsikana’s Bell"]

The Truth Commission went behind bars in July 1997 to investigate gross human rights abuses committed in the apartheid prisons and ANC camps in exile. One of the aims of the two-day hearing was to record the memories of so many political prisoners whose lives were wasted. Another was to recommend to government ways of creating a human rights culture in places of detention. The hearing was held at the old fort in Johannesburg, or "Number Four", as the prison was commonly known. One person who had eerie memories returning to the old fort was Truth Commission member Hugh Lewin. He spent seven years in jail for sabotage in the sixties. This is how Lewin captured the essence of imprisonment in his book, called Bandiet.

[Reads extracts] Walking into prison is like walking into a butcher’s fridge, empty. It is cold – no curtains, no carpets, no heaters, nothing decorative, nothing unnecessary, just this long dull corridor like in a sleazy passenger liner, with heavy blind doors, impersonal – and all very solid. Essentials only. You are stripped of everything inessential. You are stripped bare and given back only what they think is necessary. They strip you at the beginning and they go on stripping you… "Strip," said the man with three stripes on his arm…

[Extract from SABC Radio interview] But my worst experience was the eight months I spent in Pretoria Central, the hanging jail. The whole experience of living in a killing factory, where even though we never saw the executions, we saw evidence of executions twice a week. Inevitably the whole prison revolved around the singing, the noise, the silence, the screams, the blood on the floor and all the rest that went with hangings. And the fact that you worked with warders who actually had to carry out the hangings, I think that for me was one of the most chilling and terrifying experiences ever…

The National Party in the form of its leader, FW de Klerk, appeared before the Truth Commission in Cape Town in August 1996 and May 1997. De Klerk accepted responsibility for the wrongs in South Africa while he was president from 1989 to 1994. He admitted to authorising certain operations against the liberation movements. But those operations, said De Klerk, never included official permission to torture and murder activists. He also conceded that many repressive measures had contributed to human rights abuses during the apartheid era. But the lasting image of De Klerk at the Truth Commission soured almost everyone’s respect for the man who so boldly unbanned South Africa in 1990 and publicly apologised for his country’s suffering. Darren Taylor, Antjie Samuel, Kenneth Makatees and Angie Kapelianis report.

There is that which is wrong with the National Party’s past and that which is right, says FW de Klerk. His responsibility is to admit to the wrong.

…I should like to express my deepest sympathy with all those on all sides who suffered during the conflict. I and many other leading figures in our party have already publicly apologised for the pain and suffering caused by former policies of the National Party. I reiterate these apologies today…

But De Klerk can’t provide specific information on high-profile murders like that of Eastern Cape activist Matthew Goniwe in 1985.

…If I, Mr Chairman, or the previous government had known what had happened and who had committed this crime, the perpetrator or the perpetrators would have been arrested, tried and, if found guilty, sentenced…

[Murmurs dubiously]

…No stone was left unturned in efforts to ascertain the truth…

Why then were Matthew Goniwe’s murderers never brought to book? No president, no business manager and even no archbishop, says De Klerk, can know everything under his management. If so, why did De Klerk sanction unconventional strategies to crush the perceived Communist take-over of South Africa?

…I want to make it clear from the outset that within my knowledge and experience, they never included the authorisation of assassination, murder, torture, rape, assault or the like. I have never been part of any decision taken by Cabinet, the State Security Council or any committee, authorising or instructing the commission of such gross violations of human rights. Nor did I individually, directly or indirectly, ever suggest, order or authorise any such action…

What De Klerk did authorise was Defence Force raids across South Africa’s borders, including the Transkei homeland where several children were killed as late as 1993.

…Such authorisation specifically excluded attacks on civilians and limited the use of violence to the minimum required under prevailing circumstances…

De Klerk also authorised so-called dirty trick campaigns against the liberation movements, such as illegal front organisations.

…It has now become clear that certain elements misused state funds and were involved in unauthorised operations leading to abuses and violation of human rights…

De Klerk says bad judgement, over-zealousness or negligence may have clouded perpetrators of abuses. But he’s adamant that the National Party will not abandon even the rogue elements of the apartheid security forces. They, too, must get amnesty, says De Klerk. While accepting overall responsibility for the conflict during his presidency, De Klerk says the former Cabinet, State Security Council, individual ministers and security force commanders must account for specific incidents.

…Only if those with first-hand knowledge of what happened come to the fore, will you and we and the country be able to establish the truth about such incidents…

By the time FW de Klerk appears before the Truth Commission again in May 1997, the National Party’s experiencing problems. Apartheid victims are still implicating his former ruling party in gross human rights abuses. And to add credence to their refrain, several apartheid foot soldiers are finally confessing to their crimes in public for amnesty.

The Truth Commission panel is new. So is the cross-examiner. Truth Commission Chairperson Desmond Tutu praises FW de Klerk for his contribution to peace in South Africa. He quotes from the Bible. He prays. He speaks in Afrikaans. He smiles. But across the table, De Klerk chooses to sit alone. With no predecessor. No cabinet minister. No security force general.

…The National Party and I accept full responsibility for all our policies, decisions and actions. We stand by our security forces, who implemented such policies and decisions and all reasonable interpretations thereof…

Truth Commission Investigative Director Glen Goosen has been waiting for this moment. What exactly does "reasonable interpretation" mean? Does it mean, as quoted in State Security Council minutes, that "a third force should be mobile with a capacity to eliminate terrorists by their own methods"?

…No reasonable person can possibly not foresee that a reasonable man would interpret such statements to mean you can kill, you can assassinate, you can bomb, you can annihilate…

…No, I…

…And I put that to you…

"Why wasn’t I given a copy of that document beforehand?" demands De Klerk. Those quotes about "eliminate" simply mean to "neutralise politically". And the creation of a "third force" was merely a discussion.

…Yes, in 1985 and ’86 the government did consider the possibility of establishing a "third force", but never in the sense that the ANC and the media have attached to the term. The proposal was that a third paramilitary force, separate from the SADF and SAP, should be created to deal specifically with unrest and counter-insurgency operations…

Goosen returns to his original question. Was it policy to kill political opponents or were the murderers just a handful of bad apples?

…I think it would have pleased everybody if I said it was our official policy. But I can’t speak an untruth to satisfy the call for blood, which there is. I can only speak the truth as I know it and the truth is I never participated in such a policy and I was never aware of such a policy…

Goosen turns to the amnesty applications of De Klerk’s former police commissioner and former law and order minister. If all their untested evidence is to be believed, then even they were acting outside the law. By now, the truth commissioners are sitting with their hands in their hair and wondering: What do we do with all these amnesty applications if it was never policy to murder activists? De Klerk’s answer is simple.

…The blame should rest where the aberration or where the crime originated…

The image of Archbishop Desmond Tutu sunken in his shoulders with a dazed look on his face won’t go away. Tutu portrays the shock, sadness, anger and frustration of the audience at the National Party hearing. How can FW de Klerk make such an impassioned and handsome apology that apartheid was wrong, asks Tutu, and then negate that apology by going into a state of denial?

…I feel sorry for him that … I mean, maybe he didn’t know. He didn’t know? I told him…

Tutu finds it difficult to accept that De Klerk didn’t know, when he [Tutu] and so many others gave the government an avalanche of information on widespread abuses. How can De Klerk describe the actions of former security police as only "aberrations" when they were so uniform?

…And I find it unacceptable! I find it, I mean, I … I … I … I can’t acc… For someone to say the claims that … eh … people were being tortured, that those are claims, which were being used as … it was really propaganda. Propaganda? I mean, I mean, I … I was working with people at the SACC who were in and out of jail. I … I mean, I sat … I sat there and I was close to tears…

Tutu remains devastated. His speech, pauses and choice of words speak volumes. But not as much as the anguished silence when he clenches his teeth to bite back his tears.

She was proud to be a revolutionary. And proud to be an African woman. But she had no idea how she would be battered physically, mentally and emotionally for her beliefs. By the apartheid Security Police, the prison authorities and even her own sisters in the struggle. She was Greta Appelgren, the ANC’s woman in the 1986 Magoo’s Bar bombing in Durban. And the coloured Catholic who converted to Islam to become Zahrah Narkedien. Angie Kapelianis tells Narkedien’s story of suffering and strength both in jail and in the colour of her skin.

…Like I’m out of prison now for more than ten years. But I haven’t recovered. And I will never recover. I tried to be normal again and the more I struggled to be normal, the more disturbed I became. I had to accept that I was damaged. A part of my soul was eaten away by maggots, as horrible as it sounds. And I will never get it back again…

Winter 1986. Zahrah Narkedien and Robert McBride are picked up in Nigel on the far East Rand. Their hands are cuffed behind their backs. Thick, woollen balaclavas are pulled over their faces back-to-front. They are driven like that for three hours until their blindfolds are damp with sweat. CR Swart Police Station, Durban. Zahrah Narkedien is interrogated and tortured. Day in and day out for a week on the thirteenth floor. When they hurl abuse at her, she rolls the rosary beads in her head and prays silently.

…So they started to take a plastic bag. Then one person held both my hands down and the other one put it on my head. And then they … they sort of, you know, s… sealed it so that I wouldn’t be able to breathe and keep it on for at least two minutes. By that time, the plastic is clinging to my eyelids, my no… nostrils, my mouth. My whole body’s going into spasms because I … I … I really can’t breathe now. They did it to me for about three times and I still wasn’t prepared to … to … to surrender to them…

It’s time to intensify the treatment. So they ask the wardress to leave the room.

…And I was wearing for all these days the same clothing. Just a … a … a dress on and I was also menstruating at the time and I told them that I was menstruating, so I couldn’t stand ’cause I … for so long and I was bleeding a lot. But they made me lay on the floor and do all kinds of physical exercises, what they call press-ups. Then reducing the fingers till I had to pick myself up with just two fingers. And by then I couldn’t because I mean my body was tired, it was sore and I had to drop it. Then they would kick me while I was down. Kick me and tramp me and … and all the time it still didn’t really matter…

When they realise they can’t break her physically, they blackmail her mind and emotions.

…And the only thing that really made me break in the end was when they threatened to go back to my house and kidnap my four-year-old nephew, Christopher. Bring him to the thirteenth floor and drop him out of the window. Now, at that point I was really at my weakest, but I couldn’t hand over someone else’s body…

Solitary confinement is what she gets. More than 100 days in isolation. Being the only woman political prisoner in the furthest cell though doesn’t really bother her.

…What really bothered me was the rats. These were huge rats – they’re the size of cats – that were in the cells, in the passage all the time. I’ll sit and eat my food, three of them would … rats will just sit and look at me. I’ll be in the yard praying, the rats will just be around me there. I’ll get up, chase them, they’ll come back in. And then one particular evening, it just … it was crawling on me and I … and I … and I didn’t quite mind until it got to my neck and I went totally berserk. I screamed the whole prison down, but when they eventually came, they found me in a corner, I was actually eating my T-shirt. That … that’s how berserk I went…

Pietermaritzburg Prison. Zahrah Narkedien stands trial on 18 counts of terrorism, including the Magoo’s Bar bombing and the Edendale Hospital raid to rescue Gordon Webster. The wardresses are hostile and aggressive. "To them I’m a dangerous terrorist," she says. So they make her strip. Twice a day. For two-and-a-half months. "Prison rules," they say.

…And I had to actually stand fully naked and I … and I used to say: "Never, I am not going to take my … my panties off for you. You do all the searching and when you’re finished, I’ll pull it down quickly…"

Klerksdorp Prison. Zahrah Narkedien is convicted on five counts. A fight breaks out between two comrades from KwaZakhele. They blame her, the coloured. The section head believes them and banishes her to seven months in isolation. The basement and their betrayal become her living hell.

…So I had to pay the price just for being a coloured person. It was the first time I had to face up to the fact that I was part of a minority … uh … uh … uh … other than that I was just an African woman. It … it was painful for them to also deny me that right to be an African woman because my parents had always taught me that my Zulu ancestors… So … so it hurt also to be tortured by your own comrades, but I suffered unnecessarily because of this … uh … coloured issue…

"It was like eating my own vomit," she says. "A painful reality I had to embrace."

…I don’t even want to describe psychologically what I had to do to survive down there. I will write it one day, but I could never tell you. But … um … but it did teach me … uh … something: that no human being can live alone because there’s nothing you can do to survive all by yourself every single day. That I felt as the months went by that I was going deeper and deeper into the ground…

With no Bible. No birds. No butterflies. Just empty cells all around her like coffins with corpses. "I felt as if the whole world had abandoned me. That God had abandoned me." Somehow she shakes those thoughts away. "Maybe my soul will heal. I don’t hate my torturers. I do forgive them," she says. "But I could never again be the person I was." Just one woman’s story.

The ANC presented the longest and most complicated political submission to the Truth Commission when it was called to account for its past in 1996 and 1997. The former liberation movement acknowledged that some of its members committed gross human rights violations in exile, but called these abuses "excesses". It also admitted that its military tribunal in Angola executed 34 cadres. On behalf of the ANC, Deputy President Thabo Mbeki apologised for incidents in which civilians were killed, like the Amanzimtoti and Magoo’s Bar bombings in KwaZulu-Natal in the mid-eighties. But the main thrust of the ANC submission was that it fought a just war against an illegitimate government and unjust system. Kenneth Makatees, Angie Kapelianis, Darren Taylor and Antjie Samuel report.

The ANC submission to the Truth Commission is a mountain of information with the actual statement running into 100 pages. In it are lists of the dead, black and white. For some the ANC submission is history. For others it’s a revelation. Paging through the documents, our colleague Dumisani Shange discovers that his brother, Wiseman, officially committed suicide in Angola. This is the first time he learns of his brother’s fate.

…During all of the years that … eh … eh … we were in exile…

Thabo Mbeki

…The movement tried at all times to ensure that families were informed to the extent that it was possible that families could come and attend funerals of people who had died. Of course this did not happen in all instances…

In exile, ANC members are executed for crimes like rape. They’re also executed for smoking dagga. And suspected apartheid government agents who infiltrate the ANC’s armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe or MK, are treated mercilessly.

…It’s clear that some excesses occurred at the hands of some of our cadres who were involved in the process of interrogating, looking after such people. And again, Chairperson, as a leadership we have taken responsibility … collective responsibility for that…

Just as the apartheid government had destructive forces like Vlakplaas policemen and askaris, so too did the ANC have rogue cadres – young men who bombed public places without orders. Like Amanzimtoti bomber Andrew Zondo. He was hanged after bombing a shopping centre in which five white people were killed.

…He said: "I wish to say this to the people who might have lost their friends and kids and families: that I’m sorry." As the leadership of the ANC, Chairperson, we’d like to take this opportunity to say the sorrow that he expressed is a sorrow that the leadership of the movement would also express…

Mbeki says the ANC also regrets the 1983 Pretoria Church Street bombing that killed 19 people. But he defends the blast, saying there was a legitimate target: Air Force Headquarters. Quoting from a 1988 ANC statement, Mbeki says it was never policy to target civilians.

…Some of these attacks have been carried out by cadres of the people’s army, Umkhonto we Sizwe, inspired by an anger at the regime’s campaign of terror against the oppressed and democratic forces. In certain instances, operational circumstances resulted in unintended casualties…

In 1985, the ANC targets white farmers with landmines. The South African Defence Force, says Mbeki, trained these farmers as part of its defensive military structure in border areas.

…The use of those landmines would, in our view, be a legitimate form of operation in the context of the conduct of that just war…

It’s this just war against apartheid in which things admittedly went wrong and innocent people were killed, that is fundamental to the ANC submission. Mbeki argues that the ANC’s just war against apartheid cannot be morally equated with the war in defence of apartheid.

…For many centuries, our country was characterised by a conflict between the forces of white minority domination on the one hand and the forces of national liberation and democracy on the other. What this speaks to is an unjust cause on one side and a just cause on the other. The overwhelming majority of the actions carried out in the context of that just war do not constitute gross violations of human rights…

Nine months later, in May 1997, Deputy President Thabo Mbeki and his 20-strong delegation return to the Truth Commission. Tough and uncomfortable questions are asked. What steps did the ANC take to stop gross human rights abuses in exile? How could the ANC distribute thousands of unlicensed weapons to its self-defence units in the townships without any control? And why didn’t the ANC immediately condemn the horrific necklace murders?

Thabo Mbeki’s first words are: "Can we take our jackets off in case it gets a bit hot?" But the line of questioning catches Mbeki and his delegation off-guard. When they shuttle between questions and struggle to explain, Mbeki warns:

…We must avoid the danger whereby by concentrating on those particular and exceptional acts of the liberation movement, which could be deemed as constituting gross violations of human rights, we convey the impression that the struggle for liberation was itself a gross violation of human rights…

Truth Commission Legal Adviser Hanif Vally asks blunt questions backed with evidence. The kind of questions that have been on the lips of ANC supporters and victims for so long. Questions about the murder of black policemen, slogans inciting violence and death, as well as torture and executions in the exiled ANC’s camps. Truth Commission Chairperson Desmond Tutu puts his foot down as soon as the ANC slips into the habit of rhetoric.

…It would be a very good thing to point out that you aren’t infallible. If there is a … a mistake, even if you are saying it is by … with … with hindsight, then in fact whoever may be wanting to … to clobber you is going to find it very difficult to do so. You are not infallible, you have never set yourselves up as being infallible…

This is what Tutu is actually saying: The Truth Commission is a safety net for all political parties to face their human rights violations squarely. With this sustained pressure of support, the deputy president and his delegation can admit to the ANC’s wrongs. Incisive cross-examination continues. How could the ANC arm its grassroots supporters and leave them to their own devices? Defence Deputy Minister Ronnie Kasrils answers this question.

…The people who needed to be defended were not ANC people, it wasn’t a party issue. It was the community and the community had to be shown and helped how to defend itself. We … um … unreservably regret that any of our actions led to problems, led to abuses and led to deaths…

The ANC continues admitting to several mistakes: that its first tribunals left much to be desired; that confessions were extracted under torture; that cadres were charged and sentenced without legal advice; that none of its members were authorised to engage in violence with the Inkatha Freedom Party; and that popular slogans were not political statements qualifying for amnesty.

[Chants "Kill the boer, the farmer"]

But what about one of the most horrific murder methods associated with the ANC – necklacings? Four hundred and six suspected apartheid informers and collaborators were officially necklaced with tyres, doused with petrol and burnt to death between 1984 and 1989. The Truth Commission’s Hanif Vally says several comrades claim in their amnesty applications that the ANC condoned this gross violation of human rights. To make his point, Vally spells out which high-profile ANC leader said what, when.

…Statement made on the 13^th of April 1986 by Mrs Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, and I quote: "Together with our boxes of matches and our necklaces we shall liberate this country." Unquote. Statement made by Mr Alfred Nzo, 14^th of September 1986, and I quote: "Whatever the people decide to use to eliminate those enemy elements is their decision. If they decide to use necklacing, we support it." Unquote. There is an argument to be made that a just war encompasses two elements, not just the end result which must be just, but the means to that end result must also be just. Why did it take the ANC so long to condemn the practice of necklacing?…

Transport Minister and former MK commander Mac Maharaj says the exiled ANC couldn’t always respond immediately. Initially, it believed that the masses back home had resorted to necklacing in response to extreme brutalisation and repression.

…If we delayed in the judgement of any person too long in appealing for the e… end of this practice and to condemn it, then on hindsight, yes, we made a mistake…

Five commissions of inquiry investigated torture in the ANC camps abroad during the liberation struggle against apartheid. They were the Stuart, Skweyiya, Sachs, Motsuenyane and Douglas commissions. Yet several victims jailed in the ANC’s notorious Quatro Camp in Angola were dissatisfied with their findings and turned to the Truth Commission for help. The most eloquent and damning testimony, though, came from one of the ANC government’s own senior officials, Chief Land Claims Commissioner Joe Seremane. Antjie Samuel reports.

Quatro Camp, named after the old Fort Prison in Johannesburg. This is where they say when you are given bread, you think it’s cake. This is where Joe Seremane’s younger brother, Chief Timothy, was shot dead "like a pig". Yet no record, no details and no acknowledgement from the ANC as to what really happened.

…I looked for my brother very quietly and silently. I knew what was happening in the country. I was in Robben Island and I saw what was happening in all the areas. The kind of thing that was happening where people were just destroyed out of sheer rumour, sheer suspicion. That you could be labelled anything and you die the next day…

Two former Quatro Camp victims know what happened to Chief Timothy. But they’re not prepared to testify in public, says Seremane. The one is now in the army and the other is a policeman. Seremane, who left the ANC Youth League to join the Pan-Africanist Congress, says his decade-long investigations have yielded little. Access to the ANC leadership has also been denied. Seremane says it’s ironic that the apartheid government has records of what happened in its prisons, but not the ANC.

…Why do you cheat me of my brother’s bones? Why do you think our contribution is worth nothing? Why do you think we ran and volunteered to risk our lives, calling for your own return home, for justice, supporting you in your call to be treated under the Geneva Conventions and you couldn’t treat your own that way. Just say the truth, come back and tell us. We have been tested: We can forgive, we can reconcile. Yet we are also capable of forming third forces to hit back, but that’s not what we want. We are looking forward to a better South Africa…

"My brother looked like me. Suddenly no one remembers him. What’s happened to accountability? Even a little white lie will help," says Seremane. If someone can just say: "We shot him by mistake while we were practising." At least that’s something.

…There is one thing that is messing up our country. It is the lack of sincerity in our country. It is the lack of recognising other people’s contribution if they don’t belong to your camp, if they don’t belong to your tribe, if they don’t belong to your race. We are still victims of fragmentation. And it pains me when I hear the rhetorics of shallow honour and integrity of disclosure, yet underneath it is vilifying those who can’t speak for themselves. They are called rapists, murderers, mutineers. I want to ask for the true records of those trials in Quatro Camp. I want somebody to come and tell me what my younger brother actually did that he deserved to be shot like an animal being put down after being brutally disfigured so that his best of his best friends could not recognise him…

Seremane wants a full investigation into what happened at Quatro Camp. If a full account is not given, he says, the weaker people among us will go back and do it over and over again.

Who was ultimately responsible for gross human rights abuses committed in the name of apartheid and Christianity? And why did almost all apartheid foot soldiers interpret veiled orders like "eliminate" and "neutralise" to mean "kill"? These questions prompted the Truth Commission to hold a hearing into the once-powerful State Security Council in mid-October 1997. This advisory committee to Cabinet was born under the premiership of BJ Vorster in 1972. It became known as the "super inner-Cabinet" of hand-picked politicians, securocrats and intelligence agents when PW Botha came into power in 1978. The State Security Council apparently kept its finger on the pulse of political thinking and resistance by permeating all levels of society. Four apartheid ministers who served on this body were Pik Botha, Adriaan Vlok, Roelf Meyer and Leon Wessels. Angie Kapelianis asked Truth Commissioner Yasmin Sooka for her impressions of their testimony.

…I think I’m impressed by fact that all four people that came talked about taking political and moral responsibility…

…We could not win the political struggle, not against the world and not against the ANC, because the policy of the National Party had no moral basis…

Pik Botha

…The decisive question is not whether we as a Cabinet approved the killing of a specific political opponent. We did not do so. The question is whether we should have done more to ensure that it did not happen. I deeply regret this omission. May God forgive me…

…And I’m really impressed that there’s a certain amount of honesty…

…I further do not believe that the political defence of "I did not know" is available to me because in many respects I believe I did not want to know…

Leon Wessels

…I had my suspicions of things that had caused discomfort in official circles, but because I did not have the facts to substantiate my suspicions or I had lacked the courage to shout from the z… rooftops, I have to confess that I only whispered in the corridors…

…We’ve had Mr [FW] De Klerk and he’s insisted that he really didn’t know how it happened…

…If there ever was a civilian in our ranks that was Mr FW de Klerk. Always, always warning and saying: "Don’t allow yourself to be militarised." That was FW de Klerk…

…Where does the buck stop and how can one ensure that that doesn’t actually happen again?…

…Much power, too much in my opinion, was given to the head of state…

…Ek het net nooit geweet dat hulle die mense martel nie...

Adriaan Vlok

…Ek het dit nooit goedgekeur nie. Want, voorsitter…

I didn’t know that they were torturing people. I never approved it.

…gemartel en hy het vir ons inligting gegee…

I’m sorry it happened and I can’t turn a blind eye.

…Ek is jammer dat dit gebeur het…

…One has a sense, and I’m still not quite satisfied, but particularly during the evidence of Mr Vlok’s when he explained that it was never state policy to have someone killed, but he understands how the misunderstandings or misinterpretation could take place…

…In die loop van sulke samesprekings, vergaderings, toesprake en opdragte wat van my af uitgegaan het…

From my discussions, meetings, speeches and orders, there can be no doubt that I possibly used words and expressions, which could have been interpreted to mean "act illegally".

…as wat ek bedoel het. Naamlik, as instruksies om onwettig op te tree…

…I think we’re beginning to get a picture of how the politicians function, but I think that the time is certainly ripe for Mr PW Botha to be questioned…

…I would have loved to seen the State Security Council, as it functioned under the chairper…sonship of Mr PW Botha, today deal with the accusations that we have to answer here…

…For many of the people who came to testify it was an opportunity for liberation…

…I am both an African and an Afrikaner. I am a liberated Afrikaner. We have been liberated from the baggage of an immoral system of government…

…We’re so immersed often in the work of the commission that we don’t really recognise that there’s a huge paradigm shift…

…I am now more than ever convinced that apartheid was a terrible mistake that blighted our land. South Africans did not listen to the laughing and the crying of each other. I’m sorry that I had been so hard of hearing for such a long time…

…You have to look at the way in which for 40 years people’s minds were manipulated and so I think the responsibility, therefore, for them is to work very much more with assisting the rest of their communities to make that shift…

…Ek kan aan geen rede dink waarom Afrikaanse Suid-Afrikaners en hul kinders…

I don’t see why Afrikaner South Africans and their children must always be burdened with apartheid.

…Dit is reg…

The books of our past must be opened and interpreted. But then they must be closed. We dare not forget what happened in our country.

…Ons durf nie vergeet wat hier gebeur het nie…

…Because unless you have genuine remorse, you’re not going to have the climate which is necessary for true reconciliation to take place because it does demand sacrifices of us…

…We as South Africans should make a solemn undertaking never again to repeat the mistakes of the past and likewise to provide hope and expectation for all our children…

Roelf Meyer

…The event, I believe, must be a specific national day. A day for the symbolic closing of the book of the past. A day for embracing the future…

…And the cynic in me certainly felt hopeful and certainly felt that there is a future for our country because I think we don’t appreciate sometimes where we’re coming from. I think we don’t realise that nowhere else in the world has this happened. Here we’ve had practically all the politicians who were involved in government come before the commission. It’s extraordinary!…

[Sings in Zulu and English]

It is for freedom we went to prison.

It is for freedom that we gladly went.

It is for freedom we went to prison.

It is for freedom that we gladly went.

A heavy load,

a heavy load,

a heavy load,

we gladly bear.

The apartheid legal system came under the Truth Commission’s gavel in October 1997. It wanted to know how did judges and lawyers co-operate or collude with the National Party government? Why did South Africa’s learned men uphold unjust laws? And why did they fail to protect the human rights of all South Africans? But the men who could have answered these questions decided to boycott the hearing. South Africa’s first black chief justice, Ismail Mahomed, said there was no need for the judges to account for their actions in person and in public. Angie Kapelianis compiled this collage of criticism levelled at the judges.

…This is probably the most important hearing after the victim/survivor hearings…

Desmond Tutu

…You see, in dealing with gross human rights violations, we are really concerned with justice, law, order, the disposition of power and authority, and how these are regulated within conventional parameters so that they are not abused…

…Judges are human beings. Judges have prejudice. Judges are not above prejudice…

Paula McBride

…Judges when they put their robes on do not become supermen. They are raised in the same country as all of us and I think that there’s a lack of acceptance of that…

…We should have had representatives of the majority of judges who acted in what I think was clear dereliction of their duty. These judges, I think, bear a heavy responsibility…

David Dyzenhaus

…They bear a responsibility for allowing apartheid policy to be implemented unchecked by the rule of law and for allowing the security forces to operate unchecked by the rule of law. They also bear responsibility for what I take to be the main enquiry of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, that is, the people who were actually physically and mentally hurt by all those years of apartheid…

…It wasn’t the prison service or the hangman or the state president who put people into death row. It was the judges in our country…

…Now there’re two things that they plead: The one is that it would impact on the question of judicial independence and the other is that it might have the effect of dividing a bench which is coming together…

Yasmin Sooka

…I don’t think that that’s necessarily true, and … and one needs to ask the question: Why do judges arrogate to themselves this special role that they don’t need to publicly account and publicly apologise?…

…They’ve managed even up till today to preserve and propagate the absurdity that they were somehow impartial, that somehow they were above it all. And the judiciary’s role in our country made them far more valuable to the fortification of apartheid than a thousand Vlakplaas farms could have done…

…It is clear that they carried out principles where they knew and ought to have known of the intrinsic race bias … uh … within the system…

Lennox Hinds

…One had to be just blind … uh … deaf or just simply an imbecile … uh … not to have known this…

Junaid Husain

…Most of the legal practitioners, members of the judiciary in South Africa did not make justice their altar during the dark days of apartheid…

…why it is that the judges are not being subpoenaed to appear before the Truth and Reconciliation [Commission] to account…

[Claps hesitantly in background]

…for what they have done in our history? The leaders of our liberation movements have been subpoenaed to appear before the TRC and I think that it’s imperative that stronger action is taken to get the judiciary in this country to come forward and to account for what they’ve done…

…And I am deeply distressed that no judge has seen fit to appear before the commission. For a long time in South Africa, judges were raised to pedestals of virtual untouchability when experience points to the contrary. They have shown they have not yet changed a mindset that properly belongs to the old dispensation, which most of them have castigated so sharply in their submissions…

[Reads poem]

I saw your mother

with two guards

through a glass plate

for one quarter hour

on the day that you died.

"Extra visit, special favour"

I was told, and warned

"The visit will be stopped

if politics is discussed.

Verstaan – understand!?"

on the day that you died.

I couldn’t place

my arm around her,

around your mother

when she sobbed.

Fifteen minutes up

I was led

back to the workshop.

Your death, my wife,

one crime they managed

not to perpetrate

on the day that you died.

Convicted former president PW Botha was the one crucial apartheid politician who could have shed more light on the official sanctioning of gross human rights violations. Botha chaired the State Security Council from 1978 to 1989. But instead of succumbing to the Truth Commission, Botha chose to face the court system for eight months and lost. George Magistrate Victor Lugaju found Botha guilty of contempt on the 21^st of August 1998 for repeatedly ignoring subpoenas to testify in public. Lugaju said Botha’s failure to testify was unlawful, intentional and without sufficient cause. His sentence was a R10 000 fine or one year in jail. An additional 12-month prison sentence was suspended for five years. This is an extract from Botha’s media briefing at the start of his expensive trial in January 1998.

…Werk hierdie ding [the microphone]? Dames en here. Can you all hear me?

Yes, yes…

Those who can’t hear me put up your hand…

[Laugh slightly]

…and salute me!

[Laugh slightly louder]

Ek is ’n gelowige mens. En ek is ’n begenadigde mens. I’m a believer and I’m blessed by my creator. Ek is nie ’n perfekte mens nie. Ek staan by almal wat wettige opdragte van die regering uitgevoer het…

I stand by everyone who carried out legal instructions in our struggle against revolutionary and Communist attacks on our fatherland.

…Hierdie totale aanslag op alle lewensterreine het gepardgegaan met die mees gruwelike…

This total onslaught went hand in hand with some of the most gruesome acts of violence against the civilian population.

…maar word nou gerieflikheidshalwe deur die WVK…

But the Truth Commission and some politicians conveniently forget this.

…Dis wonderlik hoe kort sommige mense…

It’s incredible how short their memories are.

…Geen stryd word deur slegs een party gevoer nie en geen doel…

No struggle is fought by only one side and no cause is so noble as to justify violent murders and destruction.

…Ek dink aan die kampe waar…

I’m talking about the liberation camps outside our borders where people were intimidated and tortured.

…Ek dink aan die halssnoermoorde…

The necklace murders.

…Ek dink aan die opruiing van mense…

The incitement of people.

…En ek is nie bereid om verskoning te vra…

I’m not prepared to apologise for the views I voiced on removing racial discrimination.

…van rasse…kriminasie nie. Net so is ek ook nie bereid…

Likewise, I’m not prepared to apologise for my government’s legal actions in resisting attacks on our political system.

…Ek staan nog by my standpunt dat ek die verguising van dapper soldate en polisiemanne…

I reject the vilification of brave soldiers and policemen. They’re not that bad. They are the ones who maintained order in this country day and night. I honour them. I salute them.

…Lees my toesprake in die parlement…

Read my parliamentary speeches and you will see that this is a hollow cry – this parrot-cry of apartheid.

…while I expressly stated in the open that apartheid is an Afrikaans word and can be easily replaced by a proper, positive term: good neighbourliness. Good neighbourliness…

[Laugh]

Who’s laughing? Who’s laughing? Uitsprake van sommige politieke leiers…

The pronouncements and fixations of certain political leaders with the past fuel racism and division. In this regard, the Truth Commission is the worst sinner.

…En die WVK is die grootste sondaar in dié verband...

…Okay, last question…

…Mr Botha, you said in your speech, you had … you make no apology for … for some of the things that happened when you were president. Um … could you say what it is that you…

But I’m not here to apologise! That’s my point with the … so-called Truth and … and … uh … and…

…Reconciliation…

…Reconciliation Commission. They want me to apologise. I’m not prepared to apologise. Why do you want me to go and apologise before Bishop [Desmond] Tutu? For what? For what?…

For the cross-border raids…

He didn’t go, he said he’s not going… Wag ’n bietjie. Is he going to apologise for the fact that he stood under a Communist flag while he … uh … so-called leader of the church? Is he … going to apologise for that?…

…Are you going to apologise for all the people who died in jail, who died in Lesotho and who died in neighbouring countries?

No, I’m praying for them!

Okay, I think that was the last question. Please. Mr Botha, it’s very hot in here and … uh…

It is becoming more hot…

[Laughs]

…It is becoming more hot, but I must say I’m enjoying myself…

[Laughs]

The apartheid government’s top-secret Chemical and Biological Warfare Programme sealed the Truth Commission’s investigations into gross human rights abuses on the 31^st of July 1998. South Africans and the world listened with disbelief and then shock to a group of doctors who perverted science to entrench white supremacy. Truth Commission Chairperson Desmond Tutu described the public testimony on the programme, code-named Project Coast, as "the worst evidence I’ve ever heard". Some of the apartheid scientists disclosed how they tried to produce a vaccine and a bacterium to sterilise and kill only black people. But the most disturbing allegation was that the apartheid government planned to poison jailed ANC leader Nelson Mandela in the eighties. Darren Taylor compiled this report.

…There were also plans to contaminate medication used by President Nelson Mandela at Pollsmoor [Prison] with the untraceable, heavy, metal poison, Thallium…

Dr Schalk van Rensburg is a former Defence Force scientist who worked for Brigadier Wouter Basson, the mastermind of South Africa’s Chemical and Biological Warfare Programme.

…Dr Basson mentioned after he had told us a lot about the effects of Thallium, if you give just the right dose – you mustn’t give too much, but just the right amount – then you can cause what appears to be an outbreak of meningitis or encephalitis. And in so doing, he mentioned in passing that he had given some Thallium, or he said we had given some Thallium, to Steve Biko…

In March 1986, four years before the National Party government freed Nelson Mandela from prison, this is what its State Security Council recommended: "Mandela must be released outside South Africa. He must be in a relatively poor physical condition so that he cannot act as leader for long." Van Rensburg says fellow scientist André Immelman later suggested that the apartheid government had indeed followed through on its plan to poison South Africa’s first black president.

…In a conversation with André Immelman, shortly after Nelson Mandela’s release, he was very confident that Nelson Mandela’s brain function would be impaired progressively for some time…

Apartheid government operatives also poisoned the leader of the South African Council of Churches, Frank Chikane, by coating his underpants with toxin. Van Rensburg recalls other so-called "successes".

…There’s another case where … uh … anthrax spores were put into the food of three Russian advisers in Lusaka, advisers to the ANC that is. And … uh … one of them died…

Another scientist, Dr Daan Goosen, says he secretly delivered venom from the deadly black mamba snake to Basson.

…We also did some toxicity tests to establish the dose in … in non-human primates, to see what sort of dose could be used. Ee… I can tell you, a minute acc… quantity is necessary intravenously to kill someone instantaneously…

Dr Schalk van Rensburg says army operatives later claimed to have murdered a young white conscript who was an ANC supporter by simulating a snakebite. Both Van Rensburg and Goosen say they were tasked to make fatal substances that would not be detected in postmortem examinations. Death was to appear natural. But former police forensics expert General Lothar Neethling dismisses all allegations that they conspired to murder apartheid’s political opponents as "fairytales".

…Ek is ’n konserwatiewe Afrikaner…

I’m a conservative Afrikaner raised in the Dutch Reformed Church. I don’t believe in murder!

…Is dit goed genoeg?…

In 1982, the apartheid government counted 45 million black people in South Africa. Filled with paranoia at this figure, Goosen says the white regime falsified the census results to ease white fears, by saying there were only 28 million black people. The scientists then set to work on a special project, which they insist was never completed.

…But then our final brief and very, very important one was to develop a product to curtail the birth rate of the black population in the country. The person that directly instructed us or asked us to do this was Dr [Wouter] Basson…

Goosen says he asked Basson: "Why are you doing this?" Basson apparently replied: "I’ve got a daughter. One day when the blacks take over this country and my daughter asks me, ‘Daddy, what did you do to prevent this?’ my conscience will be clean." One of the more ludicrous chemical and biological warfare projects was designed to "incapacitate" militant black crowds with hallucinogenic drugs. Former government chemist Johan Koekemoer says thousands of kilograms of narcotics were manufactured for Basson. Koekemoer is adamant that the Defence Force planned to disable opponents with gas grenades filled with the so-called "love drug", Ecstasy.

…They decided that it will be a good in… incapacitant. So I actually said to Dr Mijburgh, you know that I don’t want to love my enemy, if I want to use…

[Laughs]

…And … uh … I would not like to kiss my en… enemy, but I would rather … uh … work on his central nervous system and disorientate him to such an extent that he can’t operate … uh … properly…

The government scientists delivered botulism in beer cans, cholera cultures, peppermint chocolates filled with cyanide and poisoned orange juice to covert operatives known only as "Koos" and "Chris". It was the job of Defence Force scientist Dr Jan Lourens to make murder weapons for Basson. "It was like James Bond. I lived a life of luxury," says Lourens. His lethal weapons included walking sticks that could shoot poison pellets and screwdriver devices to "eliminate enemies".

…The operator that uses the piece of equipment would stab the person being attacked and in the stabbing process, the piston would be released and the chemical substance would be injected into the individual…

When Wouter Basson is supposed to attend the Truth Commission hearing, he sits in a nearby coffee bar. With a red koki pen, he scrawls "Doctor Death – the truth will out" on the yellow graffiti wall of well-known names. His contempt for the Truth Commission continues for three days. Basson refuses to answer even the most elementary question.

Dr Basson, can you tell us what your age is, please?

Meneer die voorsitter, ek … uh … kan geen vrae beantwoord op hierdie stadium totdat u vir my…

Mr Chairman, I can’t answer any questions before you…

You are bordering on contempt! You are bordering on co… dangerously on contempt, Dr Wouter Basson!

Ek het duidelik aan u gesê…

I’ve already told you, Mr Chairman, that I’ve been instructed and advised to…

Don’t tell me … don’t tell me about that again. With due respect…

…Dan in die lig…

You are veering on dangerous ground, Dr Wouter Basson…

Despite all the documentary and oral evidence against him, Wouter Basson denies everything.

…Meneer die voorsitter, ek ontken kategories die stelling dat ek betrokke was…

Mr Chairman, I categorically deny that I was ever involved in the preparation, planning and/or distribution of any substance to injure or kill anyone.

…liggaamlike leed aan te doen of te dood…

No one is convinced. Dr Daan Goosen maintains that the development of a vaccine to sterilise only black people was supposed to be the beginning of so many possibilities under the Chemical and Biological Warfare Programme.

…It is frightening, Chairman, frightening! This programme of Coast haven’t touched it. We have tried to, but we were stopped before we could get close to it…

[Reads poem]

it is a dry white season

dark leaves don’t last, their brief lives dry out

and with a broken heart they dive down gently headed for the earth,

not even bleeding.

it is a dry white season brother,

only the trees know the pain as they still stand erect

dry like steel, their branches dry like wire,

indeed, it is a dry white season

but seasons come to pass.

These scripts - © SABC 2000. No unauthorised use, copying, adaptation or reproduction permitted without prior written consent of the SABC.