TRC Episode 25, Part 04

These were all human rights violations stories we've listened to so far. That is what the Truth Commission has been concentrating on in its first six months. The Truth Commission has now entered a new phase, a phase where the perpetrators rather than the victims will get prominence. If one looks back at six months of testimony by victims a few clear trends emerge. The first is that the brutalities of apartheid were not confined to cities and big townships. It reached into every village and location. De Aar, Toyandu, Brandfort, Colesburg, Mtubatuba, Aliwal-North, Indwe, Potchefstroom, New Castle. Another trend is the insistence that truth is a precondition to forgiveness. And very few victims asked for financial compensation. They asked for the remains of their relatives, for heroes' acres or walls of remembrance, for hearing aids, for medical assistance or education bursaries. In the 1960s and 70s there were a lot of deaths in police detention. In the 80s and early 90s activists were simply killed where they lived and worked. Another clear trend: the vast majority of reported murders, disappearances, and torture cases happened during the dark decade of the eighties, especially after the states of emergency. One figure dominated this period, the architect of total onslaught, Pieter Willem Botha. Botha also dominated much of the testimony at the Truth Commission this week, at the former Defence Force submission in Cape Town and at the amnesty hearings in Johannesburg. One of the repeated obsessions with the former rulers and their security operators is that the Truth Commission does not understand the contexts of their war against the liberation movements. In August former state president FW de Klerk and Freedom Front leader Constand Viljoen spent much time during their submissions to the Truth Commission explaining their war psychosis caused by the dangers of communist and black revolutionary onslaught.