Country of my skull [017-011-2.0]

By: Antjie Krog

Synopsis:

The first free elections in South Africa's history were held in 1993.
Within a year legislation was drafted to create a truth and
Reconciliation commission to establish a picture of the gross human
rights violations committed between 1960 and 1993.  It was to seek the
truth and make it known to the public and to prevent these brutal
events ever happening again.  From 1996 and over following two years
South Africans were exposed almost daily to revelations about their
traumatic past.  AnUle Krog's full account of the commission's work
using the testimonies of oppressed and oppressors alike is a harrowing
and haunting book in which the voices of ordinary people shape the
course of history.


PUBLISHER'S NOTE

After the un banning of the African National Congress and the release
of Nelson Mandela from prison at the beginning of 1990, South Africans
sat down to negotiate an Interim Constitution to guide the country
towards its first democratic elections.  ANC members in exile were
granted indemnity so that they could enter the country to participate
in the negotiations at the World Trade Centre in Kempton Park.  It was
a torturous and sacrificial path, with perpetrator and victim facing
each other to negotiate a common future.  Busy with South Africa's
future, they knew that they had no choice but to deal with the
country's past. They did so directly in the final clause of the
Constitution.  This clause, which stated that amnesty would be given,
made the elections possible.  It read: The adoption of this
Constitution lays the secure foundation for the people of South Africa
to transcend the divisions and strife of the past, which generated
gross violations of human rights, the transgression of humanitarian
principles in violent conflicts and a legacy of hatred, fear, guilt and
revenge.

These can now be addressed on the basis that there is a need for
understanding but not for vengeance, a need for reparation but not for
retaliation, a need for ubuntu Ithe African philosophy of humanism] but
not for victimization.

In order to advance such reconciliation and reconstruction, amnesty
shall be granted in respect of acts, omissions and of fences associated
with political objectives and committed in the course of the conflicts
of the past.  To this end, Parliament under this Constitution shall
adopt a law determining a firm cut-off date which shall be a date after
8 October 1990 and before 6 December 1993 and providing for mechanisms,
criteria and procedures, including tribunals, if any, through which
such amnesty shall be dealt with at any time after the law has been
passed.

In the year after the elections, Parliament's j$.istice Portfolio
Committee drafted legislation to establish a Truth and Reconciliation
Commission.  The seventeen-member commission was given the task of
establishing as complete 4 picture as possible of the causes, nature
and extent of the foss human rights violations committed in the period
bet well 1 March 1960 and the cut-off date, by conducting inve4gations
and holding hearings.  It also had to facilitate the granting of
amnesty to persons who made full disc1osre of all the relevant facts
relating to acts associated wh apolitical objective.  In addition, the
Commission was required to restore the human and civil dignity of
victims 4{nd recommend reparation measures; and to compile a repo4t of
its findings and activities and recommend measures tdprevent future
violations of human rights.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission as it was duly established
consisted of three committees.  The first of these was the Human Rights
Violations Committee, yhich had to look into the accounts of victims
through la rings and investigations.  The second was the Amnesty
Committee which had to evaluate amnesty applications.  Thi's Committee
had five members, two of whom were Commissioners and three independent
Judges; it was totally independent and could not be overruled by the
Commission itself.  Among other stipulations, the Committee had to
apply the Norgard principles to determine whether an application
qualified for amnesty.  And the third committee was the Reparation and
Rehabilitation Committee, which had to formulate a reparation policy to
restore and rehabilitate the lives of victims and survivors of human
rights violations.

The Commission also' had an Investigative Unit and a

Research Unit, and was given the powers to subpoena people.

It was supposed to finish its work in eighteen months.  Broadly stated,
the aims of the Commission were to return to victims their civil and
human rights; to restore the moral order of the society; to seek the
truth, record it, and make it known to the public; to create a culture
of human rights and respect for the rule of law; and to prevent the
shameful events of the past from happening again.

The first hearings were held in April 1996.  Over the following two
years, South Africans were exposed almost daily to revelations about
their traumatic past.  In the cities and in many smaller towns, in
improvised courtrooms fashioned out of town halls and community centres
and churches, the drama of Apartheid and the struggle against it was
played out.  The Commission received 20 000 statements from victims, 2
000 of these in public hearings; and it received nearly 8 000
applications for amnesty from perpetrators.

As this book goes to print, the jury is still out as to whether The
Truth Commission has been successful as an agent of reconciliation and
reparation.  And South Africans are discovering that the relationship
between truth and reconciliation is far more complex than they ever
imagined.  2 The Truth Commission functions as a sharply focused
microcosm of the broader South African society in transition.  it has
been possible to chart the progress of democracy and 2j reconstruction
by following its troubled, volatile history.  An exploration of its
work allows us to understand the human cost of this country's
transition from Apartheid to democracy.

But it offers us more than a way of decoding the miracle of our times.
It has become an intensely illuminating spotlight on South Africa's
past.  Because it has allowed this past to be told through the personal
recollections of those who testify before it, it has put real flesh on
rhetorical phrases like a just war' and crimes against humanity'.  The
people who tell these stories, along with the people who listen to them
and, like Antjie Krog, the people who report on them, are living South
Africans.  They are struggling to find identity for themselves,
individually and collectively, within the shadows still cast by their
country's brutal history.  The spotlight is thus not just a harrowing,
often liberating revelation of the past; it illuminates present
predicaments and future possibilities too.

Many voices of this country were long silent, unheard, often unheeded
before they spoke, in their own tongues, at the microphones of South
Africa's Truth Commission.  The voices of ordinary people have entered
the public discourse and shaped the passage of history.  They speak
here to all who care to listen.

SUNK LOW ON their springs, three weathered white Sierras past the
wrought-iron gates of Parliament.  Heavy, ham forearms bulge through
the open windows honking, waving old Free State and Transvaal flags. 
Hairy fists in the air.  I run across the cobblestone street clutching
notepad I recorder to the old parliamentary venue where the tice
Portfolio Committee is hearing public submissions on what to include in
the draft legislation establishing a Truth Commission.  The faces are
grim in the hall with its dark panelling, oldI microphones hanging from
the ceiling, hard gallery and green-leather seats .. . Bellington Mampe
... Looksmart Ngudle ... Suliman Salojee mon Modipane... James
Lenkoe... A slow litany of names, read out into the quiet hall.  The
names of one hundred and twenty people who died in police custody...
Imam

Abdullah Haroon... Alpheus Maliba..  . Ahmed Timol... Steve Bantti
Biko... Neil Aggett..  . Nicodemus Kgoathe..."  The chairperson of the
Black Sash, Mary Burton, concludes her submission in the same way the
Sash's meetings have been concluded for years: name upon name upon
name.  They fall like chimes into the silence.  Journalists stop taking
notes, committee members put down their pens stunned by this magnitude
of death that is but a bare beginning.

The double doors snap open.  The marching crunch of the black-clad
Ystergarde even on the carpet their boots make a noise.  The Iron
Guard, elite corps of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging.  Black
balaclavas worn like caps, ready to be rolled down over the faces.
Three-armed swastikas on the sleeves.  Then, dressed in ordinary khaki
clothes, hat in hand, in walks Eugene Terre' Blanche as if he is taking
a stroll on his farm.  Suddenly another kind of noise fills the hall.
ANC Members of Parliament, secretaries, messengers, speech-writers,
even a Minister or two, shuffle into the already crowded gallery and
benches.  j

We've asked for all the committee meetings toj be adjourned," whispers
a black senator, we have to see this an with our own eyes how real he
is.

Expectation fills the air.  Does Terre' Blanche adj'dant want to say
anything?  He jumps up.  "Salutes.  No, I sa what my leader say!"

The chairperson of the Justice Committee, Joh4ny de Lange, shows Terre'
Blanche his seat.  Mr.  Terre'anche, what would you like to see in the
Truth Coninission legislation?"

It is so quiet you can hear an alliteratioh drop.  Terre' Blanche stays
seated.  Barely audibly, he asks: Is hier waar ek vandag sit, hierdie
sitplek, is dit die plek waar Sy Edele Dr.  Verwoerd dertig jaar gelede
ver moor is met n mes in sy hart?"  [ This seat I am sitting in, is it
the same one where Dr.  Verwoerd was murdered with a knife in his heart
t$iirty years ago?"I

We look at one another.  Indeed," says the chairperson.  Terre' Blanche
stares at his hat until the changed context of blood and betrayal is
dominating the silence.

He gets up.  He puts down his hat and moves out of the bench.  Away
from the microphones, the guards.  He stands alone on the carpet.  And
the first word that enters the mind, despite the neatly trimmed grey
beard, is: poor.  The man is a poor Afrikaner.  His khaki shirt is
bleached, its collar threadbare.  But poor as he is, he is a master of
acoustics.  As if he as made a study of the hail, he drenches us with
sound evAry tremor, boom, reverberating corner of that space under his
command.

IiFzat.  Die sol date ... Huis toe gaan!"  he shouts.  Let the diers go
home.  Then in a normal voice: Agbare Meneer die or sater Agbare Lede
van die Parlement... Laat AL... te... HUIS toe gaan... (whispering)
Laat.  MY... I4ac... huis toe gaan ... (in a crescendo) sod at die
wekIag van wagtende vroue en die wringende han de van *,*ders kan einde
kry..  . my klere is nat van hulle trane..."  Translation!  Members of
Parliament, especially the exiles, *jwack desks for translation
equipment.  They don't want to a word.  Amnesty is a gift!  But for the
political prisoner who has er known the coldness and the bleakness [die
koud-heid 4die kil-heid] of jail cells; whose life has always been
woven the wide waving veld of freedom for him, Honourable 0xair, for
him amnesty is... a fire of joy."

Terre' Blanche asks for the cut-off date, now set at 6 $?cember 1993,
to be shifted forward, so that AWB members committed violence right up
until the first democratic cnon in April 1994 will qualify for amnesty.
Then the will cooperate with the Government.  When Terre' Blanche is
finished, Committee member Jan Eck praises his Afrikaans.  Carl
Niehaus, the Afrikaansking ANC Member of Parliament, is less
enthusiastic.  t does Terre' Blanche mean by the term cooperation'? 
seems Mr.  Niehaus himself has mastered only Standard 2 frikaans,"
Terre' Blanche sneers.

Someone starts to hiss.  Dramatically Terre' Blanche throws Ipvo
fingers in the air.  Two bomb-planters!  The one drives a ercedes Benz,
and the other one, like me, drives a Nissan b.kkie.  The Nissan.  Comes
late. Five minutes AlTER twelve is bomb goes off.  But the Mercedes. 
Arrives on time.  And at bomb explodes.  Five minutes TO twelve.  Now
BEAU SE he drives a Mercedes, and not a Nissan, ... gets ?mnesty!" 
Dene Smuts, another Afrikaner MP and a,member of the Pemocratic Party,
calls for a point of order.  No, Mr.  Terre' Blanche your Nissan did
not come late. It burst with deafening noise through the glass windows
of the World Trade Centre in Kempton Park.  I was there.  And your
deeds were not aimed at the Big Stealer as you insist on calling F.W.
de Klerk but at the negotiations for a democratic dispensation.  Your
people are in jail not because they drove Nissan bakkies, but because
they refused to accept democracy.

Incensed, Terre' Blanche gasps for air.  That a woman and my mother was
also a woman;' he shouts, that a WOMAN does not understand what I
say!"

He ends his submission.  If the shifting of a date can bring peace then
you must shift the date with every day on the calendar.  If justice
rules... I will talk peace... because that is all that I am..  . a
simple farmer from Westransvaal who has come to you to put my case."

I

The contrast between client and advocate is striking.  General Johan
van der Merwe, former Commissioner of Police, sits collapsed in the
front row.  Ineengedoke.  Whether it is part of a calculated strategy
or simply an effect of seeing him out of uniform for the first time, I
cannot say.  His colour is yellowish, he blinks his eyes constantly,
his mouth nibbles at times like a geriatric and when he touch-touches
the bandage around his finger, his hand trembles.  But his case is
taken up with a flourish by a rosy, confident, English-speaking
advocate from Natal.  He is not taking up the General's case because he
agrees with what happened in the past, the advocate with the golden
rings assures the Justice Portfolio Committee.  But because he believes
the General has a point.  And the point is politics.  The mere fact
that a deed has to have a political motive to qualify the perpetrator
for amnesty is proof enough that the politicians should be the essence
of the Truth Commission's inquest.  It is not the police who come up
with Apartheid, he says, but the politicians.

With an instinct for the dramatic, the advocate gestures in the
direction Van der Merwe.  Yesterday afternoon when we were fly into
Cape Town, the General was staring out of the window the plane.  The
sun was setting and he said to me and I hJpe he forgives me my
forwardness he said in this choked-up voice: The politicians have
prostituted the police.  Once I was a proud policeman, but here I am
today humiliated and despised.  My career, to which I dedicated my
entire life with such pride, is ending in this horrible shame and
dishonour.  '

We all know that the ultimate reconciliation should be between
Afrikaner and African," Freedom Front leader (eneral Constand Viljoen
tells the Committee, and this could happen if the Truth Commission does
not vilify the Afrikaner into being worse than we are... It was said by
a very senior member of the ANC that we cannot fight a bush war in
South Africa.  Look at the map it's all developed there are roads,
farms, towns, it's impossible our masses have to serve as our bush the
black community is our bush."

All of us have failed, Viljoen goes on.  We all used violence to get
what we wanted.  The terror of the tyrant invited the terror of the
revolutionary."

Submissions from across the board.  Orgies of alliteration.  In the
press, Afrikaner intellectuals begin pointing out that thanks to
Apartheid the new Government inherited the most sophisticated
infrastructure in Africa.  Thanks to Apartheid political prisoners all
obtained quality degrees while on Robben Island with the result that
the ANC's senior leadership is better qualified than any other
political party on the continent.  Fewer people died under Apartheid
than were killed in Rwanda.  So how bad could Apartheid have been?

The oppressors are weary; the oppressed foam-in-the mouth angry.

This is the theme for a kind of overture but at the time we could not
hear it.  From the beginning of March 1995 the Justice Portfolio
Committee, under the chairmanship of Johnny de Lange, meets daily to
debate the submissions and draft the legislation.  The civil servants,
who physically write the law, sit somewhat apart.  They work late into
the night to have alternative formulations ready for the next day.  If
I personally had to draft this legislation," one of them complains, it
would have been a lean, simple law completed weeks ago.  But because
this has to be a process, it is developing into a hell of a unique, but
impossibly complex law."

As if back into a womb, I crawl the heavy-light eiderdown, the
hot-water bottle.  Through the window I see the sleeping farmyard
washed away in moonlight.  A plover calls far off.  Overcome with the
care freeness of my youth, I doze off safe in this stinkwood bed, safe
in this sandstone house, this part 7 of the Free State.  Everything so
quiet.

Stars roar past the yard..

A sudden sound.  Harsh.  Hendrik kom in!... Hendrik kom in!"

It must be around midnight.

My brother Andries, who lives on another part of the farmj is calling
Hendrik, our younger brother, on the Marnet radio.  The line crackles.
Kom nou!  [Come quickly!] People are stealing cattle ... don't switch
on your lights and bring your rifle!"

The cutting Free State cold forces me deeper into the feather warm bed.
The screen-door of the rondavel slams as A Hendrik leaves and drives
away in his bakkie in the dark.

The radio crackles again: How many?"

Andries: Two and a dog.  They have taken five cows and have just passed
the wind pomp  Do you have bullets?"

I put on my gown.  In the dining room next to the Marnet my parents are
already sitting in sheepskin slippers, each covered with a blanket
nervous and as if pinned down.  I sit next to them.  We do not talk. My
mother brings a blanket for me.  Next to the Marnet we wait.  The night
is suddenly filled with menace.

Andries:'ere are they now?"

UnexpectIly, the voice of Andries's child: Ma says they are at the
esion sloot."

What'sing on?"  I ask.

My mother explains.  Andries's wife Bettie would now be standing on the
roof of their house, from where she has a large part of the farm under
surveillance with a night-vision scope.  Bettie shouts the information
down to the nine-year-old Sumien at the Marnet, and she has to pass it
on to her father in the bakkie.

It's nearly one o'clock.  We wait.

Sumien: Pa .. .?  Pa, come in .. . Ma says they have turned towards the
road, but she can't see you... Where are you?"

Silence.  My parents sit humped up in the grey moonlight their faces
seem carved to pieces.

Sumien: Pa, where are you?  Can you hear me?"  Anxiety in her voice.

Only the silence zooms down the line ... We wait in the dark.

After a quarter of an hour, the radio comes to life.  It's Andries.  He
sounds breathless: We've found one, but the other one got away.  Tell
Ma to get down from the roof and lock the doors."

We wait.  Then we think we hear shots.  Is someone at the gate?  The
dogs bark.  We wait.  Who did the shooting?  Who has been shot?  And
which is worse?  What fierce scenes are being played out in the veld?

The family photo catches my eye.  I look at my smiling, horselkop
brothers.  I remember how Hendrik clutched my mother's arm when she was
paging to the bookmark in the children's Bible.  Please, please don't
read the bit about that guy who wants to cut his child's throat in the
veld."

What are my brothers experiencing tonight that I cannot even imagine?

We wait an eternity.  At last the line finds its voice: Call an
ambulance and tell them to come to the dam."

It is one of my brothers.  But the voice sounds so tense that we cannot
tell who's speaking.  We three are sitting there the moon has lost its
abundance.  We sit each with our own disproportionate thoughts.  My
mother gets up with a tired heaviness.  In the kitchen she makes tea.
My father and I sit without speaking.  I take my tea to my icy bed.  My
eyes dry in the dark.

The idea of a Truth Commission goes back to ANC decisions," Minister of
Justice Dullah Omar says in an interview.  When the National Executive
Committee of the ANC discussed what had happened in the country, and in
particular what happened in ANC training camps like Quatro, there was a
strong feeling that some mechanism must be found to deal with all
violations in a way which would ensure that we put our country on a
sound moral basis.  And so a view developed that what South Afrita
needs is a' mechanism which would open up the truth for public
scrutiny.  But to humanize our society we had to put across the idea of
moral responsibility that is why I suggested a combination of the
amnesty process with the process of victims' stories."

Victims, and not perpetrators, should be the beginning, the focus and
the central point in the legislation, the ANC argues.  Victims should
have several points of entry into the process.  Should losses be
categorized?  So many rand for an arm, so many for a leg and so many
for a life?  Should compensation be available immediately or should the
Government wait for a coherent assessment?

Every discussion opens up new problem areas.  Amnesty takes away the
victim's right to a civil claim.  Does compensation make amnesty
constitutional?  What about the state?  Should the state ask for
amnesty?  Because victims who receive compensation could still decide
to sue the state.

The Democratic Party also wants to shift a date.  Not the cut-off date
like the others, but the starting date of the period the Commissin is
mandated to consider The Commission has an impos,le workload, says Dene
Smuts.  This is the first Truth Commission required to investigate
nearly four decades, and lo look not only at disappearances, as in
Chile,

but at other gross violations such as murder, kidnapping, torture and
severe ill-treatment.  A starting date of 16 June 1976 would not only
shorten he Commission's area of research by sixteen years but would
have symbolic resonance, because it ushered in the famous cycle of
resistance and oppression.

But as possible scenarios are being spelled out and the [ pressure
mounts to finish the legislation so the parties start to work on one
another's nerves.  National Party member Sheila Camerer has the
energetic chairperson collapsing on to his forearms, muttering next to
the microphone: Ag, God help my, the woman is driving me out of my
mind!"  But then she just fluffs her hair to the front and ties it up
with a comb, : swinging her little handbag by its fine golden chain,
leaves the room tips-tips-tips on her toes.  When she returns to her
seat, fresh red lips and fragrant perfume with a range of several
metres, she puts up her hand and demands to continue from the exact
point where the argument broke off before she went to the bathroom.

Between Johnny de Lange and the National Party's Jacko Maree there is
nothing but total war.  The solidly built chairperson with his
working-class Afrikaner background and the skinny-looking Maree with
his bow tie and delicately framed spectacles cannot stand each other. ,
The moment

Maree opens his mouth, the chair's facial colour intensifies a shade.

One morning a. note is sent to the media: Don't leave too soon promise
to provide you with a row and an underhand ANC deal.

That someone has already shouted Fire!"  is clear' the moment the room
suddenly fills up with ANC faces never seen p on the Committee before.
An unexpected extra NP member also appears to lend his weight to the
battle.  The two parties, having amassed their cohorts' in the
Committee Room, are gearing up for a fight.

And it happens.  Mr.  De Lange says members should vote on the shifting
of two other motions to the top of the agenda.  Mr.  Maree interrupts
him.  He would like three minutes to explain his request that the
indemnity given to ANC members by the Currin Commission be discussed
first.  De Lange refuses.  He is interrupted again.  By NP member Danie
Schutte, also asking for time to motivate Maree's request.

De Lange refuses again.  Red in the face by now.  He is the chair, he
says, and this is his ruling.  If Mr.  Maree is rbt satisfied, he can
go and complain to the highest authorities.  As chairperson, he is not
going to allow Mr.  Maree to turn the j Justice Committee into a media
spectacle.  You can make clowns of other people, but not of me, the
Chairperson."  ?

Please, Mr.  Chairman," pleads Inkatha Freedom Party, member Koos van
der Merwe, do not let the poison between' you and Mr.  Maree destroy
the good relations the rest of u have built up over the years.  Can't
you resolve this in other way?"  t

Maree thrashes around in his chair, his hand raised.  In is other hand
he is waving a thick pile of documenks, representing one hundred ANC
members who, he says, wkre stealthily granted indemnity just before
Christmas by the Currin Commission.

De Lange is adamant.  We still have eight draft bills to discuss.  We
argued this agenda last week for more than an hour.  We have accepted
it.  I will allow no discussion.  I am putting

At it to the vote.  Read my lips: I and putting it to the vote.

Whereupon the ANC outvotes the other parties by fifteen to seven.

As Maree storms out, Koos van der Merwe mutters: The heavy hammer of
democracy..."

But the rush to finish the Bill has to take a back seat for a day or
two.

A blink and a wink and it was all over," I report on that afternoon's
current affairs programme.  After weeks of publicity peaking this
morning in a hysteria of upper-class British acnts in the corridors of
Parliament the Queen came, anaw, and left."

As alwrs, the Cape knows when to behave herself.  The

Southeaster meekly calms down, the sweepers sweep up the last bits of
paper, the pupils line the streets and the red carpet bleeds down the
steps.  Inside the Assembly Hall the atmosphere is predominantly that
of... how shall one put it?  dressing up for the Queen.  An opportunity
to show off your traditional dress, your designer contacts and your
gravytrain menu.

Either shiny African-print dresses with puffed-up angel wings for
sleeves, or shimmering Indian robes streaming over the shoulders, or a
traditional beaded apron rounded off by the most massive flesh-coloured
Maidenform bra ever seen in the Houses of Parliament.  One of the
visitors from the Free State seems to be hiding in some purple and gold
shrubbery; another one from Stellenbosch wears a potjie like our own
Johanna van Arkel.  Two Hare Krishnas chant Queen Elizabeth II into the
foyer with stained muslin pockets on their bare breasts.

The men, of course, are wearing traditional male dress: the expensive
woollen suit, the loud tie, the gold-framed glasses and the
indispensable thick neck.  Then they enter.

In front walks the coloured Serjeant-at-Arms carrying 4 Parliament's
golden traditional weapon in his white gloves.

Then follows the black Black Rod yes, for all these years Parliament
had a white Black Rod... but the times they are a-changin' ... The
media have been fighting for weeks for the best seats in 7 the press
gallery.  I stretch my neck.  Blink my eyes.

C an it be true?  She looks like anybody's auntie from P.E., complete
with a clasp handbag from John Orrs and skoentjies from Stuttafords.
Under any other circumstances the brooch on her left shoulder could
only be a fake, but thanks to the blinding shine when she takes the
corner, we know, oh yes we know, it is realer than real.  She clips
open her handbag, takes out her glasses and puts her speech on the
speaker's desk.

She speeches.

Can it be true?  It sounds like something one would find at any
small-town women's society meeting.  Typed out on ordinary notepaper,
one paragraph per page.  With her gloves she battles like other mortals
to fold the pages into dog ears to turn them more easily.

But don't be mistaken, the content may be ordinary, but it is delivered
in the Accent that has intimidated half the eartJi for centuries.  When
last did Parliament hear the phra: doughty champion'?

Then she folds up her speech, puts it in her handbag and off j she
goes.

With bags flying, we ambush a taxi passing the gates of .j Parliament
we' means the editor and myself.

Go!"  shouts the editor.  To the Waterfront, to thee' Britannia!"  We
turn our bags inside out, un down zips' rip open blouses the taxi man
looks panicky.  Dandruff fl yin from his shoulders.

Go!"  I yell.  We meet the Queen in seven minutes."

Warier Queen?"  He sounds sceptical.  I

Princess Di's skoonma, but you must fly."  i

He turns right round in his seat: We are talking about the Queen, the
one with' he touches his head our diamond in her crown?  The one who
wears lead in her seams?"

Yes, yes, yes," I yell in a strangled voice.  But nothing escapes my
op-en-wakker editor: Why lead?"  -!

So that the wind cannot blow her dress above her knees' says the taxi
driver smartly.

He grabs the steering wheel as if possessed.  He has a mission.  He has
a skill.  He wants us to be on time.  We scour bends, we cut corners.
The man with the problematic scalp drives like a demon.

He asks sternly, Why are you late?"

Because," the editor shouts while dialling on her cellphone with one
hand and fastening an earring with the other, we had to report on the
Queen's speech in Parliament, to two hundred news bulletins and in
eleven languages, and now she has invite some journalists for cocktails
on her yacht.

And wat did she say in Parliament?"  he asks.

Nothiij..."  Our le shoot past him in new charcoal pantyhose.

So what did you report?"

In the heap of rubble on the back seat we dig up prehistoric lipsticks,
rouge that needs quarrying with fingernails, mascara brushes clogged
with gravel, empty perfume bottles, buckled bangles and apply them all,
to the tune of howling tyres and a racing engine.

We asked how such mediocrity could stay so luxuriously swaddled.  We
said to live like her you need to plunder your own people for centuries
and thereafter suck half the world dry."

The taxi man races down the jetty and skids to an impressive stop just
behind a group of Solemn Male Political Analysts in Deep Conversation,
fondling their old school ties.

We tumble out.  We have made it.

On the deck of the Britannia our names are called out with the
proverbial imaginary roll of a drum; our ordinary names are treated
with the Accent: Rrrina Smithhh: Afrrilcaans Stereo!"  And one walks up
and puts one's hand in the white glove.  ( And how did it feel?"  my
friends ask afterwards.  I can't remember, my eyes were nailed to the
seam of the Queen's chirpy yellow dress.)

A man walks up to us.  He is the spokesperson for the Palace.  He says
the Queen will move from group to group.  He says we will speak only
when addressed.  He says no one will ask her any questions.  He says we
will obviously not report on this friendly royal gesture.

The gin and tonic is deadly accurate.  Next to the railings I become
drunker and drunker.  A sailor with a lot of golden rope on his
shoulders tells me the problems of sailing the Britannia so that the
Queen could arrive in South Africa twice.  Unofficially by plane, the
first time; then helicoptered to the Britannia for the official arrival
the second coming sailing under a rousing 21 gun salute into the
harbour.  During all this, his moustache never moves.  Not once.

General Constand Viljoen of the Freedom Front requests the Queen to
visit the Women's Memorial in Bloemfontein and to apologize to
Afrikaners for what was done to them in the name of the British.  But
her schedule is already full.

The Justice Portfolio Committee spent six and a half hours on the Truth
Commission Bill before any public submission made.  It listened for
more than twenty hours to submissions and it discussed, compiled and
drafted the various clauses of the Bill in 100 hours and 53 minutes.
Many a time the civill servants turned up at the meeting with red eyes
and wrinkle4 clothes, having worked through the night to prepare a new,
discussion document.  In total, the Committee spent 127 hours and 30
minutes on the Truth Commissioh Bill.

Eventually the legislation to establish the Truth Commission is tabled
in the National Assembly.  Over time it has cariied different
descriptions.  It is regarded as the most sensiive, technically
complex, controversial and important legislation ever to be passed by
Parliament.  It is also called: the Mother of All Laws.  For the
occasion the visitors' gallery is packed with schoolchildren and so the
speculation goes possible, candidates for the Commission.

Just as it did in the Committee, the discussion of the Big!  quickly
turns into an emotional spectacle.  After a sedate plea by the
President not to use the Truth Commission to score political points,
the theme of injustice incites speakers to oratorical heights.

Everybody has a story to tell from Members of Parliament whose houses
were petrol bombed, to friends' children whose fingers were put in a
coffee grinder, to criminals already walking the streets while
right-wingers languish in jail.  Most of the speeches are in Afrikaans.
It is with this group, in this language that they want to wrestle it
out.

A jouipalist from Beeld reminds me: Do you remember that the nalizing
of the legislation by the core committee was done in Jfrikaans?"  I
frown.  It was Johnny de Lange as chair, Willie Ilofmeyr from the ANC,
Dene Smuts of the DP, Koos van der Merwe of the IFP, Danie Schutte for
the NP and Corn6 Mulder for the Freedom Front.  I like it," he says,
those responsible for the past working to rectify it."

It is late afternoon when Johnny de Lange concludes the debate.  What
makes this piece of legislation so unique, he says, is that it really
is a patchwork of all the viewpoints of the country, a real lap pies
kombers.  I can point out a Dene Smuts da use a Danie Schutte clause, a
Lawyers for Human Rights clause, a victim clause, a police clause and
for this all of us should proudly take credit."  All but Jacko Maree,
says De Lange, who only used the Committee discussions to get cheap
publicity.  Then it is time to vote.  Everybody for the legislation
should put their cards in the slot in front of them and push the
button.

Everybody does it.

Something is wrong," says the Speaker.  All cards to be taken out.  Put
back in.

I don't look for trouble, but trouble looks for me," someone shouts.

It seems the electric current that has to register the cards isn't
working.  The Speaker asks members to wait a few minutes.

Madam Speaker," a member laughs into the microphone, I have it on the
highest authority that it is the honourable Jan Momberg who's
responsible for the power failure."  Jan Momberg is also known as Jan
Spoeg..  . Jan Spittle.

After some more waiting, the Speaker asks those members in favour of
the legislation to put up their hands in the oldfashioned way to be
counted those who say yea (African National Congress, National Party
and Pan-Africanist Congress) and those who say nay (Freedom Front). 
The Inkatha Freedom Party abstains from voting.

Then the legislation flails around for some time in the Senate.  "To
prove that they are not mere rubber stamps of the Assembly, the
senators insist on some changes.  They want two non-South Africans on
the Commission, they want blanket amnesty to be discussed.

Through clenched jaws the civil service law-writer hisses:

It's a web of a law a mo erse web.  If you change anything you have to
change every single clause."

It is Dullah Omar's task to get the legislation passed by the Senate.
When a coloured National Party member tells how he was tortured and
hung upside down by the security police, ANC members shout him down.
Crying, he relates how he was repeatedly thrown on the cement floor.
Amid raucous laughter an ANC member shouts, That's where you got your
brain damage from."

Omar stands up.  We can make a distinction among perpetrators, but I
hope this law will teach us all that we cannot make any distinction
among victims."

At last the legislation finds its waj to the Department of Justice in
the Plein Street Building previously known as the Verwoerd Building.  A
building where most of the civil servants are white and speak
Afrikaans.  And those blonde ones with the orange-peel nails you can't
find better secretaries, a Deputy Minister confides it is they who
process the legislation.  And it is the middle-aged Afrikaner men with
their slumping shoulders, making bitter jokes in the lifts ... See you
later?"  Ja, God and the Constitution willing'.."  who get it to the
Minister, the President and the Printers.

The Truth Commission Bill was signed into law by President Nelson
Mandela on 19 July 1995.

They come for breakfast my two brothers.  Laugh, talk, eat, and dismiss
the night before as just another normal night.  Their politics,.  I
notice, are still moderate National Party.

Who fired the shots?"  I ask.  But I know Andries is one of the best
shots in the district.

They explain.  Every week before full moon and every week afterwards,
they patrol the farm.  Since the 1994 election they have caught m4ire
thieves than the whole stock-theft unit of the Kroonstad7police.
Andries usually drives the bakkie.

Hendrik stands at the back with the spotlight.  The moment they see the
thieves they switch on the light.

Then we shout: Staan of ons ski et  [ Stop or we'll shoot!   Or
something in Sesotho," says Andries.  But at this point you are full of
sickening fears.  The greatest fear is that the thief is armed; that he
will shoot unexpectedly; then you also fear the moment they decide to
split and one runs for the farmhouse and the other to loot.  Most of
the time they don't stop when you warn them."

It is quiet in the dining room.  But the moment they run away .. . it
is then that I am overcome by an indescribable cold fury... He who is
trespassing and breaking the law by running away, forcing me to shoot
him.."  he is forcing me to point a gun at another human being and to
pull the trigger... and I hate him for that.

First I try to shoot into the ground next to him.  If he's close to a
mealie patch where I won't be able to find him, I try to wound him in
the legs... all the time petrified that I might kill him and then have
to live With it, deal with it for the rest of my bloody life..."

Hendrik adds: But the worst is that they don't think Andries is
deliberately trying to miss them; several of them told us that Andries
couldn't hit them because their muti was too strong!"

What do the police say?"

Man, the moment the police come, all is well for them... they go to the
police station, tomorrow they get bail..  . Most of the time they get a
suspended sentence.  You leave the court together.  Or on your way
home, you pass them on the road.  I told the magistrate it is not the
value of the things they steal, it is the value of my life they steal,
the value of my farm, the value of my future plans, the value of my
peace of mind..."

In one of the first Afrikaans novels written by a black man, two black
vagabonds murder a Jewish shop owner.  When someone squeals on the
murderers, the main character condemns the splitter.  I drive up to
interview the author, all the way to the platteland.

Why does your main character condemn the splitter and not the
murderers?"

Because black people must always stick together."

But the woman who saw a white man running away from Chris Hani's dead
body didn't say, He was white, so I'll shut up.  She said, The deed is
wrong, so I'll speak out.  '

He looks at me.  No one can destroy whites they have survival, in their
bones.  But for us, if we don't stand together no matter what, we'll be
wiped out."

Hendrik touches the knuckles of his right hand lightly.  are swollen.
Do you hit them?"  I ask, numb.

Hendrik nods.  At some stage we realized we were catching the same
thieves over and over again and we thought we h4 to do something, so
that if they want to steal, they'll decide to steal on any other farm
except this one."

My brothers tell me that stock theft on the farm has increased fivefold
since the election.

Later that morning a black policeman arrives to buy a sheep.  As he
peels off the notes, my father asks: You are paying for this sheep, but
other people of the township prefer to come and steal one.  Why do you
want to pay for it?"

Because this sheep is for a funeral, and if it's stolen the forefathers
would be very unhappy.".

How long will you be able to take this?"  I ask Andries.

My brother shakes his head.  I don't know.  I become aware of things in
myself that I never knew were in me... Like what?"

Like feeling daily how my family and I become brutalized like knowing
that I am able to kill someone with my bare hands... I am learning to
fight, to kill, to hate.  And we have nowhere to turn.  Some years ago
we could pick up the phone and talk to the highest power in the
country.  Now my home town is run by a guy whose name I can't even
pronounce."

Ja, but i was always like that for millions of black people."

Exactly... I thought what was coming was a new dispensati4 for all...
what I see now is that the brutalization of ordinalry people that was
previously confined to the townships is not disappearing, but instead
spilling over the rest of the country."  He stops, but then flings it
out: When Mandela was talking about white and black morality, how
whites only care when whites die, he should have added: blacks don't
care if whites die.."  but what is worse, they also don't care if
blacks die."

My last free weekend before the Truth Commission starts its hearings in
the Eastern Cape.  Mondli Shabalala picks me up on the farm on his way
to Johannesburg.  Mondli is a colleague of mine at the SABC.

Mondli, Moshoeshoe's name means He who can steal as swiftly and
silently as cutting someone's beard .  How can the deftness of stealing
be a mark of honour?  Why did Dingane ask Relief to steal back the
cattle stolen by Sekonyela?  Why would Mandela write in his biography
about the cattle he and his cousin stole from his uncle?  Do we
understand the same thing when we talk about stealing?"

Mondli is silent for a long time.  Then he says, I don't know.  But
what I do know is that I grew up with the notion that stealing from
whites is actually not stealing.  Way back, Africans had no concept of
stealing other than taking cattle as a means of contesting power.  But
you whiteys came and accused us of stealing while at that very same
minute you were stealing everything from us!"

I remember how my parents and I sat the whole Sunday behind closed
doors.  How we stopped talking when the dogs barked.  They prefer to
come on Sundays..  . when they think you are in church," my mother
said.  Later, when I left for Johannesburg, I looked back to wave and I
saw them standing in front of the sandstone house of my youth.  And as
we drove out, my father locked the gate and turned the dogs loose.

NONE MORE PARTED THAN Ut

A WORKSHOP IS organized for journalists who covering the Truth
Commission and their immediate We are surrounded by German, Dutch and
lean journalists especially.  More conspicuous even: only two lack
journalists one from radio and one from the Sc Flow are we to
understand the absence of black journalists at everything related to
the Truth Commission?

During the standard I-am-so-and-so' introductory session, a German
journalist says: I think that South Africa is still too traumatized to
really look at its past you are still figuring out whether you have
survived it, whether your economy is in tat whether you are going to
make it."  As we go along, it becoies clear that overseas journalists
are only interested in be amnesty seekers and whether there will be
imporint politicians among them.

Various topics are discussed: Why should the Commission be reported?
How will emotional exhaustion be prevented?  How can viewers, listeners
and readers be involved?  Should Truth Commission stories be confined
to a special page?  Won't people just skip over this section?  How can
we see to it that the past becomes front-page news?  No newspaper has
the means to employ a full-time journalist to cover the Commission will
television be able to broadcast the hearings daily s that people can
follow them from their offices?

WhAt is the role of radio with its access to all the language grou and
impoverished communities?  What about langu[ge?  Do all eleven official
languages have the words needed to cover the Commission?  A
Zulu-speaking colleague loses his temper: Of course!  And if the words
aren't there, we'll make them up."  Make them up?  He provides a
list:

hit squad: abasocongi neck-twisters massacre: isibbicongo crushed down
serial killer: umbulali one qungu addicted killer politics: ezombusazwe
matters about the ruling of the land right-winger: untamo-lukbuni
stiff-necked third force: ingal'enoboya a hairy arm ambush: la lela
unyendale lying down waiting to do an evil act

Hairy arm?"  I ask.

During third force activities," he explains, people said a cuff
sometimes moved too high up, and the exposed arm was always hairy that
means belonging to a white man."

The discussions and sessions are clean and neat and under control.

By late afternoon we are discussing how you keep your own past out of
your reporting.  The journalist from the Sowetan stands up: My
newspaper's position is that it has actually always done TRC-type
stories and will not make any special effort now to cover the
Commission."

Willem Pretorius of Beeld is on his feet.  In the army I was sent to
cut off Radio Freedom's cables and take them off the air.  What does
that make me?  Can I... or can I not report on the Truth Commission?"

It is suddenly very quiet.  After a day of journalistic cliches, we've
struck an artery.

I was a political journalist at the old SABC it was I who would remove
the voice of someone like Archbishop Tutu from reports and insert
sinister background music," says an ex-South African who now works in
America.  I was eventually fired for my left-wing political views..  .
what does that make me?"

A well-known English-speaking editor gets up with a sigh.

Rhweallly.  This is sooo unnecessary.  We have worked for years and
years to get the Afrikaner on board.  And now we are working on the
black editors... Experience has taught me that this kind of talk gets
one nowhere.  Nowhere at tall

Someone struggles up behind me.  It's veteran journalist Hennie
Serfontein, holding the microphone, beard and hans shaking so much I'm
afraid he's having a heart attack.  He stutters and gasps, Everyone
here is putting their past on the j table, but you.."  your.."
getting-on-board!"  he shouts.  My God, julie gel se whose bled die
board?"  Hennie is on roll, taking on the English press: dates,
incidents, how information was changed by specific editors, how
headlineW1' were manipulated to suit the politics of the' Nationalist
rukerss He has the date, he has the qames of the white Engisl speaking
editors and businessmen who went to see P.W. Botha with a blank cheque
and said: Demand of us what yu will, but protect our interests.

Some journalists jump up and protest that they weren't even born yet
when this happened, others loudly encour!ige Hennie.  A black
journalist walks out: the Anglo-Boer War all over again.  The workshop
ends in chaos.  Only the adjournment for drinks and snacks restores
some semblance of respectability.

On the way back from the workshop my mind is swirling.  Waiting at some
traffic lights, I see a group of workers protesting outside an old-age
home.  Their strike action was frontpage news this morning.  One of
them carries a placard: Away with Jews.

Is it possible that a Commission could find itself clinging to a
morality that is respected nowhere else in the country?

And the idea of truth.  Even if it's not spelt with a capital... Nadine
Gordimer once asked a black writer: Why do you always picture a white
woman lounging next to a swimming pool?  WeA are not all like that!" He
replied: Because we perceive u like that."  Gordimer admits that she
has to take cognizan4I of that truth.

One morning, when I was still a lecturer at a training college for
black teachers, a young comrade arrived.  He refused to enter my class.
He called Afrikaans a colonial language.  What is English then?"  I
asked.  English was born in the centre of Africa," he said with great
conviction.  It was brought here by Umkhonto we Sizwe."  That was his
truth.  And I, as his teacher, had to deal with this truth that was
shaping his life, his viewpoints, his actions.

Will a Commission be sensitive to the word truth'?

If its interest in truth is linked only to amnesty and compensation,
then it will have chosen not truth, but justice.  If it sees truth as
the widest possible compilation of people's perceptions, stories, myths
and experiences, it will have chosen to restore memory and foster a new
humanity, and perhaps that is justice in its deepest sense.

According to the law, the President must appoint the seventeen wise men
and women who will serve on the Commission in consultation with the
Cabinet.  The Commissioners must be highly regarded in the community
and must not have, a high political profile.

There are various ways of proceeding, each likely to bring new names to
the fore.  Firstly, the President could compile his own list and then
discuss it with Cabinet.  Secondly, the President and Cabinet could
compile a list together bringing in the obvious danger of political
horse-trading.  Thirdly, candidates could be nominated by NGOs,
churches and parties, and interviewed in public by a panel.  Then the
President and Cabinet could choose from a shortlist put before them. 
The advantage of the last option is that political participation would
be minimal, and there would be little opportunity to plant someone
tasked with undermining the work of the Commission.  Public hearings
would also rekindle interest in the Commission, which has died down as
the drafting of the legislation turned into a political fight.

The third option is chosen.

The President appoints a panel which includes Professor

Fink Haysom, Jody Kollapen, Jayendra Naidoo, Baleka Kgositsile,
Professor Harriet Ngubane, Senator Rossier de Ville and Bishop Peter
Storey.

The public hearings start on the morning of 13 November in the Good
Hope Centre in Cape Town.  There are forty-six nominations on the list.
The first to appear are Professkr H.W. van der Merwe, Glenda Wildschut,
Dominee Murray Coetzee and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.  j

The questions follow a set pattern.  What kind of people j should serve
on the Commission?  What kind of contribution1 can the candidate bring
to the process of reconciliation an4', truth?  I'm looking for someone
who paid a price for beliefs," says panel member Peter Story, the
Methodically

But it I Bishop.  is Archbishop Desmond Tutu who has the pa eating out
of his hand within moments.

What should one call you?"  asks Professor Ngubaie.

Wouldn't people find you intimidag... here I am altl I don't know
whether I should say Your Highness , or

Father or Bishop ..."

You can call me anything as long as you don't call me

Your Graciousness ," he laughs.  No, I don't think I intimidate people,
I hope they think I'm fun."

What kind of people would he like to see on the Commission?

People who once were victims.  The most forgiving people I have ever
come across are people who have suffered it is as if suffering has
ripped them open into empathy.  I am talking about wounded healers.  A
Commissioner should be buttressed by spiritual life."

Tutu is asked to react to a remark made by General Tieaie Groenewald: I
confess to God, not to Tutu.  long, if you've had a fight with your
wife, it is no use you only ask forgiveness of God.  You will have to
say to your wife you are sorry.  The past has not only contaminated our
relationslp with God, but the relationship between people as well. Anou
will have to ask forgiveness of the representatives of these
communities that you've hurt."

Most of the candidates are clearly conscious that they may face
political pressure and that they will be walking a tightrope between
victims and perpetrators.  Van der Merwe says that punishment is an
inherent part of the moral and legal codes of this country and perhaps
one should regard the transparent and open process of the Commission as
already a kind of punitive method.  If Magnus Malan, our former
Minister of Defence, says that he feels humiliated after being charged
in court for a massacre in KwaZulu-Natal, that is already a form of
retribution.

All the women are asked whether they feel that There should be women on
the Commission.  No man is asked whether he feels there should be women
on the Commission.  Nobody is asked whether they feel.  there should be
men on the Commission.

Glenda Wildschut says people should feel comfortable when they appear
before the Commission.  If a woman had to appear before men only, or a
black person before whites only, then people would not feel at ease.
How the Commission is going to listen to people will determine how
acceptable it will be to the majority.

Mary Burton says the beneficiaries of the past system will only be
prepared to contribute to comPensation if they experience a complete
change of heart, and that can only happen when people have information
about the past.  Hlengiwe Mkhize reminds the panel that African culture
has its own rituals of reconciliation and needn't depend solely on the
Christian terminology of confession and forgiveness.  Another candidate
talks about the il ala a grass blade milked for palm wine.  When two
people have had a fight, they sit opposite each other milking this
blade while they confess.

The emptier the blade becomes, the emptier the heart of anger."  He
also mentions obobeyse', a ritual performed by the family on the
hospital bed where a loved one has died.

Will you be able to bring right-wing Afrikaners on board?"  Advocate
Chris de Jager is asked.

Don't appoint me to the Commission as a token Afrikaner," De Jager
says.  And if this Commission becomes a witch-hunt, I want to warn you
beforehand I'm a pathetic hunter."

Alex Boraine underlines the importance of effective administration.  If
the three committees, the staff, the publicity, the financial
administration do not function efficiently, the Commission need not
even start its work.  It will not qily become an international
embarrassment but the victims will be failed once more.  The Commission
will have to find its way,) in uncharted territory.  He also warns
against having toq many theologians on the Commission It could end up
as the Church Commission."

Deal carefully with the concept of collective guilt, sa4 Professor Jaap
du Randt.  People must ralize: there But for the grace of God go I. One
person's vigorous search for trh is the other's witch-hunt.

Considering the enormous task ahead, it is clear that A Small's
ambivalent rambling is not appreciated by the pei:

I am a man of two hearts and not of this world.  This 1truth Commission
thing is useless it wastes hard-earned money to listen to a bunch of
crooks.  Only literature can perform the miracle of reconciliation."

After three-quarters of an hour in this vein, Fink Haysom asks: But you
are so critical do you want to serve on thi Commission?"  independe4'

If there is space on the Commission for an critical, stubborn,
sometimes naughty voice then I will be there with my heart but I will
always remain critical."

Most of the candidates say they were initially opposed to the
Commission, but that the long court case of Vlakplaas commander Eugene
de Kock changed their minds.  They realized that a Commission could
provide more answers to more people at a lower cost and arrive at a
fuller picture of what happened in the past as a bonus.

The las of the forty-six candidates is Reverend Frank Chikan4

The Truth Commission should bring a new morality to this country...
People demanding punitive justice are ignoring the greater justice a
new morality could bring a shared morality freed from colonialism,
oppression and greed..."

Simultaneously, the bleepers hooked to our belts start to vibrate
viciously.  We press the buttons: PIs phn Edtr.  Manelisi leaves the
room to phone.  When he gets back he passes me a note: Editor says we
must leave for Pretoria immediately, otherwise we'll be late for the
Mandela dinner.

But we're waiting for the litmus test.  It has developed gradually over
three weeks of interviewing.  An aspiring Commissioner is asked: What
will you do if you discover information that concerns the highest
positions in the new Government?  Most candidates answer that the
stability of the Government of National Unity is important for the
survival of everybody.  South Africa's democracy is young and fragile.
One would treat such sensitive information with care.

But we have to go.  We switch off our machines.  We try to pull our
equipment unobtrusively across the table towards us.  We see Chikane's
eyes following the two microphones gliding in pas de deux to his left,
toppling from the table into our laps.  We pack up we roll up metres of
cable.  Our bleepers urge: Get to Pta NOW.

Manelisi holds up his finger.  Here it comes.  The litmus test.  And
Chilcane says: I believe unequivocally that all information needs to be
treated in the same manner.  Whether it touches the highest trees or
the most ordinary shrubs.  Should we treat information about important
politicians differently to that about ordinary people, we immediately
create a new injustice as bad as the previous one.

We leave.  Outside the hotel it is Johannesburg, it is Friday, it is
five o'clock and it is raining.

In the car we send through our reports.  The car windows steam up.  We
drive.  We work.  The cellphone rings.  It's Radio Tswana.  With his
feet on the petrol and brakes, Manelisi does a Question and Answer'
about the prospective Truth Commissioners.  I hold the wheel.  We
experience in symbiosis the dodging of cars.  A close shave manifests
only in Manelisi's intonation: The candidate said that the Commission
should bring a .. . (his voice suddenly revving from his tummy) nnneww!
(swerving) morality."  We clean the windows with our notes, with our
socks.

I do a Q n A with Radio Lotus from Durban, then PM Live on SAFM.  We
open some windows we get soaked, we driv, we work.  A

The cellphone rings: I'm hearing you on the radio where the fuck are
you?  All of us are waiting outside the j presidential gates."  j

The boss.  I give the phone to Manelisi.  I do the gears, he does the
explanation.  We don't know.."  it's raining, we can't see anything,
but we must be close to Pretoria."

I'

We calculate.  It's ten to six.  He has to iron his shirt.  We are not
going to make it.

Radio Xhosa phones, Radio Lesedi waits on the line, pass an accident
sirens and red light splashed on wet pavement.  While the queue of cars
slowly crawls ahead, I move across the gears, Manelisi slips underneath
and I am behind he wheel, foot on the gas.  Sweat and rain covering
us... he!e's the Voortrekker Monument... Unisa... Six o'clock the
cellphone rings.

We're in Kerkstraat."

Okay, we are on the steps here.  Parks is waiting for us.  We'll go
in.. . don't dress up, just come, so that we can all be seated by ten
past."  I

Against all odds, we find ourselves in front of the gates of President
Mandela's official residence the house with the name that whites cannot
remember."  The guards stop us.  We open the window and explain in four
different languages who we are.  They let us through.  We speed up to
the house in lanes of water and stop neatly in the last parking spot.
We jump out.  We open the boot and grab our clothes.  I open the back
door and, in the pouring rain, unfasten my belt.  Manelisi's Tshirt is
halfway over his head when:

Wait... WAIT!  You.  cannot.  You, cannot undress here the wholeAhouse
overlooks the parking lot."  It's the guard.

Just go dper juto the garden," he begs.

We tak our clothes and stumble down some steps into the wet, muddy,
dark garden, while our bleepers go berserk.

Time to strategize," says Manelisi.  It's dusk, and a faint drizzle is
falling.  The ground is wet, everywhere there are pools of water and
mud.  I clasp my clothes together while I take off my tackies and
jeans.  I put them on the wet ground.  I put my clothes on top.
Manelisi does the same.  I pull on stockings and shoes, and just when
I'm busy washing under my arms with water dripping from the leaves, we
hear voices.  A flashlight falls on Manelisi in his red underpants,
leaning slightly forward, shaking out his shirt.  Absolute silence
follows.  The frozen moment is loudly broken by Maneisi.  As if he is
the President himself, he lifts his hands in annoyance:

Hey guys, please.  People are dressing here.  Respect our privacy."

Upon which the guards obediently switch off the flashlight, make an
about-turn and march away.  Nine minutes past six.  We run up the steps
to Mahlambandlopvu' and slip into the queue just in time to greet the
President.  Our boss glows.  It's wonderful that you are here."  She
hands me a tissue to wipe my lenses and asks the doorman if Manelisi
can nip out quickly to scrape some mud from his shoes.

In November, a shortlist of twenty-five names is submitted to the
President.  The list produces a lot of speculation behind the scenes.
It's said that, with one or two exceptions, the cream of the people
with a human rights profile have already been taken up into the ranks
of the ANC Government and its various commissions.

Many of the names on the list are unknown to the majority of South
Africans.  Some of them will remain unknown until the end of the
process.

But before the final list can be compiled, the panel and the President
have to clarify several things.  Should a victim of gross human rights
violations serve on the Commission?  What about someone like Father
Michael Lapsley?  How impartial can a person be who has lost both hands
in a bomb attack?  Would black victims identify with a white victim?

Moreover, should people on the list be representative of a type of
morality, or do they need to represent gender, politics, race,
province, language and so forth?  To put it another way: which
Afrikaners will be on the Commission?  Those who paid a price in the
past for their stance against Aparthe4l or those who can now draw in
the support of the National tarty and right-wingers?  And how can a
former right-wing Afrikaner take moral decisions about people whose
sentiments he shared?

Which black people will serve on the Commission?  H does one
differentiate between people who got involved in struggle because they
were against the inhuman system jbf Apartheid and those who got
involved because they wanted the same material comforts as whites?  How
many black peoplejvill have the courage to take up a critical public
stance toward the new Government?  Should the Muslim as well as the
J-Indu religions be represented, and what about the Cape Muslis?

It's difficult to gauge exactly what the panel was thijiking when they
drew up the shortlist.  Two additions, tugh, show how the wind is
blowing.  Reverend Khoza Mgojo was added to give better representation
to KwaZulu-Natal.  Advocate Denzil Potgieter was added because of
apparent unhappiness over the absence of coloured people on the list.
What about Glenda Wildschut, she's coloured isn't she?  Yes, yes, but
everybody knows people' means men'.  I

The rest of the list one could more or less have predicted.  The
Afrikaners are Wynand Malan and Advocate Chris de Jager.  The English
Commissioners are Alex Boraine, Mary Burton, Wendy Orr and Richard
Lyster, and the Indians Dr.  Faizel Randera and Yasmin Sooka.  The
black Commissioners can be divided into two groups: those who will
eventually be referred to as the Nguni Bloc or Black Caucus Duniisa
Ntsebeza and Bongani Finca and the women, Mapule Ramashala,
HlengiweMkhize and Sisi Khampepe.

This fn en is Tutu's team.

And illy have nothing to start off with.  Not a chair, not a telephone,
not a budget.  Just a law.

The speed with which the Commission gets on its feet is watched with
envious eyes.  A Government spokesperson confides: The Truth Commission
is the ideal for all of us.  Within a few months it set up four
offices, its internal communication is astonishingly up-and-running,
the publicity it generates is better than textbook-perfect, it doesn't
let itself be paralysed neither by bureaucratic red tape, nor by the
Government or any political party.  Everyone knows that they are
navigating a tight financial ship.  They have no budget for alcoholic
refreshments.  They work on a contract basis.  They evaluate their own
activities and their personnel.  The Commission is an example of how
things can be done."

On the insistence of Archbishop Tutu, the Commissioners gather at the
end of January 1996 for a retreat under the guidance of Father Francis
Cull, Tutu's personal spiritual adviser.

What lies ahead is a very difficult task.  They have been called to do
something for the whole of South Africa and, of course, one feels
inadequate to deal with an immense job like this," says Cull.  He
explains how Commissioners will not be allowed to talk during the
retreat, even during mealtimes.  In the military sense, a retreat is a
time when you withdraw in order to regroup and recoup.  So, in a
religious, spiritual sense it is a time when you go into a place of
solitude and silence, where you can be still and where you can come to
terms with your inner journey.  Where you can concentrate and focus on
your own resources and the task ahead."

Through the luxury suburb of Bishopscourt, I follow the directions to
the house of the Archbishop, for the Truth Commission's first photo
call  Even though a radio journalist cannot do much with a photograph,
the chance to look around the official residence of an Archbishop is
too good to pass up.  Guards block the way, there are dogs and demands
for ID books, because the first death threats have already been made
against some Commissioners.

But as you take the garden path, seamed with shoulder-high hortensias,
up to the big house, you get a feeling of transition of transformation
of the have-nots occupying the world of the haves.  It's a densely
overgrown property, rich with trees and plants.  But you can tell
immediately: whatever is growing was planted long ago.  No fine garden,
no expanse of lawi cut a little here, trim a little there, and that's
it.  You arrive in a courtyard that leads to the main house, the
offices and other I buildings.  Three children splash around in a half
-empty , fountain.  Several families are obviously living in the out-I
buildings on the extensive property.

We journalists are taken to the dining room.  A gig anti4 elaborate
table with carved chairs.  On the wall haigs skewish tapestry, woven
with lpve for the Archbishop by 4e women of Boitumelo.  The study has
heavy timber bookcas from floor to ceiling, partly filled with row upon
row of leather-bound volumes.  On other shelves.  lie stacks of aler
native magazines, church pamphlets and theological w#rks out of Africa
which could only have been printed on focal presses.  A series of
gold-framed portraits of previous pink and-chubby archbishops hangs
next to home-made presents and badly taken photographs, testimony to
the first black archbishop's lifetime of service to people once
neglected and' now eternally grateful.  A handmade cross rests against
the, wall Jesus looking more like an amnesty seeker than victim.

While we wait, a colleague tells us this story.  When Tutu comes to
preach in Namaqualand he says it's so hot, it's always hot on a Sunday.
And when the service is finished, Tutu comes to my grandmother's house
to lie there under the tree she has such a dense, shady tree.  And then
for the next week the people talk of nothing else but that holy man.."
the Lord's chosen one .  who lies under a tree just like an ordinary
man.

The dr opens and the seventeen Commissioners walk in.  The meAia
suddenly goes wild.  It pops and flashes.  Photogrhers elbow each other
out of the way, the TV crew begs pee,le not to crowd the camera angle.
Somebody trips over my recording equipment with a tooth-shattering
kiap.  While the Commissioners are still busy seating themselves, a
journalist calls out: When is your first hearing?"

But something else is happening.  Absolutely focused, they seat
themselves and Tutu bows his head and starts to pray: That we may have
the strength to listen to the whispers of the abandoned, the pleas of
those afraid, the anguish of those without hope."  Whereas at their
first gathering the Commissioners looked either shy or too pleased with
themselves, now there is a purposeful ness in their bearing that
suddenly has nothing to do with religion or group representation.  This
is just a photo call Tutu says, because the newspapers asked for a
head-and-shoulders shot of each Commissioner.  After that you may
leave.

With just two weeks to go to the first hearings, challenges are
launched against the Truth Commission legislation on constitutional
grounds.  Earlier in the month, police general Johan van der Merwe has
said that refusing amnesty would be unconstitutional.  The Interim
Constitution clearly states that there will be amnesty.  Hot on his
heels are the families of Steve Biko, and Griffiths and Victoria
Mxenge.  They say that amnesty will take away the right of the ordinary
citizen to a civil claim.  During the first months of its life, the
Commission is constantly in court trying to clear up certain aspects of
the legislation.

At a media conference, Deputy Chairperson Alex Boraine says: The
Commission has encountered opposition from day one chiefly from the
right wing.  The head of the Investigative Unit, Dumisa Ntsebeza, says:
Steve Biko's death happened almost twenty years ago, it was not the
Commission that stopped the families from going to court.  Moreover,
Biko's family accepted an out-of-court settlement in which they
received R65 000.  According to Tutu, all the narratives around the
Commission are important; he insists that families have the right to
strive for justice.  But the Commission has a far greater task, he
says, which is to listen to the unknown victims those who have never
received any attention from the authorities or the media and to provide
a forum for the exposure of their experiences'.

Suddenly people seem to find the idea of amnesty repugnant.  And Tutu
is the one who has to please explain: W did not decide on amnesty.  The
political parties decid on amnesty.  Amnesty made our election
possible.  The amnes clause was inserted in the early hours of the
morning after a exhausted night of negotiating.  The last thing, the
Lift sentence, the last clause was added: amnesty shall be granted
through a process of reconciliation.  And it was only when that was put
in, that the boere signed the negotiatic1s, opening the door to our
election."  Tutu Iepeats this stoty ip all the languages he can
muster..

According to Johnny de Langes, the legislation 1was carefully checked
by constitutional experts, and he has no doubt that it falls within the
framework of the Constitt*ion.

Meanwhile, the Mxenge family announce that they f II sue security
police assassin Dirk Coetzee for one million rand.  Says Coetzee: I am
back in the country for six years already.  It is strange that for all
these years they have not charged me, but now that I am asking for
amnesty, they have a problem.  And this after I was prepared to testify
for them in 1992 in a civil case against the old Government."

Do you have a million rand?"  I ask.  I

No, I do not even have a million cent, I have nothing... I have lost
everything.  I live in a rented house, with furniture that I got from
my parents; I drive my mother-in-law's car."

A Commission for Truth?  Long before the idea took shape in Parliament,
it was discussed at two conferences, both organized by Dr.  Alex
Boraine.  The first one took place at the Lord Charles Somerset Hotel
in the Strand early in 1994.  Highlyjsceptical, I found a place at the
back of the hall.  The only images of righteousness I had to go by were
of German geriatcs with kieries and cancer in overseas docks.  What
woukbe the effect of a manacled P.W. Botha, stripped of his little hat
and forefinger, on his way to long-term imprisonment, other than
astonishment that anyone could regard this as the final proof of
justice.

But immediately I'm ashamed.  Of course crimes against humanity should
be punished.

It takes the Chilean philosopher and activist Jose Zalaquett, who
served on the Chilean Truth Commission, precisely seven and a half
minutes to convert me to the idea.  The Nuremberg and Tokyo trials
could only work the way they did because the guilty lost their
political power and their guns.  Their defeat was complete and the
conquerors needed only to wrestle with their own sense of justice.  But
in Chile, as in South Africa, the overthrown regime is part of the new
Government and still has enough power to obstruct the inquests into any
abuses or to start a new civil war.

Ideological purists, says Zalaquett and every sentence he utters could
serve as a maxim maintain that it's better to suffer longer under a
tyranny when there is hope for a politically purer outcome than to
progress by messy compromises.

One cannot expect morality from politicians, but one can hold them to
the ethics of accountability.

A policy that wants to make a difference has to prevent a repetition of
past abuses and compensate for what has happened where possible.

It will sometimes be necessary to choose between truth and justice.  We
should choose truth, he says.  Truth does not bring back the dead, but
releases them from silence.

A community should not wipe out a part of its past, because it leaves a
vacuum that will be filled by lies and contradictory, confusing
accounts of what happened.

Perpetrators need to acknowledge the wrong they did.  Why?  It creates
a communal starting point.  To make a clean break from the past, a
moral beacon needs to be established between the past and the future.

The most important lesson the struggle taught me and my friends is that
no one is endowed with remarkable courage.  But courage is another name
for learning to live with your fears.  Now, after eighteen years and
the Chilean Truth Commission, courage has again evolved a new
definition: the guts not to give in to easy justice.  To live within
the confinements of reality, but to search day after day for the
progressing of one's most cherished values.  Merciless. Accountable."

Identity is memory, says Zalaquett.  Identities forged out
half-remembered things or false memories easily commit
transgressions.

Revolution has always been the liberation only of the elite!  says
Dimitrina Petrova of Bulgaria.  We as intellectuals refused to touch
the files of the Bulgarian security police.  These were not even
written with the pedantic logic of the Germans!  The files exposed only
the shallo*, slovenly, puAy souls of those who wrote them.  Those files
never contained the great narrative of Bulgaria."

Everybody seems excited about the presence of the Polis& philosopher
Adam Mischnik.  He quotes Jurgen Habermas Collective guilt does not
exist.  Whoever is guilty will have answer individually.  At the same
time there is such a thing as collective responsibility for a mental
and cultural context which makes crimes against humanity possible.  One
should be aware of the fact that traditions are ambivalent and that one
should stay critical about traditions and be very clear what should be
continued.  The violations in Germany should have the effect that a
specific mistrust exists about German tradition and cultural contexts.
Like Germany, South Africa will always need to question its mentality,
while communities with a stronger democratic culture need not do it so
often.

Here in South Africa it's reconciliation with a gun against your head.
You choose negotiations when you choose the logic of peace.  But the
moment you get up from the negotiation table, you have to defend your
erstwhile enemy he is now your partner.  He becomes your political and
moral burden."  Mischnik warns: "If you look for a scapegoat, and you
find on and you make him the devil... then you yourself become
thengel..."andhenyouwakeup ... lost,"themterpretersays tentatively.,

But Mischnik nods his head vigorously.

Kader Asmal quotes Alexander Solzhenitsyn: By not dealing with past
human rights violations, we are not simply protecting the perpetrators'
trivial old age; we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from
beneath new generations.

BEREAVED AND DUMB, THE HIGHS

SOUTHERN AIR SUCCUMBS

TENSION IS PLAIN to see in the faces and body language f all the
Commissioners.  Archbishop Tutu is contitIuar rubbing his right hand,
several pairs of shoulders are ten sly set, their faces look tired and
drawn beneath two big Soth African flags and Truth Commission banners.
The city haM of East London is packed from wall to wall.  Even in the
gal lies people are sitting on the steps.

Last night, the Archbishop says, he had butterflies iA his stomach: We
were aware from the beginning that the Commission could go terribly and
horribly wrong.  But this first victims' hearing is the making or
breaking of the Commission."

So what are your worst fears?"

He laughs nervously.  Silly things, like the microphones net working,
security problems.."  or terrible things like victims not showing up or
violence breaking out."

Commissioner Bongani Finca starts with the well-known Xhosa hymn:
Lizalise id inga Iakho.  The forgiveness of sins makes a person whole."
As the song carries, the victims file into the hall and take their
seats at the front.  Through ritual they are physically separated from
the rest of the audience.

Archbishop Tutu prays.  But untypically he sounds as if he is praying
from a piece of paper: We long to put behind us the pain an division of
Apartheid, together with all the violence which r aged our communities
in its name.  And so we ask you to less this Truth and Reconciliation
Commission with your wisdom and guidance as a body which seeks to
redress the wounds in the minds and the bodies of those who
suffered."

Everyone stands with their heads bowed while the names of the deceased
and disappeared who will come under the spotlight today are read out. A
big white candle emblazoned with a red cross is lit.  Then all the
Commissioners go over to the row of victims to greet and welcome them,
while the audience stays standing.

But the journalists in the media room are hardly aware of this
consecration of space.  Frantic shouting accompanies the attempts to
tune in TV monitors, establish clear sound reception and set up laptop
computers.  Radio has its own small room.  We have a whole newly
appointed team, which has to cover the event in all eleven official
languages.  Today's hearings will be broadcast live, after an hour-long
programme on the meaning of the legislation, the origin of amnesty, the
workings of the Commission and an interview with the Minister of
Justice, who sanctioned the legislation.  Somewhere in a corner,
foreign journalists are being briefed on the history of the Eastern
Cape, how to pronounce Qaqawuli' and Mxenge', who the Cradock Four and
the Pebco Three were.  Like people possessed they take down notes.  The
locals watch them from a distance.

To seize the surge of language by its soft, bare skull

Beloved, do not die.  Do not dare die!  I, the survivor, I wrap you in
words so that the future inherits you.  I snatch you from the death of
forgetfulness.  I tell your story, complete your ending you who once
whispered beside me in the dark.

When I opened the door.."  there was my closest friend and comrade .. .
She was standing on the doorstep and she screamed: My child, my little
Nomzamo is still in the house!  ... I stared at her..  . my most
beautiful friend..  her hair flaming and her chest like a furnace..  .
she died a day later.  I pulled out her baby from the burning house...
I put her on the grass.."  only to find that her skin stayed behind on
my hands.  She is with me here today."

I was trying to see my child.  Just when he was about to opn the police
van at the back, I heard a voice shouting, say1g:

No, don't show her anything hou die meid daar weg!  [ Keep the kaffir
girl away from there!  ] But I managed.  I j pulled a green curtain...
I saw.."  my... child... sleeping among tyres... and he was foaming in
the mouth and he was already dead... Then they pulled him out and threw
hin on the ground... And I looked at him... And he was dyin(and they
won't allow me to hold him .. and my kc fell on the ground..  . And
they asked, quickly: What's thaV?  What was that?  .. . And I said: ..
. It's the key of r4'y house '

This inside me... fights my tongue.  It ... unshareab1.  It destroys
... words.  Before he was blown up, they cut of his hands so he could
not be fingerprinted... So how do I say this?  this terrible..  . I
want his hands back."

It was Sunday.  And cold.  He came into the kitchen.  Make me some bean
soup.  it

It's Sunday, jong, I want to cook special food.  4

But he wanted bean soup.

While dressing for church we heard the noise.  The youths were coming
down the road.  We were standing in our bedroom.  We were not talking.
We were not moving.  They surrounded the house and they shouted: Let
the spy die, let the spy die!  They threw stones through the window.
When they left, he said to me: Don't cry Nontuthuzelo.  A person dies
only once, not many times.  I know now where these things are leading
to.  Come, let's make soup.  We went to the kitchen arJ put the beans
in a pot.

Then Aomeone we knew knocked at the door.  The comrade are burning your
shop, Uncle Mick!

I'll b!  back for lunch, he said to me.

They told me afterwards.  He walked up to the door of his shop, he
didn't look back.."  someone in the crowd shot him in the back... They
told me afterwards Craig Kotze had said my husband was the one who
betrayed Steve Biko."

Two policemen got on either chair and they dragged me to the window,
and then they said I can now jp... I refused they grabbed me by the
shoulders and lifted me physically up and pushed me out of the window
.. . and they were holding me by my ankles .. . each policeman holding
one ankle.  All I could see was the concrete floor at the bottom we
were three floors up, and all of a sudden one would let go of one foot
as he's about to catch my foot, the one he had released, the other chap
lets go and they played like that... and you know you thought: God,
this is the end."

They held me... they said, Please don't go in there..  . I just skipped
through their legs and went in... I found Bheki he was in pieces... he
was hanging on pieces... He was all over..  . pieces of him and brain
was scattered all around that was the end of Bheki."

At Caledon Square I heard a loud sound.  Policemen were celebrating.
They said: We've got Looksmart!  I was in my cell when I saw Looksmart
being dragged up a flight of stairs by two policemen.  They were
beating him as he went up the stairs.  I noticed that his beard had
been pulled out.."  one by one.."  on one side of his face.  He was
bleeding heavily from the mouth.  Two days later they took him again
his hands handcuffed behind his back.  That was the last time I saw
Looksmart Ngudle."

And the man there sitting next to the ambulance driver he stood there
with my son's intestines in his hands and he was actually holding it
and carried it into the ambulance."

In the mortuary after the Queenstown massacre, I had to identify my
son.  We waited in front of the mortuary..  . a

thick black stream of blood was running from under the door blocking
the outside drain ... inside, the stench was bearable... bodies were
stacked upon each other.."  the blood from my child's body was already
green."

This white man with the red scarf, he shot into the outsiie bathroom
where Sonnyboy was hig... I was standing in the kitchen... I saw him
dragging my child.  Sonnyboy was j already dead.  He was holding him by
his legs like a dog.  I saw him digging a hole, scraping Sonnyboy's
brains into that hole,4?  and closing it with his boot.  The sun was
bright.."  but it went4 dark when I saw him lying there.  It's an
everlasting pain.  I will stop never in my heart.  It always comes
back.  It eats me apart.  Sonnyboy, rest well, my child.  I've
translated you fror the dead."

I asked them, Show me the mark on his chin, then I ll know it's my son.
They showed me the mark on his chin, d I said: It's not my son.  '

When Fuzile didn't come home that night I went to look for him.  Now
this makes me mad really.  My son was shot and nobody told me.  I
looked everywhere and nobody told me my.  son was in the mortuary...
they later gave me his clothes.  His T-shirt looked as if it had been
eaten by rats."

As she had a baby, the police said that the corpse could breastfeed the
baby."

Barnard was a frightful man the cop we couldn't kill.  He always drove
this red Valiant and wore this red dock.  Rambo of the Western Cape, he
called himself.  Whenever his car appeared on the shimmering horizon
leading the yellow Casspirs, we knew: someone dies today.  We will
remember the man with the red scarf who shot dead our sons."

This wahe last thing I saw: Barnard standing next to his car.  He spoke
Xhosa like a Xhosa.  He pointed his firearm at me.  I felt something
hitting my cheek.  I felt my eyes itching.  I was scratching my eyes
and yelling for help.  Since then I've been blind.."  and unemployed.."
and alone and homeless.  But today... today it feels as if I can nearly
see..."

I heard shots... I ran.."  slipped and fell... I crawled out at the
front door... On the steps my son sat.."  with his father's face in his
hands... He was covered in blood..  . He cried over and over: Daddy,
talk to me..  . Today he is 21 years old.  I am still woken at night by
his cries: Wipe the blood.."  wipe the blood from my father's face. '

That morning I did something I had never done before.  My husband was
still at his desk busy with the accounts of our business.  I went up to
him and stood behind his chair.  I put my hands under his arms and
tickled him .. . he looked surprised and unexpectedly happy.

And now?  he asked.

I am going to make tea, I said.

While I poured water on the tea bags, I heard this devastating noise.
Six men stormed into our study and blew his head off.  My five-year-old
daughter was present..  . That Christmas I found a letter on his desk:
Dear Father Christmas, please bring me a soft teddy bear with friendly
eyes..  . My daddy is dead.  If he was here I would not have bothered
you.  I put her in a boarding school.  The morning we drove there .  we
had a flat tyre.  You see, she said,

Daddy does not want me to go there... He wants me to stay with you... I
have watched him die, I must be there when you die .. . She is now a
teenager and has tried twice to commit suicide."

In the beginning it was seeing.  Seeing for ages, filling the head with
ash.  No air.  No tendril.  Now to seeing, speaking is added and the
eye plunges into the mouth.  Present at the birth of this country's
language itself.

And it wipes us out.  Like a fire.  Or a flood.  Tears are not what we
call it.  Water covers our cheeks and we cannot type.  Or think.

We should all be deeply humbled by what we've heard, Kut we've got to
finish quickly and really turn our backs on is awful past and say: Life
is for living."

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, after the first day of testimony in East
London

Ms GOBO DO-MADIJUZELA: Baba is going to present to iw what he says is
the work of the man who came to be knoi as the Rambo of the Peninsula.
The olice officer who 4is known by the name of Barnard.  Good morning,
I am now going to explain to you how this house is arranged.  If you
face towards your right, that is now the whole ho4se, people in this
house are approximately 200 to 250.  Yoi4 are now seated on the
platform.  And our small tablesl are arranged as a horseshoe.  Right in
the middle of the horseshoe is Archbishop Tutu, next to him is Dr.
Boraine, I am right at the extreme end of this horseshoe.  I am seated
directly across from you, we are facing each other.  We are now going
to start to talk to each other, Baba.

Could you please tell us, Baba, what happened on that't day of this
incident, could you please explain to us.  MR SIKWEPERE: ... I heard
that we are now being attacked.  I ran.  Now that place was between
Crossroads and KTC.  While we were still there, a van approached it was
a white van and it was driven by Barnard.  When he had just passed, he
asked us all to disperse within five minutes.  Now the communities
asked, How can he ask us to disperse, because this is just a small
meeting?"  we were just 20 to 25.

I wanted to find out what was the response from this white ran.  When I
saw that the van now was stationary, I went it.  I was just standing
for two minutes next to the windlv ... now this white man opened the
door and withcfew his gun.  Now I wanted to find out what is the story
going on, on the other side of this car.  I tried to peep and I was
looking straight into him, straight to him.  While I was still looking
at him, these people asked him, How can you ask us to disperse?"

This white man said this in Afrikaans You are going to get eventually
what you are looking for.  And I am going to shoot you."  I was shocked
at what this white man said to me.  He said in Afrikaans, Ek gaan iou
kty."  Now I wanted to find out why is he talking to me like this... I
saw people surrounding this van I was now wondering, where do these
people come from surrounding this van, all of a sudden?

After that I heard a loud noise, it sounded like a stone hitting a
sink.  But I decided not to run, I decided to walk.  Because I knew
that if you ran, you were going to be shot, so I decided let me just
walk into a safe place where I can just start running.  But during that
time shootings were going on... Barnard was not driving.."  when I
arrived at the place where I thought now I am safe, I felt something
hitting my cheek.  I couldn't go any further, I stayed right there only
to find out I had been hidden by a corner of a house.  I felt my eyes
itching, I was scratching my eyes.  I wasn't quite sure what happened
to my eyes at that particular time.  I felt somebody stepping on my
right shoulder.  And saying, I thought this dog had died already."  I
felt both my eyes I was just waiting that these people are going to
take me to a prison.  Ms GOBO DO-MADIKIZELA: Baba, do you have any
bullets in you as we speak?  MR SIKWEPERE: Yes, there are several of
them.  Some are here in my neck.  Now on my face you can really see
them, but my face feels quite rough, it feels like rough salt.  I
usually have terrible headaches.  Ms GOBO DO-MADIKIZELA: Thank you,
Baba.  MR SIKwEPE1u: Yes, usually I have a fat body, but after that I
lost all my body, now I am thin, as you can see me now.  Ms GOBO
DO-MADIKIZELA: How do you feel, Baba, about coming here to tell us your
story?

MR SIKWEPERE: I feel what what has brought my sight back, my eyesight
back is to come back here and tell the story.  But I feel what has been
making me sick all the time is the fact that I couldn't tell my story.
But now I it feels like I got my sight back by coming here and telling
you the story (Lucas Baba Sikwepe)e)

Instinctively, one knew that some people would deliberately cut
themselves off from the Truth Commission process.  And4 it would be
quite possible to do so, by reading nothing about it.  But very few
people escape news bulletins even the musi' stations have a lunchtime
news report.  so it -is crucial to u that the Commission and its
narratjves be captured as fully a& possible on ordinary news bulletins.
Even people who do 4 more than listen to the news should be given a
full und4rstanding of the essence of the Commission, and hear quits a
few of its stories.  This means that the past has to be put iito hard
news gripping enough to make bulletin headlines, into reports that the
bulletin-writers in Johannesburg cannot ignore.  To do this we will
have to use the full spectrum of hard news techniques and where
necessary develop and reform them according to our needs.

A bulletin generally consists of three audio elements: ordinary
reporting read out by a news reader 20-second sound1 bites of other
people's voices, and 40-second voice reports sent through by a
journalist.  How can these elements be moulded to our aims?  An expert
needs to come help me, I plead.  And they send Angie.

I sit next to her in the media room at the city hall in East London. It
is the first day of the hearings.  Angie types codes and passwords into
her laptop computer to log on to the network.  We wait: little lights
flash and scratchy shrieks issue from the modem sounds of broken glass.
We're on we're logged on' For the rest of my life I will remember this
scene: the meinSers of the radio team, each wearing earphones,
recording the translation of their assigned language, and Angie on a
cushion, so that she can reach the unusually high table, making a
furious assault on the day's first news story furious, because Angie is
someone who types with all ten of her fingers.  And as those pinkies
squirrel away on the keys, the testimony of the first victim of the
first day, Nohle Mohape, goes through to Johannesburg in time for the
eleven o'clock bulletin.

Thus our labours over the next two years will be structured.  The first
actuality programmes are around one o'clock.  We do short packages,
text with sound bites or live interviews for the afternoon programmes,
and in the evenings we work on longer pieces for the following morning.
Meanwhile the news bulletins keep flowing through.  Stories, complete
stories with beginnings, middles and ends, are told for the first time
over the news: in a 40-second voice report, we relate how Phindile
Mfeti told his wife that he was going off to have his jeans shortened,
and then disappeared without a trace.  How she later found on his desk
the glasses and pipe that he always took with him.  How she asked the
Commission for something to bury even-if it was just a piece of bone or
a handful of ash.

We also learn quickly.  Bulletin-writers and news readers squirm away
from whatever is not fashionable or harmlessly clinical.  For words
like menstruation' or penis' there is no place on the news; a phrase
such as they braaied my child on a fire' is out of the question.  We
are told that the writer Rian Malan has complained that he doesn't want
to mix breakfast and blood' in the mornings.  This is just the
encouragement we need.  W write the first lines of the hard copy: The
missing hand of ANC activist Sicelo Mhlawuli dominated the testimonies
before the Truth Commission hearings in East London today.  Mhlawnli's
hand was last seen by a fellow detainee."  Then the recorded comment: I
saw the severed hand of a black activist in a bottle at a Port
Elizabeth police station.  The police told me it was a baboon's hand.
They said to me: Look here, this is the bottled hand of a Communist.
But I know that Sicelo Mhlawuli, one of the Cradock Four, was buried
with his hand missing."  This is a perfect sound bite.  (How quickly
our own language changes fantastic testimony, sexy subject, nice
audible crying .. .) Then the news reader concludes the story: The
daughter of Sicelo Mhlawuli, Babalwa, has told the Truth Commission how
a certain policeman, Cloete, came to her mother's house every day and
stood next to her mother howling like a dog all the time waving his
hand loosely in the air while all of thel?1 laughed."

We also insist on the use of Truth Commission' rather than

TRC', which would conceal the essence of the Commission behind a
meaningless abbreviation.

We pick out a sequence.  We remove some pauses and edit itj into a
20-second sound bite.  We feed it to[ohannesburg.W switch on a small
transistor.  The news comes through: I w4 making tea in the police
station.  I heard a noise, I looked u

There he fell... Someone fell from the upper floor p4t the window... I
ran down..  . It was my child... grandchild, but I raised him."

We lift our fists triumphantly.  We've done it!

The voice of an ordinary cleaning woman is the headline on the one
o'clock news.

Week after week; voice after voice; account after account.  It is like
travelling on a rainy night behind a huge truck images of devastation
breaking in sheets on the windscreen.  You can't overtake, because you
can't see; and you can't slow down or stop because then you will never
get anywhere.

It is not so much the deaths, and the names of the dead, but the web of
infinite sorrow woven around them.  It keeps on coming and coming.  A
wide, barren, disconsolate landscape where the horizon keeps on
dropping away.

And this is how we often end up at the daily press conferences
bewildered and close to tears at the feet of Archbishop Tutu.  By the
end of four weeks they are no longer press conrences.  He caresses us
with pieces of hope and humanity We ask fewer and fewer critical
questions.  Perplexec we listen to the sharp, haughty questions posed
by foreign journalists those who jet into the country, attend one day's
hearings, and then confront the Commission about its lack of judicial
procedures and objectivity.

The first sign of the International Journalist in your midst is the
subtle fragrance.  Male or female, overseas journalists can obviously
afford a perfumery that you won't find on the shelves at Pick n Pay.
The second sign is the equipment.  Microphones like cruise missiles on
launching pads appear in front of interviewees, and you have to find
space next to them for your humble little SABC mike.  They are equipped
with recorders that produce fully edited sound bites and reports at the
push of a button, computers they can carry in their inside pockets and
cellphones no bigger than lipsticks.  And they know something really
big is happening in East London, they pick up the vibes but nothing
fits into their operating frameworks.  How can you report anything?"  A
Belgian journalist struggles to keep the scepticism out of his voice.
South African journalists keep on bursting into tears all around me in
the hall."

The Story of the Century, they tell us.  With heroes and villains;
well-known and unknown characters; the powerful and the powerless, the
literate and the illiterate.  Hung with laptops, tape recorders, bags,
notebooks and reels of cable and tape, we limp into hotel foyers long
after midnight.

Why the Eastern Cape why start at this scalp of green silence?

This part of Africa was the first frontier between black and white,
between the terrestrial endeavour of Africa and the maritime endeavour
of Europe, says Noel Mostert in his book Frontiers.  The Eastern Cape
opened up between white and black an entirely new relationship beyond
that of master and slave.  The landscape of this part of the country
provided a dramatic backdrop for the moral struggles around
colonialism, expansionism, race and freedom.

According to Mostert, the indigenous people of the Eastern Cape found
themselves selected by history to bear for centuries the brunt of
contact with the outside world.  Despite the fact that these were
peaceful farming and cattle-herding communities to begin with, the area
became known for its fierce resistance to oppression.  The Xhosas
originally consisted of three main groups: the Pondo, to which Winni
Madikizela-Mandela belongs; the Thembu house, of which her former
husband is a prince; and the Xhosa group, which produced Steve Biko.

Resistance in the Eastern Cape was complemented by excellent missionary
schooling, which enabled the oppressed F to put forward a refined
political argument in English, thus breaking new ground in black
political thinking inter- p nationally.  The Eastern Cape also saw the'
beginnings of he Pan-Africanist Congress and Black Consciousness.  From
the sixties onwards, with the cream of its leadership either in jail or
in exile, the Eastern Cape endured an unprecedente escalation of human
rights abuses, many of them notorioi4. These included the detention and
death of Steve Biko, tie assassination of the Cradock Four and Pebco
Three, the massacre at Bisho, and the Mother well bomb incident.

Of all those detained without trial in South Africa, one third came
from the Eastern Cape.  Why?  Because the region was also the dumping
ground for those soldiers who got out of hand during the bush war the
veterans, black and white of Koevoet and the notorious 101 and 32
Battalions.  These men had to be kept out of the glare of the media,
and at a distance from Parliament and human rights organizations.  And
their names cropped up during the first week of hearings in East
London, always in connection with torture and murder: Gideon Nieuwoudt,
Albert' Ntungata, Eric Winter, Chris Labuschagne, Spyker van Wyk, Gert
Strydom.

It was apparently assumed in security circles that whoever crushed the
Eastern Cape would control the country.  The region still lives with
the consequences.  Despite the fact that Xhosa pele dominate South
African politics, this is the second poorest of the nine provinces,
with 65 per cent of the economicly active population unemployed.  True
tots spirit of- resistance, the first attempts to stop the

Truth Commission emanate from the Eastern Cape.  The Biko family file
several cases to prove that the legislation is unconstitutional, while
perpetrators from Port Elizabeth succeed in preventing the Truth
Commission from allowing victims to name them.

It has to be this part of the country that turns us inside out, that
renders us: bare lips.  It has to be this region of fierce opposites
meadows and plains, waterfalls and don gas ferns and aloes that sparks
from a speechless darkness the voices of the past.  And at long last,
flicking cigarette ash from our shoulders, we can weep in the certainty
of this April; in the assurance of the testimony of fellow South
Africans.  To kill or caress it keeps us going as degenerate metal.

IT WAS THE END of October 10 October 1985.  She was on her way to work,
two young men approached her.  Now they were five.  When they saw her,
they chased her.  She went to hide in another house, and now they took
her out of that house.

They took her overall; and they poured her with a petrol bomb.  One of
them held her feet and then they started igniting her his her feet.
They were beating her up.  They beat her up and they put a tyre on her.
There was nobody who could stop this, the police were looking for her,
but they were lost and they couldn't find her.  She tried to [take the
police] to them..  . to the people who tried to hurt her, but they
couldn't [understand her] because she didn't have a voice.  The police
took her to Bloemfontein.

In Bloemfontein she stayed for three days, and she started to mention
everybody who did this to her.  Then after that, she died.  They didn't
allow her to be buried in Colesberg, because they said she was an
informer.  They said if she was buried there they were going to burn
the church.  Then she ended up being buried in Pilonome Hospital.
That's where I will stop for a moment.  Aov POTGIETER: Was there any
truth in this allegation that she was an impimpi, an informer?

MRS MALiTI: That's how they got her, but the reason why they burnt her
is because my uncle is a policeman.  Aov NTSEBEZA: You said while this
happened there was a boycott of the shops that time.  Your mother's
main offence was that she went to buy meat from the butchery yop will
correct me if I am wrong... She tried to clear her nine?  MRS MALm: Yes
sir.  ADv NTSEBEZA: According to the report that you gave to people who
were taking the statements earlier, she paidjn

R100.  4

MRS MALITI: Yes.  Mw NTSEBEZA: Where did she send this R100?  MRS
MALrrI: She sent it to the come$ des and the cmides announced it, that
she did pay this R100 trying to a for forgiveness for buying meat
during a consumer boycott.  They said they forgive her.  Now she took
this letter ko the township.  ADV NTSEBEZA: When she came back to the
township he was under the impression that she was forgiven?  MRS
MALITI: Yes.  ADV NTSEBEZA: In other words..  . she was killed while
she was still under the impression that she was safe, knowing that she
was forgiven?  MRS MALITI: Yes, that's so.  Arw NTSEBEZA: When did the
police come in?  I MRS MALITI: The police arrived when she was burnt
already.  She was burnt while she was pregnant.  ADv NTSEBEZA: What do
you mean now by that?  MRS MALrrI: When the police came in, they could
they were trying to find out where she was, but they could hear her
crying.  They saw her in the main road, she was already alight.  Any
NTSEBEZA: Did she run after she was burnt?  MRS MALm: No, she couldn't
run, she was just walking slowly, her clothes were burning.  She went
in the direction where the police were.  An JTSEBEZA: Was she walking
around while she was naked?  MRS !AALITI: Yes.

Aov NTSEBEZA: Were the people afraid to help her?  MRS MALrrI: No one
was allowed by the comrades to help her, so she went alone to the van.
Aov NTSEBEZA: Were these comrades who were chasing people away?  MRS
MALrrI: There were five of them at the beginning there were too many,
but at the end they were just five.  One of them was Tifo Sihlaba..  .
it was Tabo Gusha, Pinkdyaan Kelem, Toto Mayaba, Tembile Falati.  Aov
NTSEBEZA: What about Zolile Silwayane?  MRS MALm: Zolile Silwayane is
the one who actually accepted the money, he is the leader of this whole
situation.  Yes, he is the one who announced that he had received the
money, and he was the one who actually went back again and said she
must be ignited.  Any NTSEBEZA: This is a very unique case from all the
cases we have heard.  We've been listening to cases where our people
were being killed by police and the Government, but now this is unique
because our people are being killed by our own people at the same time.
Do you know the husband to the deceased?  MRS MALrrI: Yes, I know his
name is Doti.  That day he doesn't know anything because he ran.  He
ran to Crossroads, and even today he is not well since then.  Any
NTSEBEZA: Just to clear something up, are you trying to say he was
never well again mentally?  MRS MALrrI: Yes, that's what I am saying.
(Thomzama Maliti, testifying on the death of Nombulelo Delato)

dare I sit in this grape dark during this return journey where my body
is overcome by grief my heart coagulate resigned write I a blue slit
against this all... The word Truth' makes me uncomfortable.

The word truth' still trips the tongue.

Your voice tightens up when you approach the word truth ," the
technical assistant says, irritated.  Repeat it twenty times so that
you become familiar with it.  Truth is your jou job!"  [ Truth is your
job, after all!"J

I hesitate at the word, I am not used to using it.  Even when I type
it, it ends up as either turth or trth.  I have never bedded that word
in a poem.  I prefer the word lie'.  The moment the lie raises its
head, I smell blood.  Because it is there... where4 the truth is
closest.

The word reconciliation', on the other hand, is my d41,y bread.

Compromise, accommodate, provide, make spa for.  Understand.  Tolerate.
Empathize.  Endure... without itno relationship, no work, no progress
is possible.  Yes.  Piece by piece we die into reconciliation.

However neither truth nor reconciliation is part o my graphite when
sitting in front of a blank page, rubber else at hand.  Everything else
fades away.  It becomes so quiet.  Something opens and something falls
into this quiet space.  A tone, an image, a line mobilizes completely.
I become myself.  Truth and reconciliation do not enter my anarchy.
They choke on betrayal and rage, they fall off my refusal to be moral.
I write the broken line.  For some brief moments of loose-limbd
happiness everything I am, every shivering, otherwise uselehs,
vulnerable fibre and hypersensitive sense come together.  A heightened
phase of clarity and the glue stays .. . and somewhat breathless, I
know: for this I am made.

I am not made to report on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
When I was first told to head the five-person radio team covering the
Truth Commission, I began to cry, inexplicably, on the plane back from
Johannesburg.  Someone tripped over my bag in the aisle.  Mumbling
excuses, fumbling with tissues, I looked up into the face of Dirk
Coetzee.  There was no escape.

After three days a nervous breakdown was diagnosed.  Two weeks after,
the first hearings on human rights violations began L East London.

The months that have passed have proved my premonition right reporting
on the Truth Commission indeed leaves most of us physically exhausted
and mentally frayed.

Because of language.

Week after week, from one faceless building to another, from one dusty,
godforsaken town to another, the arteries of our past bleed their own
peculiar rhythm, tone and image.  One cannot get rid of it.  Ever.

To have the voices of ordinary people dominate the news.  To have no
one escape the process.

We sleep between one and two hours a night.  We live on chocolate and
potato chips.  After five years without cigarettes, I start smoking
again.

In the second week of hearings, I do a Question and Answer with an
actuality programme.  I stammer.  I freeze.  I am without language.  I
put the receiver down, and think: resign.  Now.  You are dearly
incompetent.  The next morning the Truth Commission sends one of its
own counsellors to address the journalists.  You will experience the
same symptoms as the victims.  You will find yourself powerless without
help, without words."

I am shocked to be a textbook case within a mere ten days.

Exercise regularly.  Take photographs of loved ones with you to come
home to in the hotels.  Take your favourite music with you.  And talk
to one another .. . be one another's therapists."

We develop techniques to lessen the impact.  We no longer go into the
halls where the hearings take place, because of the accumulated grief.
We watch on the monitors provided.  The moment someone starts crying,
we start writing scribbling doodling.

One hotel room drifts into another.  One breakfast buffet provides the
same sad fruit as another.  One sorrow-filled room flows into another.
One rental car smells like another but the language, the detail, the
individual tone.."  it stays.

I'm going to take the tale of Nomonde Calata and make a comic out of
it," says my friend Professor Kondlo, the Xhosa intellectual from
Grahamstown.  I will call it: The Contestation of Spaces."

It is late at night.  We sit and drink in the sultry Eastern Cape
midnight.  Outside the window the dark sea pushs past white trails of
mist.

The first page of my comic will carry the headline the PAST, and it
will have two drawings.  In the one frame I sill write: Male
Storyteller (Historian) and draw a group of tjvo men sitting in the
traditional kgotla or kroro or motJ whatever you want to call it, that
glamorous space in wiich men and boys meet each other.  Where stories
are to4i of where you come from, who you ai'e, the structui the group's
male ancestry, who your role model is.  Thqj tales which interpret your
world for you, and help the male tellers to take decisions about
economics, politics, history.

Frame two will have the caption: Female Stoyteller (Socializer of
Children).  This drawing will show space where food is prepared.
Children of both genders sit and listen to the stories of make-believe.
A flowing gallery of magical and bizarre moments that cut into everyday
life.  Are you awake?  Are you listening?  asks the grandmother.  The
children must react and interact with the multidimensiQnal performance.
Unlike the stories of the men where bound ties are set, these stories
undermine boundaries: men turn into women and vice versa, animals
become people, women fall in love with animals, people eat each other,
dreams and hallucinations are played out."

I don't get it.  The wife of Fort Calata really doesn't fit the
stereotypical storytelling grandma by the pap pot and the fire that you
want to put in your comic.

Exactly;' says Professor Kondlo and thumps his fist on the table.  Over
these drawings I rubber-stamp: MIGRATION, URBANIZATION, "FORCED
REMOVALS.  And then starts the aual story of Nomonde Calata as a woman,
sitting in the male pace of the British Colonial city hail of East
London, and elating a story as part of the official history of this co
urAry.  It's bloody amazing!"

Your introduction only handles the cultural aspect," I say.

Maybe you should draw Nomonde arriving at the city hall accompanied by
the police who once persecuted her?  Now her space is protected and
officially demarcated for her here she is safe.  Then you start
immediately where she testifies how the police burst into her house and
arrested her husband..."  I dig through my notes, but he is already
playing the cassette:

NOMo1.iDE: My husband was in the room, he already had his clothes on,
and he was wearing very warm clothes.  Three policemen I can remember
Mr.  Venter, Mr.  Calo was a black man, it was Mr.  Strauss who was
wearing a uniform.  He had a small stick in his hand.  They were not
very patient with him, they were pushing him .. . they were really
making him to hurry.  I merely requested, Please, do not push him, do
not handcuff him because he's got a... chest problem... (pause... a
sob..  . an audible shuddering) JOHN SMITH: Would you like some time,
Mrs.  Calata?  Are you fine?... Let me assist you with this whole... NO
MONDE After leaving with him, they handcuffed him to the back, leaving
with him (clears throat) because I was also waiting for a trial the
trial for wearing a T-shirt I didn't know where he was taken to, I
didn't know where they had taken him to... Why do you think she cried
here specifically?"  I ask.

Maybe remembering her husband as vulnerable.  Because one picks up from
the testimony that they had a special relationship he confided in her,
they discussed everything, and when he didn't turn up on time that
night she knew at once that something was wrong.  When she cries at the
end it is also because this friend of hers, the wife of Matthew Goniwe,
is crying."

But now this new space that Nomonde is sitting in it isn't only
physical, it's also metaphorical."

The Prof smiles.  Yes.  We're talking about two different social
spaces: one in which violence was justified in the past.  And the
other, in the present, where abuses of human rights are condemned as
immoral and wrong.  By choosing the city hail in the centre of town and
not a community centre in the township, the Truth Commission wants to
portray a symbolic break with the institutional frameworks of the past.
This city hall is no longer the official domain of whites and
perpetrators: it now belongs to all of us."  [

NO MONDE In May, Fort was not around, he was in Johannesburg to see a
physiotherapist, because he had this frozen shoulder.  On 27 May in the
early hours, I was woken up by the knock and the lights, the
flashlights that were right in the house.  And I went to open the door.
Opening the door I saw Mr.  Venter and Mr.  Gouws aid many other
policemen, there wore horses, SADF, it was just full.  They entered my
house and said they wanted to sear chi They got into my bedroom, they
searched.."  they were, looking for documents, UDF documents, they took
everytt thing.  In their search, Mr.  Venter he asked me: Wherels your
husband?"  I said to him, My husband is not here, he is in Gauteng." He
was asking this in Afrikaans.  Jy moet vir iou man shy kan maar
wegkruip en jy kan horn maar wegsteek, die dag as ons horn k... dan sal
by kak."  [ Tell your husband he can hide away, you can help him to
hide, but when we find him.."  he's going to shit."]

I was worried and I was scared.  And at the same time I was brave.  I
kept quiet and I looked at him.  jy sit op my bed staan op."  [ You are
sitting on my bed get up."]

He stood up and he said, What is this bed after all?"  After that they
left my house..

Matthew Goniwearrived after the police had left.  He said they visited
all the executive members; they took all the documents from the
members.

After this testimony," says Kondlo excitedly, I draw a page from a CIA
handbook used in the early eighties to teach Latin American fcurity
forces how to extract information from prisoners.  Jhe purpose of this
will be to explain the psychological unrpinning of torture.  The first
step is to bring in a superior outside force.  One of these outside
forces is time: a person should be harassed at a time when he least
expects it and when his mental and physical resistance are at its
lowest ideally in the early hours of the morning.  When confronted at
this time, most subjects experience intense feelings of shock,
insecurity and psychological stress and have great difficulty adjusting
to the situation."

What I find fascinating is the interaction with Venter about the bed.
He invades her privacy, he sits on her bed something only very intimate
guests or children would usually do.  While he's sitting there, he
threatens her husband.  Then she reclaims her space: you can do this
and say that, she says... but you will not sit on my bed.  Although he
scoffs at it, he indeed gets up from the bed despite himself, he
respects their space!"

NO MONDE In April, before Fort went to Johannesburg for this
physiotherapist treatment, he arrived from a UDF meeting.  It was at
night.  I was already in bed, but he woke me up.  He said, Nomonde, I
have to tell you this."  I said to him, Speak."  And he said: We were
detained with Matthew for a few hours in Port Elizabeth.  We left
Sparrow in the car, because we didn't want the car to be seen... A
Security Branch [mani was sitting there.."  they were waiting for us.
There was one of them who asked: Luitenant, moet ons dit nou doen?  And
he answered: Dis nog me die regre tyd me.  [ Lieutenant, should we do
it now?  ... It's not the right time yet.  ] They asked questions.  At
the same time Matthew was being asked such questions..."  SMUrI-!: Did
your husband tell you what he understood those words to mean?  NO MONDE
Yes, he was able to explain, and said, I think they plan something very
big about us."  They took it lightly, but they were unhappy and
uncomfortable.  He kept on thinking about this incident in P.E. where
they planned this.  And he expressed his shock about what he had
heard.

I wonder why Fort said: they plan something very big he makes it sound
like a launch or something instead of a death."

Maybe the translation is off the mark.  But note that Nomonde is now
testifying in a space made safe for her by the same police."

You know, it's not necessarily the same policemen.  I interviewed
Sydney Mufamadi of Safety and Security he he said the regions were
ordered to put together new groups to deal with security around the
Truth Commission, people w are positive towards the new dispensation
and not linkedj t all to past abuses."  4

So: the inside of the hall.  I will draw all the Tith Commission
posters and that massive banner all of his signifying to Nomonde that
this space is owned by1ithe Commission and therefore safe and official.
Safe &r a political activist, safe for a woman and wife, official
knits acknowledgement of her story as the truth and official in giving
her the space to become a historian, a custodian of history despite her
gender."  f

But the space that haunts me is the space of Afrikaans literature that
now enters the narrative."

NO MONDE In May, when he [Fort] was still absent, thy didn't want to
give him a driver's licence.  So he always had somebody to escort him.
When he was not there his younger brother was driving for him, Roy was
driving for him.  Roy came to inform me and told me that when we were
away..  . the police came and they stopped them and then they asked
Matthew [Goniwe], Mattewis, waar is Meraai?"  [ Mattewis, where is
Meraai?"] He asked, Who is Meraai?"  And then they asked, Have you
forgotten about your wife about Fort?"  But he commented
sarcastically:

Ons sal iou en Meraai weer kry as julie saam in die kar is."  [ We'll
catch you and Meraai again when you're together in the car.  "I Matthew
was cheeky and disregarded them and we back to the car.  That was in
May 1985.

Mais and Meraai are a well-known couple in Afrikaans litera ire  During
the fifties, the prolific and popular writer

Mikro wrote a few novellas about a small village, Gonnakolk, and these
two were the main characters.  Mattewis is big, strong, staunch,
hard-working and taciturn, and his wife Meraai, the village dressmaker,
is an unattractive woman but with a good, obedient heart.  Most of
their daily tribulations are linked to the church and their involvement
in the community.  They are poor, good people the salt of the earth.

The unique thing about the novellas was the use for the first time in
Afrikaans writing of a narrator who comments directly to the reader.
The effect of this, according to the critics, is to erase the distance
between the narrator and the characters.  The narrator takes the reader
into his confidence and asks him to understand the naivety or the one
dimensionality of a particular character.  As interpreter and guide to
the village, the narrator becomes an organic necessity in the story of
Mattewis and Meraai, and his presence emphasizes the fact that we are
dealing with constructed realities, with fictions.  In the
mid-eighties, these stories were adapted into a television series,
retaining the role of the narrator."

And the Security Branch," the Professor muses, obviously watched
television."

Ja, we can assume they're familiar with the content of Mattewis en
Meraai.  So.  Why would a security policeman stop someone he supposedly
perceives as a threat to his existence, an opsweper, an agitator, a
terrorist, and then call this man he is planning to kill by the name of
the prototypical hard-working, religious, decent Afrikaner?  I don't
understand it.  And then to equate Fort Calata with his wife Meri...
there is no homophobic inference here, Meraai is the follower, the
obeyer.  How is your Freud and your psychoanalysis?"

Now Kondlo gets very excited: The episode can be read on so many
levels.  You could say this cop feels he is protecting Mattewis and
Meraai.  That is what his job is all about.  I am going to kill you
because I am Mattewis, I am the salt of the earth and I protect
Christianity.  So you can read it on a political level.  But then he is
also really making fun of Goniwe denigrating him by using an image and
a language he may have trouble understanding.  But.."  and this gets
fascinating if you want to go into the Freud thing, you could read into
it the Oedipal triangle: the stern father, the mother and the little
boy who is the cop.  All his life he has wanted access to the mother,
or the space between the mother and father an that is the bedroom.
Remember the bedroom scene?  Now at last this boy finds himself in a
situation with his big gun, the I killer phallus, and he has all the
power I am going to kill J you, he says, because I have all the power
and all the law.  '

Beautiful.  This is crying out to be a graphic novel.  ,; Remember
Nomonde's story is just one of four.  If we could j."  get the stories
of all the widows of the Grad6ck Four and then analyse the interacting
and contesting spaces... And when those cops ask for amnesty!  My God,
we'll also have to find a frame somewhere for the fruit-jar on the
window sill at the police station, the one with Sicelo's hand in it."

I

We haven't even begun to understand what we're hearin.  Do you remember
where Nomonde describes waiting on the night of 27 June, when Fort,
Matthew, Sparrow and Sicelo went to a briefing in Port Elizabeth?  How
the abnormal situation with police watching the house has become
normal, and when they're not there it's abnormal?"

NO MONDE At eleven I was anxious... I was unable to sleep because my
husband was not yet back as he had promised.  I knew that he was always
being followed and harassed even when he went to the OK, wherever he
went he was harassed by the police.  There was a reverend who visited
our place on that weekend, and I woke him up and said I was uneasy..  .
I went to the reverend's room and said: I'm.  anxious because my
husband is not yet here."  He reassured me and said that probably he
would be coming tomorrow morning because it was very late  Still I felt
that no, this was not the situation.  He always reports when he is
going to overs lee somewhere ... He doesn't just do something without
or ming me. So I kept on.  I was awake, I had insomniL Usually when I
looked out there were Gasspirs,

there were vans, there were Casspirs even on the other streets, but
that evening it was (whispers) quiet there was not a car moving around
as they usually do..  . but this was also an indication that something
was wrong... I had this premonition, and I was highly expectant at the
time.  I still had insomnia.  The following day I woke up, but I was
working under pressure because I was hopeful that probably the
reassurance of the reverend might be true.

So we've had the television and Afrikaans literature forcing themselves
into this narrative.  But the way Nomonde found out about the death of
her husband surpasses all fiction..."

NO MONDE We [Nomonde and Nyameka Goniwe] were unhappy and we slept
without knowing on Friday what had happened to our husbands.  Usually
the Herald was delivered to my home because I was distributing it. When
the Herald was delivered, I looked at the headlines and one of my
children said: Mother, look here in the paper..  . the car belonging to
my father has been burnt."  At that moment I was trembling, because I
was afraid what might have happened to my husband because if his car is
burnt down like this, I was wondering what happened to him.  I started
distributing the papers as usual, but I was very upset during this
time.  After a few hours, some friends came in and took me and said I
must be among the other people, and they said I must go to Nyami. Nyami
was always there for me and I was only twenty at the time and I
couldn't handle this so I was taken to Nyami's place (cries loudly
while interpreter finishes) and when I got there Nyami was crying
terribly..  . it affected me also... SMITH: May I request the
Commission to adjourn maybe for a minute... I don't think the witness
is in a condition to continue presently... Turij: Can we adjourn for
ten minutes please.

For me, this crying is the beginning of the Truth Commission the
signature tune, the definitive moment, the ultimate sound of what the
process is about.  She was wearing this vivid orange-red dress, and she
threw herself backwards and that sound... that sound... it will haunt
me for ever and ever."

It's significant that she began to cry when she remembered how Nyameka
Goniwe was crying when she arrived at the Goniwes' house.  The
academics say pain destroys languge and this brings about an immediate
reversion to a prelinguistic state and to witness that cry was to
witness' the I destruction of language... was to realize that to
remember.  the past of this country is to be thrown back into a time be
for language.  And to get that memory, to fix it in words t, capture it
with the precise image, is to be present at the birth of language
itself.  But more practically, this partiulr memory at last captured in
woyds can no longer haunt5ycwl, push you around, bewilder you, because
you have taken control of it you can move it wherever you want to.  tSo
maybe this is what the Commission is all about findAig words for that
cry of Nomonde Calata."

When the hearing resumed, Tutu started to sing: Senzeni na, senzeni
na... What have we done?  What have we done?  Our only sin is the
colour of our skin.  I was at a meeting once where ANC leaders rejected
this song because it perpetuates the idea of being a helpless victim. 
But when it, was sung this morning, I cried with such a sense of loss
andy despair I could hardly breathe..."  I'

Listen how tired and resigned her voice sounds when she goes on with
her story."  Kondlo presses a button on my tape recorder.

NO MONDE When I was at home the reverend from my church visited me.  He
was there to explain that the bodies of Fort and Matthew were found.
Well, we settled.  At the time I had my second child.  This child was
very close to the father after hearing this news the child was sick.  I
was pre gnat at the time.... I left that child that was inside of me..
I don't know what happened on that day.

At first tthought she was saying she had a miscarriage but she
obviously means this in a metaphorical sense.  Because she mentions
later that all her children were born in a natural way but that this
last one, a son, was a Caesarean."

And when she describes her visit to the doctor, she puts on this brave
face again in front of the security police waiting for her there."

NO MONDE He said to me, Sister, you have to clean your face, you have
to wipe out the tears, you have to be brave' and I listened.  And when
they saw me, they saw a very strong person.  I saw the doctor and then
went home.  Mr.  Xoliwe is the man we asked as families to go and
identify the bodies.  He said, Yes, we've seen the bodies, but I've
discovered that the hair was pulled out.  His [Fort'sI tongue was very
long.  His fingers were cut off.  He had many wounds in his body." When
he looked at his trousers, he realized that the dogs had really bitten
him very severely he couldn't believe that the dogs had already had
their share... Well, the funeral went on... I'm sure the Chairman of
this Committee knows exactly the ion... Kondlo nods his head.  The
funeral of the Cradock Four on 20 July 1985 changed the political
landscape of this country for ever.  It was like a raging fire.  ANC
and SACP flags were defiantly displayed buses and buses full of people
turned up, were turned away a state of emergency was declared.  But in
a sense it was the real beginning of the end of Apartheid."

Just to crown your Oedipus theory, two days after Mrs.  Calata why do I
call her this now, when we've talked the whole time about Nomonde?  Is
it the horror of her testimony that has distanced her from me or do I
simply feel humbled?  Anyway, after the birth of her child, the
security police turned up."

NO MONDE The leader of those police was Mr.  Labuschagne.  He said:
Hau... jy'tn baba, sonner n a... wit jy me bons moet die pa wees van
die baba me?  Ons kom deursoek die huis."  [ Hau... you've got a baby,
without a father... don't you want us to be the father of the baby?
We've come to search the house."] I kept quiet, I didn't give them an
answer, but after a few minutes they came back.  They said,

We want to evict you out of this house, because you don't have money to
pay for your rent and we know for fact that you don't have money.."
even in Fort's account here is no cent left."  I didn't indicate
whether I will move out or not.  They repeated this.  I said to them:
No, I'm not going out of this house, you will have to take your gun and
shoot me and take me out of the house."  Well, they stood up left.

We had an inquest at New Brighton.  The fin diag as that the court
agrees they were killed, but there is 1of enough evidence as to whQ
killed them.  We stayed at home with no knowledge of what was happening
until 1q94 then there was a report in the New Nation newspapr and the
inquest was reopened.  SMITh: Are you referring to the note where
instructioI were given for your husband to be removed from society your
husband and the other three?  NO MONDE Yes.  They should be permanently
removed from society as a matter of urgency..."  SMrri-i: Was the
finding of the inquest that the Security Forges were responsible for
the deaths but it could not apportion blame either to the army or to
the police?  I

How could we lose our humanity like that?  The word

Apartheid suddenly sounds like a euphemism!"  I battle with my voice.

Whites," says Kondlo, throwing back the last of his drink with a
grimace, have no ubuntu... they choke on all their rights, but they
have no human compassion.  Look at this poor guy Webber who lost his
left arm in an APLA attack.  Why does he come alone every day?  All the
black victims are accompanied by their families and people from their
coinmumtjs.  And Webber?  Is it because he really has no one in the
rid, or is it because whites do not care about each other

*

Wordless, lost.  While Afrikaner surnames like Barnard, Nieuwoudt, Van
Zyl, Van Wyk peel off victims' lips.  The question they keep asking:
What kind of person, what kind of human being, keeps another's hand in
a fruit-jar on his desk?  What kind of hatred makes animals of
people?

It is ordinary people who appear before the Truth Commission.  People
you meet daily in the street, on the bus and train people with the
signs of poverty and hard work on their bodies and their clothes.  In
their faces you can read astonishment, bewilderment, sown by the
callousness of the security police and the unfairness of the justice
system.  We were treated like garbage: worse even than dogs.  Even ants
were treated better than us."

And everyone wants to know: Who?  Why?  Out of the sighing arises more
than the need for facts or the longing to get closure on someone's
life.  The victims ask the hardest of all the questions: How is it
possible that the person I loved so much lit no spark of humanity in
you?

A mother stumbles on to the fact that her child is dead.  She sends one
child to go and buy fish.  He hears on the street:

They shot your little brother just now."

The abnormality of South African society strikes Commissioner Mary
Burton.  In a normal society if your child is not at home on time, you
think he might still be at his friends.  But under Apartheid you go and
look at the police station, then at the jails, then at the hospital and
eventually at the morgue.

What gradually becomes clear is that the Apartheid system worked like a
finely woven net starting with the Broederbond who appointed leaders.
In turn these leaders appointed ministers, judges, generals.  Security
forces, courts, administrations were tangled in.  Through Parliament
legislation was launched that would keep the brutal enforcement of
Apartheid out of sight.

It is striking that no politicians attend the hearings.  Is it because
they respect the independence of the Commission, or do they simply not
want to know what price ordinary people paid for the end of Apartheid
and the new dispensation?  Many of those testifying are unemployed and
live in squatter camps.

Now that people are able to tell their stories, the lid of the
Pandora's box is lifted; for the first time these individpal truths
sound unhindered in the ears of all South Africans.  he black people in
the audience are seldom upset.  They have known the truth for years.
The whites are often disconcerted: I they didn't realize the magnitude
of the outrage, the depth of'7 depravity' as Tutu calls.  it.  II

Where does the truth lie?  What does it have to do it reconciliation
and justice?

For me, justice lies in the fact that everything is being dealt out on
the same table," says my colleague Mondli.  The'trh that rules our
fears, our deeds and our dreams is coming to light.  From now on you
don't only see a smiling black man front of you, but you also know what
I carry inside of me: I've always know it now you also know."

And reconciliation?"

Reconciliation will only be possible when the dignity of black people
has been restored and when whites become compassionate.  Reconciliation
and amnesty I don't find important.  That people are able to tell their
stories that's the," important thing."

For me, it's a new beginning," I say.  It is not about skii colour,
culture, language, but about people.  The personal pain puts an end to
all stereotypes.  Where we connect now has nothing to do with group or
colour, we connect with our humanity..  . I keep quiet.  Drunk or
embarrassed.

Let us drink to the end of three centuries of fractured morality," says
Mondli and lifts his glass.  Here people are finally breaking through
to one another and you and I are experiencing it."

And maybe this is how we should measure our success if we mane to
formulate a morality, based on our common human it

Monj laughs and says: We're all starting to talk like Tutu."

Time and time again the name crops up: the A-Team of Tumahole, the
township at Parys on the banks of the Vaal River.  I only heard there
was this thing called the A-Team.  They were people against the UDF.
They used to drive through the township in their cars they started this
A-Team to work with the police.  At night we saw police vans delivering
booze to their houses.  The A-Team wore their names on their chests,
they carried hammers, pan gas and guns to bring death to their own
community."

According to witnesses, the activities usually started on a Saturday
afternoon.  After drinking and taking some drugs they would target
their prey.  Torture and killing were never part of their vocabulary;
instead they took their victims to what, they called The Open Field'
all in the name of discipline.

David Nhlapo, an ordinary resident of Tumahole, says the A-Team picked
him up one evening.  They took him from Parys to Sasolburg.  That's
where they put a tyre on me, poured me with petrol and they said I
should be naked.  I undressed myself and they said, You are now going
to feel the pain the other policemen felt.  They sliced my friend's
neck with a spade."

In stories about KwaZulu-Natal, the name of another gang often comes up
the Amabutho.  They also had special attire that singled them out
balaclavas and colourful overalls.  Their weapons were knobkerries,
spears and axes, and they worked with Inkatha and the SADF.  Their
rituals were steeped in tradition.  Before going after their victims,
they drank and splashed on war potions to make themselves invincible.
They also didn't speak of killing', but used euphemistic phrases like
to remove obstacles' and to purify the fields'.

A survivor of one of their attacks remembers: And one of the Amabuthos
said: Let me see who has an axe... and I heard they were chopping down
our door and they were coming inside... I don't know when Kumbolani
died because at that stage I was hiding.  I wasn't hiding under the
bed,

because I realized if they find me under the bed, they will kill me
more cruelly, they must kill me standing.  So I stood behind the door
and I was hiding, and they got inside, they chopped him.."  they
chopped him in the face with an axe and on his chest... they opened up
his chest with an axe."

The Amabutho often removed body parts to brew a cancoction with which
to cleanse themselves of the murder.  The operational tactics of both
the A-Team and the Amabiitho I echo some of the Vlakplaas rituals
described by Dirk Coetzee.  7 Men bonding in groups.  Drinking,
choosing a victim, arming themselves and then getting together to make
the Big Kill.,

Tutu reads an anonymous letj:er in Afrikaans sent t t1e Commission
during the second week of hearings.  Dan bull 1k vir dit wat gebeur
bet, a!  kan ek niks daaraan verander, ne.  Dan sock ek in my binneste
from the verstaan hoe is ditmoon?ik dat niemand eenvoudig geweet bet
me, hoe is dit moontIikdat so mm iets daaraan gedoen bet, hoe is dit
moontlik dat ek ook maar baie keer net toegekyk bet.  Dan wonder ek hoe
is dit moontlik om met daardie skuld en skande van die binnekant te
Ie... ek weet me wat om te s meek weet me wat om te doen meek vra u
hieroor om verskoning ek is jammer vir a!  die pyn en die hart seer  Ek
s dit me maklik me Ek s di?," met n hart wat stukkend is en met trane
in my oe..

[ Then I cry over what has happened, even though I cannot change
anything.  Then I look inside myself to understand how it is possible
that no one knew, how it is possible that so few did something about
it, how it is possible that often I also just looked on.  Then I wonder
how it is possible to live with this inner guilt and shame... I don't
know what to say, I don't know what to do, I ask you to forgive me for
this I am sorry about all the pain and the heartache.  It isn't easy to
say this.  I say it wit a heart that is broken and tears in my eyes..

The text grow next to one another in the vapour of freshly mown
language.  Nomonde Calata, Priscilla Zantsi, Isabel Hofmeyr,
Nontuthuzelo Mpehlo, Nqabakazi Godolozi, Elaine Scarry, Feziwe Mfeti,
Nohle Mohape, Art Spiegelman, Govan Mbeki, Phyllis Maseko, Ariel Dorf
man, Lucas Sikwepere, Abdulhay Jassat, Johan Smit, Ms Mkhize and Ms
Khuzwayo, Marta Cullberg Weston, Cyril Mhlongo, Bheki Mlangeni's
mother, Colette Franz, Yehuda Amichai.

Some journalists ask to be deployed elsewhere.  Others start to focus
on the perpetrators.  Some storm out enraged at parties, or see friends
fleeing from them.  Some drink deep gulps of neat brandy, others calm
themselves with neatly rolled daggazolletjies.  After four months most
of us who travel frequently become ill lungs and airways.  The
Chairperson has bronchitis, the Deputy Chairperson pneumonia.  It's the
planes, someone says, they are germ incubators.  No, it's the constant
adapting to different climates and altitudes.  We are becoming a
family.  I board a tiny propellered plane and sit next to one of the
interpreters.  In the back sits the Arch with his Anglican bodyguard.
While we ascend shakily, I see how Tutu bows his head and prays and I
just know, somehow, we're going to be fine.

I walk into my home one evening.  My family are excitedly watching
cricket on television.  They seem like a happy, close knit group.  I
stand in the dark kitchen for a long time.  Everything has become
unconnected and unfamiliar.  I realize that I don't know where the
light switch is.

I can talk about nothing but the Truth Commission.  Yet I don't talk
about it at all.

Until the day in Queenstown.  It is bitterly cold.  Coated, scarved,
duveted, we listen to one neck lacing experience after another grim
stories, a relentless procession of faces in a monotonous rhythm.

A man testifies about a bomb explosion in his restaurant.  He says, The
reason why only one person died that day is because of the top-quality
tables that we have at the Spur."

And I start to laugh.

My friend came to me and said: Lucas, I wanted to come to you..."  But
I couldn't find my legs," I say to myself and collapse with laughter.

Alocaljournalistputssometeainfrontofmeanasks tentatively: Have you been
covering the Commission for long?"

I take two weeks leave.

We tell stories not to die of life

The man sits alone.  He is wearing a cheap jacket.  In ftmal,
old-fashioned Afrikaans he says he cannot tell the stry of how an ANC
bomb wiped out his family and friend.t

I can deal with it only in the form of questions..  Lo you know, you
the Truth Commissioners, how a temperate feels of between six and eight
thousand degrees?  Do yo know how it feels to experience a blow so
intense that it forces the fillings from your teeth?  Do you know how
it feels to look for survivors and only find the dead and maim... Do
you know how it feels to look for your three-year-old child and never,
Mr.  Chairman, never to find him again and to keep wondering for the
rest of your life where he is?"  4

Towards the end of the eighties, the Van Eck ant De Neyschen families
went on holiday on a game farm near Messina on the northern border of
South Africa.  One afternoon the two families went out in the bakkie to
look for game.  The back wheel on the right the exact spot where the
three-year-old Van Eck boy was sitting struck a land mine

We were immediately in flames.  When I came to myself I saw my baby boy
of eighteen months was still alive.."  he was lying quite still, but
looking at me.  Mr.  De Neyschen was lying on his steering wheel ...
his hair burning, blood spouting from is forehead."

V Eck pulled them all through the window, and then he weno look for
survivors.

Right behind the vehicle I found my wife and Martie de

Neyschen.  Both severely maimed and killed outright.  I searched
further.  I came upon little Kobus de Neyschen who had some life in
him.  I went back to his father and said: The child is still alive, but
severely maimed and burnt.  His father asked there on the scene to let
his child go... which is what happened.  Then I noticed Mr.  De
Neyschen's daughter Lizelda walking towards us out of the veld..  . She
had a cut across her face and she limped.  Then I searched further for
my son of three years, but could not find him.."  until today I could
not find him... I and my son buried our two family members and the next
day our two friends.  Since then it has been down the hill for me all
the way.  I sit for days ... I simply sit..  . I lost my business.  I
am reduced to a poor white."

The small side hail accommodates the electronic media.  The translation
is channelled to our tape recorders.  We see Van Eck on the monitor.  I
write the news copy.  I decide on a sound bite.  I dictate the hard
copy over the phone.  I read: and never comma Mister Chairman comma
never to find..."  A catch in my voice... My throat throbs heavily.  My
breast silts up, speechless.

I give the phone to a colleague and flee blindly among the cables and
electronic equipment .. . out on to the stoep overlooking Nelspruit.  I
gasp for breath.  Like two underwater swimmers, my eyes burst out to
the horizons .. . the mountains lit in a blushing light-blue hedge of
peace.  I am drowning.  My eyes claw at the trees, the kloofs..  . see,
smell the landscape of paradise and a language from paradise: mispel,
maroela, tarentaal, I whisper.  The air is drowsy with jasmine and
kanferfoelie.  I sit down on the steps and everything tears out of me.
Flesh and blood can in the end only endure so much... Every week we are
stretched thinner and thinner over different pitches of grief .. . how
many people can ne see crying, how much sorrow wrenched loose can one
accommodate... and how does one get rid of the specific intonation of
the words?  It stays and stays.  I wake up in unfamiliar beds with
blood on my flayed lips and sound bites screaming in my ears I receive
a call.  They say the story is really powerful.."  can we possibly send
another sound bite?  Shall we send the one about the fillings or the
one about the daughter coming towards them?"

I wipe my face.  Send the one about how he just sits and remember to
add that the newspapers of the day said piec s of his son's hair and
eyes were found in a tree near the bal4cic."

My hair is falling out.  My teeth are falling out.  I have rashes.
After the amnesty deadline I enter my house like 4 stranger.  And
barren.  I sit around for days.  Staring.  youngest walks into a room
and starts.  Sorry, I'm not used if you being home."

No poetry should come forth from this.  May my haxid fn off if I write
this.

So I sit around.  Naturally and unnaturally without Words.  Stunned by
the knowledge of the price people have paid for their words.  If I
write this, I exploit and betray.  If I doi't, I die.  Suddenly my
grandmother's motto comes to minds then in despair, bake a cake.  To
bake a cake is a restoative process.

I snip into a bowl glace pineapple, watermelon, ginger, green figs,
dates and walnuts.  Big red and green cherries, currants, sultanas.  I
let it stand in a cool dark cupboard a bowl full of ghstemng jewels
soaking in brandy.  I relish the velvet of twelve eggs, butter and
sugar.  I bake a fruit cake aid eat small fragrant slices in the
blinding blue Cape sumnr heat.

And I think up delicious lines of lies and revenge.

THE NARRATIVE OF BETRAYAL HAS

TO BE REINVENTED EVERY TIME

DR BORAINE: Mr.  Snayer, Basil where did Anton stay before he was
killed?  MR SNAYER: At the house next to mine.  DR BORAINE: So you at
that time on that night in November 1989, early morning you didn't
really know that he was there?  MR SNAYER: No, I had no idea.  DR Boin:
Okay, thank you.  Now you have told us that you heard shots being fired
approximately what time was it when you first heard that?  MR SNAYER:
It must have been between about 12:30 and 12:45 in the morning.  I
remember that because I had been out rehearsing with the band I play
for.  Until about twelve o'clock I came home, found my wife in the
kitchen baking cookies, because that was the day of my eldest
daughter's birthday, eleventh birthday.  Ja, I was terrified and, of
course, one immediately reacts to that, and the proximity of the sound
immediately made me and my wife fall flat on the kitchen floor and I
made my way to the telephone phoned my neighbour.  His response to me
was that there could be a shooting between people either in his
backyard or just outside in the street.  My wife, while I was in the
bedrooms of my children, taking the boys out of the room which was the
closest to where I heard the shots, and taking them away from there to
a back room where my daughters were my wife had phoned the Athlone
police station and the response from the police station was that she
needn't worry, they knew all about what was going on.

And that obviously made me more terrified because of how I began to
interpret things from that point onwards.  I made my own deduction it
could be one of two things at that point.  It could have been a
possible perpetrator of he or offender of the law, who had been
cornered; or it could have been a freedom fighter who had been
surrounded by j the police.  I then went back into the back room where
my family was with our housekeeper.

And, of course, they were they were shivering there..  my children were
at that time thirteen, eleven and fotW years of age .. . and crying
incessantly and probably wondering when the next shot was going to hit
their bedroom door.  The shots were just going on and on and 4n.  And I
then started crawling around, moving towards he back of the house where
most of the sound was corrng from, and I managed to open the back
window very-cry slowly and slightly, and on peeping through I saw feet
moving about in my backyard, and then with the amount of vision that I
had, I could clearly see that my back gate was wide open and I know
that it's a practice of mine to lock it.

I then became aware of people walking around in the' back street, in
and out of the gate, in my backyard past that window, and everybody was
armed.  Some had taken position on the property opposite my house,
opposite the street in the back, also armed and shooting.  I then
closed the window and proceeded to go to the front of the house, and at
that point I my thought was to evacuate my house for the safety of my
family.  By this time it was about possibly three o'clock in the
morning.  And the shooting hadn't abated.  I then went back to the back
of the house, opened that same window, and I think it could have been
around three o'clock or just before when I saw a Casspir vehicle coming
down Denton Road, which is that road at the baJc.

It's K cul-de-sac and I suppose with no space to turn, the vehicle that
had gone past reversed again out of the street.  It must have made a
turn, and minutes after that it came back, this time reversing past the
window again, and I was watching all of this.

Then at around that time, when the vehicle had gone past again, I then
heard it revving up.  It speeded up and rammed the wall of Mr.
Noordien, my neighbour next door, rammed the wall.  About three
attempts were made before the wall gave and the Casspir then parked
right opposite, in very very close proximity to the apartment where
where Anton was apparently living.  It was at that time there was an
increase in the gunfire and also in the type of sound that I heard.
Only to discover afterwards, of course, that there were huge holes in
the wall, both outer and inner walls, right through the wall.

Soon after this exercise of the Gasspir, I went back to the room to
report to my wife what was happening.  And then I heard the front
doorbell ringing and I went to see who was there.  A person who
identified himself as either Sergeant or Captain Brazelle.  He said to
me that I should open the door because there is a terrorist in the
house next door and they needed to come in.  I protested and said my
family had been terrorized right through the night already, and that I
didn't think it was a wise thing for them to come and use my house as
an advantage point from which to fire heavy artillery.  They were all
very heavily armed.  He said to me he didn't need my permission.  I
then felt quite helpless and frustrated.

I opened the door and he barged in, with about four or five policemen
in uniform following him with guns at the ready.  They took various
positions, two in the kitchen, at the kitchen window opposite the
apartment, and two in the bathroom next to the kitchen, also opposite
the apartment.  I was ordered for my own safety to go into the room
where my family was and not to come out.  I didn't obey that, I went
into the room and kept the door open.  And I then saw that the two
policemen who were at the kitchen window bashed the kitchen windows
out... it sounded as if the house was blowing up.

I I began to feel increasingly compromised by a situation over which I
had no control.

I heard voices outside shouting, Kam uit, iou vark [Come out, you pig],
today is your last day today you going to die."  I I didn't I really
didn't know why this as happening.  And every time the voices or voice
said, Kom uit, jou vark," which to my mind meant they were only j
fighting one person.  The shooting didn't didn't stop.

Then I went into a room adjacent to the back room where I where I had
spent much of my time that morning" and at around 7:45 the morning,
about ja, about qurte to eight, I became aware of a policeman on the
roof, Jyiqg or crouching, and a hand o arm movement which would have
been either trying to catch something that had falIn or throwing
something.

Very I mean almost immediately after that, there w4s a loud, very-very
loud explosion.  And then everything just went quiet and minutes after
that, I heard someone sa)ling,

You may come out now, it's all over."

No one was allowed into into that apartment until the police had done
what they whatever they were doing inside and whatever was or whoever
was carried into an ambulance.  But when we when people who were
surrounding the place were finally allowed in by Mr.  Noordien we saw
the effect of whatever had been had been shot into the room or whatever
explosions occurred.

There were bits of clothing on the floor, against the wall the walls
and ceiling were blood-spattered all all over.  Bits of what I I can
only describe as hair of some sort and flesh were also strewn around
and and smeared or whatever on to the wall.

And that that ended a I suppose, an episode in our lives as a family
which we will never forget.

But Ij want to end by saying that I agreed to testify here today of
simply because the truth must be told.

I also agreed because of the impressions created by claims that yung
cadres like Anton and Ashley Kriel, Robbie

Waterwitch, Goline Williams and many-many others, were communists or
young people misguided by communists.  That myth should be exploded
once and for all.  I believe that a brave soldier died in the service
of his country.  I also believe that I owe it to the family, who were
not given the chance to say goodbye.  (Basil Snayer)

I'vi BEEN A STRANGER in my country for a long time.  My full name was
Mark Henry.  In 1991, I changed it to Yassir Henry.  Because Mark was
the name I could no longer live with it was much more than religious
grounds.  Mark was a name that brought me ostracization, that brought
me shame and brought me great danger.  I am 26 years old now

I want to recapture my experience at the hand of the state that has
scarred me for life and has caused me psychological trauma.

I tell this in order to have some kind of continuing and I hope that by
telling it I may wake up from this nightmare that I've lived ever since
16 November 1989.

I became politically active when I was fifteen years old.  In 1986,
myself, Ashley Forbes and Peter Jacobs went into exile with the strong
belief we would return stronger to protect our people from the
brutalities of the state..  . The plan was that they would come back
and set up structures and I would follow with expertise.  We went to
Swaziland, and we formally joined the ANG in Maputo.  In Lusaka we were
screened, accepted and sent to Luanda.  We were split up I went to the
East' for military training.  After two months I was taken up in the
security structures of the ANG.  I was selected to specialize in
military engineering.  At the age of seventeen, I was sent to the
Soviet Union for ten months.  There I specialized in special
intelligence and military combat work.  During that time I was
appointed military commissar of ten combatants.  For me this was a very
great honour and responsibility... I was thrust from boyhood into a
world that demanded constant vigilance,

maturity, discipline.  I returned to Luanda and was appointed to work
with the Soviet person responsible for training cadres in the
underground of South Africa who came for short periods of training to
Luanda.  When the Soviet person left I was given the full
responsibility for his work.  End 1988, I was called to Lusaka and
informec9ithat I will form part of the technological working group
subordinated to Ronnie Kasrils then head of the Military Political
Council.  I found that this assignment did not fulfill my objective
that I initially went into exile for, namely receive specialized
training and return to the country.

In 1989, together with Anton Fransch, known to me only as Mahomed, I
was infiltrated back into SA... Contrary to my expectations, there wads
no clear briefing of wawe were supposed to do in Cape Town.  Instead we
were Aold that we were to be debriefed.  We had to give details of our
training the process that unfolded was extremely confusing exacerbated
by the fact that we were chated to household chores.  We were
restricted to certain areas of the house only and were openly treated
with suspicion.  Our personal relations became so strained that there
was open hostility.  After a month I decided to leave I felt there was
no longer trust.  I felt that my life was at risk.  I leW and contacted
my sister who helped set me up somewhere eI,e as a student.  (long
silence sighs audibly before continuing) One day, purely by chance, I
met Mahomed in a shop.  We spoke frankly.  I conveyed to him my
concerns and said that I was prepared to meet them for a discussion.
His opinion was that since I left in the manner I did, I did not have
the right to meet them on neutral ground and I should go back with him.
I truly begged him not to show me where he stays... But he coerced me
into going with him.  Then there he refused to let me go unless I told
him where I stay.  Following this I felt compelled to relocate.  I felt
particularly vulnrable as the distrust between me and other comrades
had not been dispelled.  But I was running out of funds and decijed to
relocate to my family home for three days while organizing alternative
accommodation.  But the second day at my parents' home, about 3:30 I
heard a commotion at the front door and several security policemen
holding my father as a human shield with a gun against his head...
Outside they were laughing, shaking hands and congratulating
themselves, saying: Die skaap is in die kraal."  [ The sheep is in the
pen."] In my mind I thought this would be my end.  I was taken by car
and they started asking me about my weapons and about Mahomed.  They
took me to Grassy Park and then to Culemborg.  They interrogated me:
weapons and Mahomed and whether it was Anton Fransch.  They showed me
photographs of myself, they showed me photographs of Mahomed, they
showed me computer printouts with information about our infiltration
into the country.  At one stage, one just walked in and said, Wat praat
june nog met die fok ken donner?"  [ Why are you still talking to the
fucking bastard?"] And he hit me twice on the chest... I kept on saying
I had no weapons, I don't know Mahomed.  Then they informed me that my
father was arrested as well.  I told them that Mahomed and I had
disagreements and we had broken contact.  Liebenberg told me that
unless I cooperated they would kill my mother and nephew who was only
four.  At the time I didn't see this as an empty threat .. . I was
nineteen.  I don't think any nineteen-year-old should be given such a
choice... I had no choice.  I agreed to tell them on condition that
they release my father and leave my mother alone.  I tried to stall for
time and pointed it out on a map.  They showed me a very big map.  I
took a while and then I showed them... (cries) I showed.."  them.."
where he stayed.  They took me..  . with a large.."  contingent of
police to the house... With the confirmation that this is the house,
many more police came... I was then forced on to the floor of the car
with my head between my legs and my hands handcuffed behind my back...
(sobs) I thought that... that that that they would arrest Mahomed .. .
(sobs) but they entered the premises without warning..  . I heard
gunshots.  I could hear that the police were afraid.  They were running
up and down, someone shouted that one of them had been shot.  They
started shouting at Mahomed to come out.  What followed was a fierce
exchange of gunfire.  I heard a nade... I think it was then that I knew
it was not about arresting ... I heard a very big explosion, it sound
el like a rocket had been launched and then... (whisper) there was
silence..  . And they shouted that it was over.  In my head I heard all
the time, and even now although now I am asking the same question: Who
sold me to the police?  3 Who sold me to the police?  ... (cries) Anton
died!  ... With 7 that question on his mouth... And I wake up night
after night with the same question!  (cries) No... no... Thereafter I
was taken back to Culemborg aAd the questionng1 continued..  . the
questioning continued.."  with hour silence in between.  They showed me
thousands of phot graphs of people in exile.  I was shown an album. All
the other albums, they did the paging.  But this one they askd me to
page and at the fourth or fifth page ... Is4w something that to this
day I have nightmares about.  The photograph was that of a severed head
of someone I personally trained in Luanda.  His lips and kidneys were
all up alongside his neck.  His eyes were open and there was dried
blood on his lips.  The rest of the album contained photos of his body
parts strewn across a street... Where does culpability rest?  I believe
I cannot be held solely responsible for the death of Anton Fransch. And
the role played by the security police must be exposed.  (cries out) I
wish!  To be recognized!  For who and what I am!  So that the
falsification of my history can be rectified.  I want to know who the
person was who informed on me.  Only then will I be able to reconcile
myself with my experience and with the death of Anton (voice breaks
completely) that the ANG acknowledges their role in my pain!  That they
restore my military rank.  And that the TRC will grant me the
poss4,ility to wake up from this nightmare with which I've beef living
for so many years, so that I too can share in the pr4ss of healing
taking place in our country.  ARCHBISHP TuTU: Yassir there is not much
one can say... those of us who have not undergone this kind of
experience, can sometimes be very glib.  But what we realize is the
incredible cost, the heavy price paid for getting us where we are.
Especially by young people like yourself... We hope that this moment
has lifted some of this heavy burden from you... (Yassir Henry)

THE SOUND OF THE SECOND

NARRATIVE

FOR SIX MONTHS the Truth Commission has listened to the voices of
victims.  Focused and clear, the first narrative ct into the country.
It cut through class, language, persuaioriJ' penetrating even the most
frigid ear hole of stone.  Andt it continues.  Somewhere, in some dusty
community, from w&k to week, the tale keeps on being plaited.

She is sitting behind a microphone, dressed in beret or kopdoek and her
Sunday best.  Everybody recognizes her.  Truth has become Woman.  Her
voice, distorted behind her rough hand, has undermined Man as the
source of truth.  And yet.  Nobody knows her.

The truth and the illusion of truth as we have never known them.

I,

Yet something is amiss.  We prick up our ears.  Waiting for the Other.
The Counter.  The Perpetrator.  More and more we want the second
narrative.  And it had better be good.  It had better be powerful.  It
had better display integrity.  And it had better bring acute personal
detail, grief and bewilderment.

There can be no story without the balance of the antagonist.  The ear
and the heart simply cannot hold their heads above a one-way flood.  In
time, the victims' hearings are repoqed more sketchily, read less
avidly, scheduled less frequenter.  Who would want the truth when the
truth has turned Is back?  Who would wish to confess before
CommisRioners with as little power as themselves?

Now and then, the muffled sound of a perpetrator is heard in a court
interdict or press release.  At the political submissions in August, no
politician rises to the occasion.  There is not a single moment of
frank personal feeling.  When F.W. de Klerk says: I stand here before
you today..."  he is not even standing, he is sitting down.

After six months or so, at last the second narrative breaks into relief
from its background of silence unfocused, splintered in intention and
degrees of desperation.  But it is there.  And it is white.  And
male.

The starting point of the human rights hearings was the indefinable
wail that burst from Nomonde Calata's lips in East London.  The
starting point of the perpetrators' narrative is the uncontrollable
muscle in Brian Mitchell's jaw.  Mitchell is seeking amnesty for his
part in the Trust Feed massacre in which eleven people died.  When
Judge Andrew Wilson asks him during his amnesty hearing: Would you say
you suffered a lot?"  the only answer Mitchell can muster for the eight
o'clock news is a frantically quivering jaw muscle.

Two main voices will be heard in one week: the army generals and the
police generals.

I phone Army Headquarters: May I please interview General Georg
Meiring?"

About what?"

About his submission, Monday."

The General speaks to no one.  He stands by his submission.  He has
nothing more to say."

But I want to know why Meiring is not presenting the submission of the
old SADF."

I'm told to get lost in the ons-is-nog-steeds-baas-aI-dink-;ynie-so-me
tone.  [The we-are-still-the-boss-even-if-you-don'tthink-so tone.]

It is Monday morning.  The military squad marches into the venue in
Cape Town for Operation Shut Up and Deny.  (Not to be confused with
Operations Stratkom, Veikom and Komkom the last with its sexual
innuendoes and all;

Truth Commission to formulate a different position on reconciliation in
a way which takes it out of the colour code and makes it available to
all South Africans as a future guideline.  The human rights of black
people were violated by whites, but also by blacks at the instigation
of whites.  So the Truth Commission was forced to say: South Africa's
sharSeful Apartheid past has made people lose their humanity.  It
dehumanized people to such an extent that they treated feb human beings
worse than animals.  And this must change ever.  4

These contending positions on reconciliation and change vie for
supremacy.  ;

While debate flourishes around the question of amnesty or ANG members,
some ripples stir the waters of the Wildern#ss.  As the Crocodile
flounders, a secretary, Mrs.  Harman, focuses attention on its last
remaining teeth: Mr.  Botla is deeply religious, she tells a
journalist.  He knows his Bibl.  He will speak when the time is right.
She also says: Mr.  otha walks around with a big smile on his face.  He
says people also said bad things about Hitler.

After weeks of pressure, questions and criticism, the second arm of the
Truth Commission at last goes into action.  The first amnesty hearing.
It takes place in the Bafokeng Civ4c Centre on the hill overlooking
several well-known casinos.  The building houses the offices of King
Lebone Molotlegi XIV tribal leader of the Bafokeng-Bakwena, the richest
tribe in Africa with a yearly income of R75 million from local platinum
mines.  However, the money has always been controlled by trustees:
first the old regime, then Lucas Mangope, and now the new Government.
The Civic Centre is decorated with doorknobs in the shape of crocodiles
the genealogical totem of the tribe.  Bafokeng-Bakwena means People of
the Dew and the crocodile'.

Earln the morning a group of people file down the slopes tow arc5 the
venue.  The Amnesty Committee consists of three judges %rho are not
members of the seventeen-person Truth

Commission: Judges Hassen Mall, Andrew Wilson and Bernard Ngoepe.
Accompanying them are Commissioners Sisi Khampepe and Chris de Jager.
And the judges are difficult.  They want nothing to do with the media.
They refuse to make statements.  They refuse to give interviews.  They
refuse to hold a press conference.  Despite clinging to legal decorum,
they don't seem to get going.  We all stand around.  The Chairperson
and his Deputy Boraine eventually arrive, but the doors remain closed. 
Now and then someone storms out, glances back into the hall, grabs some
furniture and drags it back inside.

What is the problem?"  I ask somebody in the hall.  The problem is the
seating arrangements.  The judges are used to such matters being
resolved by the architecture of a courtroom.  Now they have an ordinary
hall, and it seems from the human rights hearings that you make a
Statement with your seating arrangement.  You project a symbolic
message.  Yes, you impact on the psychological disposition of the
entire audience.  In a nutshell the site of a seat can influence
amnesty!

Now where should the perpetrators sit?  On the same raised level as the
judges?  And the victims?  Down among the audience?  Most of the
perpetrators are still in prison and are guarded by a whole troop of
warders.  And where should Tutu and Boraine sit?  The Amnesty Committee
is independent.  In no way can its decisions be influenced by the Truth
Commission.

A table is moved off the stage.  Then the chairs.  To the great
annoyance of the camera and technical personnel, who rush around
setting up their equipment in new positions.  Out of pure boredom we
produce a short report for the news, on how the learned judges have the
same problem as an uninitiated hostess on a Saturday evening.  Who sits
where?  This tongue-in-cheek story is no sooner broadcast, than the
judges march sulkily into the hall.  In a piqued voice, Judge Mall asks
the media to be aware of their responsibility and not to send utter
nonsense out into the world.  The late start has nothing to do with who
is sitting where, but with the demands of Correctional Services.  Later
we hear that one of the judges' wives is a dedicated radio listener.
After the news she phoned her respectable husband on his cellphone:
Don't make asses of yourselves."

III

An Afrikaner son from a National Party home.  NG Kerk, Voortrekkers,
Rietfontein Noord Laerskool and Wonderboom Hoer.  God has given South
Africa to the Afrikaner.  Willing to die, but also willing to murder
for this land.  F It was Dirk Coetzee's dream to become a member of the
elite corps, the cream of the crop, the hand-picked core of the
security forces.  When he was eventuatly assigned o , Vlakplaas, the
unit was nothing more than a dormitory for F' askaris being paid R200 a
month.  Coetzee immediately , improved the living and working
conditions changed it into a place where the man ne could relax, a farm
for the guys'a Even though the official task description for Vlakplaas
was simply to track down and arrest guerrillas, in the eighteen months
of Coetzee's stay, there was only one arrest.  Nevertheless, and
despite spending millions of rands at the taxpayer's expense, the unit
was never criticized or accused of wasting money.

The reason is obvious: the unofficial task, namely to tram a hit squad
that could be called out to take care of activists, was I' carried out
perfectly.  The orders were given orally, one-to one  No diaries, no
written reports.  Amongst ourselves, says Coetzee, we developed our own
body language.  The wink of an eye, the nod of a head, could spell
someone's end.

Dirk Coetzee has often been accused of stretching stories and
fabricating details.  Yet it is precisely these details that make it
difficult to dismiss his evidence .. . because they exude intimate an
authentic knowledge.  Testifying about the torture of tAacher Joe
Pillay, Coetzee had Nazi-like scenes unfolding n underground bunker
near Fort Klapperkop in Pretoria.  Neither the torture nor the
information sought was important, but the experiment preceding the
death that was what counted.

They eventually decided then to bring in an army doctor in a brown
uniform with a drip and the so-called Truth serum they put Pillay on a
stretcher and the doctor controlled the drip in his arm.  He lost
control over his thinking.  It made him fall into a kind of relaxed
position."

Coetzee describes the layout of the buildings, the high brass, among
them Savimbi, attending discussions.  They weren't allowed to drink, he
says, because of these important presences.

The drops have an effect.  Four drops for not too big a person and if
you give more, it's like administering coroform... more would bring
such a deep sleep that one would die.  We were all drinking.  We gave
Kondile his spiked drink.  After twenty minutes he sat down uneasily.."
then he fell over backwards.  Then Major Nic van Rensburg said: Well
chaps, let's get on with the job."  Two of the younger constables with
the jeep dragged some dense bush veld wood and tyres and made a fire...
A man, tall and with blond hair, took his Makarov pistol with a
silencer and shot him on top of his head.  His body gave a short
jerk..."

Coetzee is an expert on banal statistics.

The burning of a body on an open fire takes seven hours.  Whilst that
happened we were drinking and braaing next to the fire.  I tell this
not to hurt the family, but to show you the callousness with which we
did things in those days.  The fleshier parts of the body take longer
.. . that's why we frequently had to turn the buttocks and thighs of
Kondile... by the morning we raked through the ashes to see that no
piece of bone or teeth was left.  Then we all went our own ways."

What is there left to say?  As part of his amnesty application this man
has handed in his unpublished manuscript on hit squads copyright
reserved.  IMRAM MoOsA (on behalf of Charity Kondile, the mother of

Sizwe): You have said you would like to meet Mrs.  Kondile and look her
in the eye.  It is an honour she feels you do not deserve.  And that if
you were really remorseful, you wouldn't apply for amnesty, but in fact
stand trial for what you did... COETZEE: I respect Mrs.  Kondile's
feelings as far as she doeh't want to see me.  But I feel that I should
not be made an isolated case.  I am also entitled to the rights of the
laws of'j the land.

After this showdown there is a long, uncomfortable silene in, the hall.
The amnesty panel, the legal representatives,i the audience, the
Kondile family.."  the onlr movement is .Thk Coetzee's gulping Adam's
apple.

A journalist enters the media room of the Durban Chrisan Centre.
Someone, a young boy who speaks English with a heavy Afrikaans accent,
put a big black bag down next to me and asked me to keep an eye on it.
Do you think I should tell the police?"

Of course," we urge him.  Since Coetzee's amnesty hearing started,
security has been clamped tightly around the event..  At one point a
death threat was received, and after that there were apparently
sharpshooters on the roof.  Coetzee himselk has a phalanx of bodyguards
who precede him into the hall, to check the chair in which he will sit,
the toilet he will use.  (Coetzee has a certain kind of intelligent
face that is rarely seen in the security branches from generals down to
foot soldiers.  Afrikaners are usually versed in bloodlines and nothing
counts more, any expert will tell you, than the ancestry of the mother.
Neither Coetzee's past nor his dyslexia rhymes with his face.

Everywhere Coetzee goes, Klein Dirk his youngest son goes too I ask
him, What is your.  grandmother's maiden name ur father's mother?"

His t5ck eyebrows and sullen eyes frown at me.  His blood ling does not
interest me.  Stofberg," he says.  And the puzzle is solved among
Afrikaner surnames, Stof berg counts as one of the best.)

The journalist calls the police and shows them the black overnight bag
against the wall.  In a flash they go into action.  The area around the
bag is cordoned off.  The media room is evacuated under a drooping
awning we all stand smoking while the bomb squad is called by radio.
They arrive with a sniffer dog.  Now they need three more bags so that
the dog can have a choice.  Three of us offer our bags, and they are
put next to the black one.  The dog starts sniffing.  Jissus, I hope
that dog is sniffing for dynamite, not dagga," a colleague says
nervously.  The dog sits down next to the black bag.  There is
something in it.  Now we are moved to the other side of the building.

Inside the hall it is David Tshikalange's turn.  Tshikalange started
out as Coetzee's gardener and ended up as a member of the Vlakplaas hit
squad.

Everybody is still busy working out how to open the bag and defuse the
bomb, when a side door of the hall opens and one of the cute young
translators tripples out.  Before anyone can move, she picks up the
black bag, throws it over her shoulder and walks off without even
noticing the astonished faces of the bomb squad.  She turns out to be
the Tsonga translator, specially flown in this morning from
Johannesburg to translate for Tshikalange, who has sounded like an
imbecile the past three days because of poor translation.  Her flight
was late and she went straight to the translation booth.  In passing,
she asked somebody to put her bag in the media room.  And why did the
dog sit down next to it?  There was indeed something suspicious inside
it.  Bullets.  A package of cartridges that she forgot to take out
after her last trip to the shooting range.

While Dirk Coetzee tells of how Griffiths Mxenge was stabbed, how the
knife was twisted in behind his ribs and couldn't be pulled out, how
his throat was cut and his intestines jerked out, his security men sit
behind him, half concealed by a curtain.  One of them is Klein Dirk.
His blonde girlfriend is with him today.  She is wearing a little black
foliage of a dress with thin straps.  As Coetzee is relating the
details, to gasps of horror from the audience, she is busy lacquering
her nails.  Her left hand is splayed on Klein Dirk's thigh he holds the
bottle while she applies neat layers of dark Cutex to her nails.

{ Th Truth Commission starts its work in 1997 with the continuation of
the amnesty hearing of Dirk Coetzee, Almnd j Nofomela and David
Tshikalange in Johannesburg.  But the hearing soon settles into a
half-hearted pace.

The hearing is supposed to start at ten.  At a quarter past ten the
Truth Commission banner is still being hammered into thrj wooden
panelling of the council chamber.  At half past ten' the first
testimony begins.  At eleven, it's teatime.  The Gommlte# adjourns.  We
wait. And wait.  It's twelve o'clock.  At half twelve Commissioner
Chris de Jager appears in the passa.  They've devised a way to shorten
the hearings.

Why didn't you devise it yesterday?"  an angry journ4st asks.

How do you foresee dealing with thousands of applications when you've
barely managed half an hour this morning?"  growls another.

It's ridiculous!"  shouts a third, beside himself.  You refuse to start
before ten o'clock in the morning, you adjourn for tea for lunch, for
the demands of nature and the menopause, and' oh boy!  you never work
later than four o'clock.  You handle the proceedings as if you're in
court but unlike a court you have a specific time span and YOU'LL
NEVER

MAKE IT AT

THIS PACE!"

All the journalists are edgy.  Deadlines are coming up, and not a
single line of argument has been sustained, nothing was said, nobody
was seen long enough to churn out even a funny kind of story.  But more
worrying this seems like a deliberate slide towards general amnesty.

David T4kalange and Almond Nofomela wanted to buy some dia&onds in
Lesotho.  They asked Coetzee for money

(he says).  He in turn borrowed R5 000 from his mother-inlaw and lent
it to them.

They returned a day later, with five little small diamonds the size of
a matchstick, stained, cracked, and one a little bigger like the nail
of my small finger a yellow one which I later learnt is called canary
yellow .  To me as a layman, I could see that they were cheated if one
just thinks of your wife's engagement ring.  And I send them to return
the man's diamonds and bring my money back."

Coetzee ordered Joe Mamasela to go with them.  Little did the Lesotho
diamond dealer know that the men he took for stupid opportunists were
in fact three of South Africa's most ruthless killers.  He was lured
out of Lesotho, killed in a blue gum plantation near Lindley and his
car taken in exchange for the diamonds.  When the three showed up at
Coetzee's, he realized that a dead body in a plantation near a
platteland town spelled trouble.  Coetzee, who was on his way to
oversee the murder of lawyer Griffiths Mxenge in Durban, rushed back to
Lindley that same night.  They put the body in a funeral parlour's body
bag and it was later burnt near what Coetzee called Houtkop border
post.  The car was stripped and sold at the border for the RS 000
Coetzee got from his mother-in-law.

So where's the political motive?

It would have been disastrous if a sensitive source like Joe Mamasela
was uncovered.  Secondly if I, or Joe, or Almond were charged for
diamond stealing it would embarrass the security forces and Vlakplaas
would be exposed."

Vlakplaas had it in for Lindley.

A jolly drinking session.  Singing, with their arms out of the windows,
five black men in their blue Ford Escort turned on to the national road
towards Lindley.  Unbeknown to them, they swerved right in front of the
deadly Vlakplaas contingent back from an operation.  They were a
danger!  They ignored the solid white line," says Coetzee; he tried to
force them off the road.  They refused and found themselves under fire
from the car behind Coetzee's.  That was Joe Mamasela emptying his
Tokarev pistol, wounding four of them, one seriously.  The men then
stopped.

Joe and Almond pulled the people in the vehicle out of the car.  Joe,
of course, in the normal manner, kicking karate an fisting them down.
At the time a pastor, an Afrikaan dominee, stopped with his wife and
asked if everything was okay, and I was just worried to get this member
of the public I out of the way and I said: there's nothing to worry
about, .J everything was under control I was from the police."  F

At the time, Mamasela had infiltrated the ANC in Botswana and his links
with the security police could not be made known, especially not when
he was crrying a weapbn of Russian origin.  So they picked.  up all the
empty cart rides and Coetzee ordered Nofomela to fire some shots with
his own service pistol.  They left the wounded there and reportc4 the
incident at Lindley.  But then!  Nofomela refused to tak.
responsibility for Mamasela's wild bout of shooting.  p

However, no problem was really insurmountable at Vlakplaas.

From Security Headquarters, Brigadier Jan du Preez, with the consent, I
can assure you, of General Johann Coetzee, through the divisional CID
officer, Brigadier Van der Merwe in Welkom to the Attorney-General's
office in Bloemfontein Advocate Tim McNally.  They cooked the whole
thing."

Coetzee sits back: another episode in the life and lore of Dirk
Coetzee.

After the hearing, Mamasela phones a Sesotho-speaking colleague and
tells him Coetzee is talking a lot of nonsense.  It was Coetzee himself
who wanted the diamonds, that's why he borrowed the money from his
mother-in-law.  When he saw that he had been cheated, he sent Mamasela
along to get his money back.  According to Mamasela, he, Nofomela and
Tshikalan sat at the Lesotho border for hours.  What could they do? Tey
were between the devil and the deep blue sea.  The diamolid dealer
would never return the money, but they couldn't go back to Coetzee with
empty hands.  Then they decided to pull off the first and best person
driving by and take his car, and give that to Coetzee in place of the
money.  And so they killed the next man who came along: In his car we
found a milking logbook from a dairy farm; he worked for one of the
biggest dairies in Lesotho.  We took his car to Coetzee."

My colleague reports this story on the radio.  At the end of the
broadcast some people phone from Lesotho: Thank you Radio Lesedi, thank
you Mamasela we've been wondering for years what happened to our
father.

It was an ordinary weekday.  Japie Maponya went about his work in a
building society in Krugersdorp, oblivious of the fact that two
Vlakplaas askaris were watching him through the plate-glass windows.
His sin?  His brother Odirile Maponya was an ANC guerrilla and had been
responsible for the death of a black policeman.  When Japie left for
home at closing time he was confronted by two men who said they were
investigating a case of fraud against him.  He should come with them to
a police station.  Kidnapped, Japie was taken to Vlakplaas where he was
assaulted by Eugene de Kock.

De Kock was angry and was shouting and assaulting him," one of the
askaris testifies.  There are ways to make a man talk.

De Kock wanted a canister of tear gas... I think he went to fetch it
from the back of his car and we blindfolded him, myself and Johannes
Mbelo... there was a combi similar to these that sell ice cream which
we called the A-Team because it didn't have any windows.  We then put
him into this combi.  De Kock then took this canister of tear gas and
sprayed it on his nose and closed his nose and he remained inside
coughing in the combi.  After a while he opened up the combi and
dragged him out and threw him on the ground.  He was not talking at
that stage.  De Kock asked me if this person would be able to recognize
me at a future stage and I said yes.  And he told me: Do not worry, my
china, he won't see you again.  '

Three years after the death of Japie, the very same brother on whose
behalf he was tortured to death planted a bomb at the Sterland cinema
complex in Pretoria, but something went wrong with the fuse and Odirile
Maponya blew himself up.

The family asks the Truth Commission to lead them to the remains of
Japie, so that the two brothers can rest in peace.t'

Nofomela suddenly becomes very talkative, spilling over with details,
when he gives evidence about the murder for which he j is set to spend
the rest of his life in jail.

In the beginning, Nofomela's problem was a very common; one: money.  I
could no longer claim traVelling expensed at1 Vlakplaas but I had a big
family, new house, new furninir and my car was in the garage," says
Nofomela.  And cars play a a crucial role for the man ne at Vlakplaas.
They never just sa car' it's always: a light-blue and white Opel
Laurel' or grey Cortina with a white bonnet'.

Then Johnny Mohane suggested that we steal money from the Lourenses
they have lots and lots of money lying in a bag in the house."

Late that afternoon, when they stalked the house from the back, they
found Hendrik Lourens sitting on his stoep.  When he saw them, he
asked: What are you kaffirs doing on my farm?"

That annoyed me!  The fact that he called me a kaffir especially if I
thought about the way I worked at Vlakplaas

Because quite often I worked for whites who were oppressing blacks and
today here a white man is calling me a kaffir.  This term that I
absolutely resented."

And that, says Nofomela,.  is his political motive.

The brother of Ace Moema sits motionless as Dirk Coetzee testifies that
Ace asked too many intelligent questions about the struct*es of
Vlakplaas.  He must be an ANC plant, Vlakplaa4peratives believed,
because he didn't fit in with the other ask iris  He was a thinker,"
says Goetzee, always reserved.  A non-drinker.  A non-smoker."  Ace was
discussed, and Brigadier Schoon told Captain Koos Vermeulen who hated
blacks fanatically, according to Coetzee to do with Ace as he saw
fit'.

After the testimony, Ace Moema's brother addresses the Committee and
conjures up the haunting image of his mother at home, at this very
moment, waiting.  Waiting for him and waiting for solace.  My mother ..
. is not here today, my father is late; When we left this morning, she
said she cannot stand the pain of listening to the proceedings about
how gruesome a death her son died... So, she said, go and listen and
reflect on what the proceedings are... Now she is waiting at home, she
doesn't know what is happening she expects us to get back and tell her
something... I'm not quite sure when I get back home what is it that I
tell her to ensure that..  . she finds solace in whatever I say to
her..."

If being intelligent, being quiet, is a criterion for one to die, then
it really brings to light the kind of anarchy that reigned at the time
at Vlakplaas.  In 1991, at the time of the Harms Commission, I was
called to give evidence and I went through this and I'm going through
this again.  What was clear was the ineptitude, the obvious lack of
sensitivi... of the pain that one was going through... And clearly from
the word go the Harms Commission was a farce... and I'm not trying to
construe that the Truth Commission is a farce, but one would expect
much more from the proceedings that are going on here.

My mother would like to know where her son is.  Why was it that he had
to die?  I am here to express the deepest... (cries drinks some water
sits for a long time with his slender left hand covering his forehead)
.. . Your Honour... I... left the country because of the pain I'd gone
through.  I've lived in exile, I've lived under very harsh conditions,
but this is one of the worst moments for me to be sitting here, to try
to say how the family feels about what has happened..  . and

Can I round off by asking two questions, just two questions, so that my
mother at home could sleep in peace?

Can somebody go to her and say: I've committed the murder.  I'm
sorry.

Can somebody take her to say: This is where your son is ... The
Attorney-General of KwaZulu-Natal, Tim McNflly, announces that he is
going to arrest Dirk Coetzee and put him on trial for the murder of
Griffiths Mxenge.  J

Of course.  It's the seon... 7

In the long grass they walk carey... test the win4 follow the spoor.."
the rifle held reassuringly against tie body.

And they are not out for a bit of liver' or a slice of biltog.  They
want one of the Big Five.for a trophy on the walli

Under the thorn tree things are getting uneasy.  Batted rhinos, a
one-toothed elephant, scarred buffaloes and ater.  Truly out of sorts,
out of habit, out of habitat tit teri on the fringes of their keel
velle

Why would an animal become a hunter?  Because Justice changes its
spots, says the hunter, sighting through his telescope.

In the light of campfires rumours ferment.  A lion rumbles, in the dark
and everyone gets excited.  Will he or won't he appear?  Who will be
the first to put a bullet in the heart?  Who will hang the trophy above
his bar counter?  What infamois name can become part of our personal
hunting statistics?  One can virtually hear the hunters closing in on
the erstwhile big game.

But of late it seems that the Truth Commissioners themselves are
developing a lust for hunting.  They threaten here, they subpoena
there, but they are amateurs .. . the meat hooks next to the fire
remain emp... In a dapper Boy Scout group the amnesty judges are
scaring up small game meticulously recording cases where skunks are
camouflaged as antelqpcs.

Who going to outwit whom?

Is thee no rescue for a threadbare old animal during this huntinseason?
Yes, says the taxidermist, wander over to the new camp on the other
side of the game farm..  . a crocodile is not regarded as one of the
Big Five there.  What is more: they do not distinguish between the
hunter and the hunted.

Behind Goetzee's legal team is a wall of files.  Their spines are
labelled: Lindley Incident, Lothar Neethling, Harms Commission
Transcript etc.  The blond pony-tail of Coetzee's young advocate lies
motionless on his back as he navigates the evidence.  He puts sharp and
critical questions to Coetzee to which his client responds with
practised fluency.  This is calculated to make the Amnesty Committee
assume that the most difficult ground has already been covered.  While
the advocate speaks, the attorney next to him runs a highly efficient
factory line of files, documents and letters passed on quietly by an
assistant at the slightest nod of the head.  Dirk Goetzee is an
industry.  Not so Nofomela.  He is defended by a one-man team with a
two-file argument.  On the third day of the hearings the press still
don't have copies of Nofomela's application.  The lawyer sits by
himself and seldom asks a question.  As a result Nofomela is subjected
to endless cross-examination.  When he speaks about anything in which
Coetzee is involved, he is vague.  When he speaks about the murder for
which he is serving a life sentence, he is verbal, exact, and even
offers dates and details like late afternoon' and by midday'.  An
unforgettable image: we are busy loading our laptops, notebooks,
machines and cables into an Avis car, when a Mercedes of the latest
design glides past us like a swollen foot.  The tinted windows slip
open and Dirk Coetzee's legal team wave regally at us.  Behind them
scuttles the clapped-out diesel Mercedes of Almond Nofomela's lawyer.

The legal teams of the amnesty applicants are a field of study in
themselves, Enter the lobby at any amnesty hearing, and you see them
immediately.  Off to one side, smoking feverishly, hairstyles a decade
or so out of fashion, wearing grey suits and packed in around Die
Blinke [The Glinty One].  The Blinke is the attorney.  He orchestrates
the assault.  Never because he supports these people's Apartheid
politics and past', of course, but because they deserve a fair shake.
And the more the money, perhaps, the fairer the shake?  Initially,
Departments of Defence and Police do not want to cover e expenses of
amnesty applicants, but most of them have contracts which stipulate
that the state will cover any kgal I costs relating to their period of
service.  When General Johani van der Merwe agrees to apply, the
floodgates open on police I amnesty applications and payment kicks in.
And then the e4, carpet is rolled out for the crocodiles and those who
clean' their teeth.  An attorney gets R2000 per dhy with 20 perce4
extra per applicant; the advocate is paid R3500 per day w1*1 a R300 per
hour consultation fee over weekends.  No fee, r after-hours.

The advocate is the star in the Blinke's team, and as sooias he walks
in all their attention shifts here is the champi6 of their cause, the
saviour.  And such an advocate is hand-picked according to firm rules
by the Blinke.  He must be reasonably young, so that his role in the
Apartheid past will never be an issue.  He must be pale and
sensitive-looking, so that one can assume that gruesome details shock
him also.  He must be an Afrikaner with a good English accent a man of
the times, home in all worlds.  The Blinke, usually overweight and
compulsive talker, will groom the advocate like a racehorse.  His
flanks will be soothed, his mane stroked, and his nostrils and palms
twitched and cuddled while he warms up.

When the show begins, the advocate leans towards his client with full
concentration.  The attorney sits back in the bench and observes all
the action like a ringmaster.  Imperceptibly, he moves small notes
towards the advocate, who does not lose his smooth line of argument for
a moment.

The legal teams evoke a lot of aggression at the hearings.  Everybo
knows this is a money-making business.  During the Capri hearings into
the training of IFP members to fight against the ANC, no fewer than 29
advocates sat there every day for t'fvo weeks.  Most of them never said
a word.  And, says an English-speaking advocate, it's the same
advocates who are gaining financially all over again.  Those who helped
people to lie then, are helping them now to tell the truth.

The only place where state money doesn't play a role is in the amnesty
applications from the political right and left.  The legal team
representing Glive Derby-Lewis and Janusz Walus consists of Harry
Prinsboo and Louisa van der Walt.  They share a cellphone.  I phone
them to get a reaction on the postponement of the Ham amnesty hearing.
Louisa answers and the conversation goes something like this: No, as a
matter of fact we are very (in the background an explosion of snorting,
tearing and absolute destruction) upset.."  just hold on... (she puts
the phone down and speaks in a scolding tone, the sounds die down to a
subdued growling)... Excuse me, my Rottweiler and my bulldog suddenly
want to tear each other to pieces... The law stipulates that people in
detention enjoy NEE!  STOP DIT!  EK PRAAT NIE WEER NIE [No!  Stop that!
I won't say it again!J .. . precedence.  But it's the... EK SIEN IOU
[I'm watching you] ... Hani family who are behind this (sounds of a
woman, cellphane in hand, being torn apart and eaten in her
kitchen)..."  The cellphone cuts out and I decide rather to get hold of
the Ham family's attorney.  Against the imposing George Bizos, who
looks at the audience and the judges more often than at the applicants,
Prinsloo and Van der Walt were clearly out of their depth.  A top-class
Afrikaner advocate never came forward to take up the Walus and
Derby-Lewis case.  Why would Afrikaner advocates prefer to defend VIok
and P.W. Botha rather than these two right-wingers?  Perhaps the fact
that neither of them is an Afrikaner has something to do with it.  This
is not what happens to those who apply for amnesty for the deaths of
Amy Biehl and the St.  James churchgoers.  The PAG, like the CP, does
not have favoured access to state funding like the NP or the ANC.  The
family of the young men sentenced for the murder of Amy Biehl have no
money for anything.  Yet their case is taken up by two attorneys, Nana
Goso and Norman Arendse.  They are so effective in linking Black
Consciousness and PAC policies to the deeds, that

Robin Brink, the Truth Commission's Leader of Evidence, congratulates
them at the end of the hearing.

Dirk Coetzee walked from the darkness into Vrye Weekblad.  He was not
the average Afrikaner, nor was he one o the greatly misled.  He was
also not a hero.  He was just a person who, like the rest of us at that
time, didn't necessarily know' what was right, but did know what was
wrong.  And as he was rejected and insulted over the years, as his
reactions veered between paranoia and psychopathy, he never weighed or
your conscience.  Coetzee was just an Afrikaner who, 4r whatever
reason, decided to walk a certain path.  And to the price for it..

I.

THE WET BAG AND OTHER

PHANTOMS

I STAND BEFORE you naked and humble.  I have decided to stop
apologizing for Apartheid and to tell the truth.  With this I will
betray my people and I will betray myself.  But I have to tell the
truth.  I have made peace with God and the time has come to make peace
with the people of KwaZulu-Natal.  To make peace with myself.  It is
this audience which haunts me in the back of my head.  Maybe among you
are those whom I assaulted, whom I left behind for dead in the
field."

Constable William Harrington testifies about the Seven Day War in the
area around Pietermaritzburg in the early nineties, when two hundred
people died, hundreds of houses were burned down and thousands of
refugees left homeless.  He admits that he assaulted more than a
thousand people during his short service period of two years and eight
months in the police force.  This works out to more than one person
every day.

Harrington was eighteen years old and had been out of the Police
Training College for barely a week when he was sent to track down ANC
combatants in the dark.

Richard said I should stick close to him.  I was so afraid.  We entered
an ANCUDF area.  Rick pointed out DaIlies he was fired at by the ANC
the previous week.  When we descended into ad ark valley, whistling
started 200 metres from us it was echoed into the valley.  They know we
are here, whispered Rick.  I tried to run, but it was difficult with
the haelgeweer and belt around my waist, trying to prevent the flares
and bullets from falling out of my pocket."

In the darkness they came across a group of men, down on their knees to
keep out of sight, and signalling to one another by making clicking
sounds with their tongues.  The unit Harrington was in crouched down
silently and crept closer, making the same clicking noises.  Five
metres from then someone suddenly shouted, Amapoyisa!"  [ The police!"]
aid everybody started to shoot in all directions.

It was like a movie imprinted on my memory.  Flares were fired, people
tumbled as they were shot.."  it was like a herd .  J in flight."  F

After this baptism Harrington learnt quickly.  At night,4 disguise ding
balaclavas, his unit sowed destruction in areas.  They went from home
to home, se ached for weapn demanded to see IIFP membership cards.  If
the house was without one, it was burnt down.  I fired on any ANC house
4 group from my vehicle, I distributed weapons to IFP chief4 I
transported Inkatha members and ammunition.  It was dayof death and
blood.

It was my war, my personal war against the ANC.  My superiors told me:
You act as if you are a little God.  And they were right.  I did
exactly as I pleased.  At the age of twenty I made my own choices as a
constable.  I aligned myself with the IFP and up to this day I never
had a lecture, letter or pamphlet informing me the ANC is no longer a
lot of terrorists."  Harrington's hero was Major Deon Terreblanche
notorious for his killing sprees.  He was actually like my father.  He
was interested in my work.  He always wanted to know how I was.  He
told me I personally have to fight against the ANC, because they were
communists.  He said he would see to it that I never get into
trouble."

But a kitskonstabel with ANC sympathies killed Terreblanche.

A few days before the Seven Day War we buried Major Deon.  Iced
constantly I drank to forget.  I grieved for that man.  I cafied him at
his funeral how could I not have loved that ma But when I look at what
he did, then I know I should not have loved him, but when I think of
him with my heart, then I know that man was my father... that man I
loved."

And his mother?

At that stage she was dying of cancer."

The camera picks up the thin line flowing from the corner of
Harrington's left eye over his cheek.  He raises his right hand stiffly
and tries to wipe it inconspicuously from his face.

I grew up in jail.  I was just 21 when I was sentenced.  But my fear
now belongs to the past.  As I leave this stage here today I will be a
marked man for the rest of my life.  I have just betrayed the police
motto: One for all and all for one.  I will be stigmatized as a traitor
because I have named every individual who worked with me and when you
fight like that, the only thing you have is trust.  You trust on each
other for your life.  And I have betrayed them all of them.."  but I
beg you for forgiveness and peace."

When Harrington leaves the stage he bursts uncontrollably into tears.
He is immediately taken to a special room for psychiatric support.

William Harrington was refused amnesty.

Amnesty application of policeman Hendrik Johannes Petrus Botha

Under the pretext that he had toilet paper in his backpack, Laurie
retrieved his backpack with the weapons and black bag from the combi.
The five of us walked through the thick bushes to an opening on the
Tugela River bank.  Laurie put down his backpack and whilst Laurie,
[Mbusoj Shabalala and Charles [NdabaJ were urinating at the river bank,
Sam and I took the silenced weapons out of the backpack.

In the meantime Laurie had made Charles and Shabalala sit flat on the
ground facing the direction of the river.  Laurie told them we are
taking them to a safe house in northern Natal.  Sam and I came from
behind and shot them in the back of the head.  After they had fallen we
each shot a second time into the body.  I shot Charles and Sam shot
Shabalala.  Sam and I removed their clothes, while Laurie returned to
the vehicle to get concrete poles, hessian and wire.

Laurie cut the wire into lengths and Sam rolled Charles and Shabalala
separately in hessian after the concrete ole had been placed over their
chest and legs.  The wire was then tied around their bodies to keep the
hessian and peles iI position.  Laurie and I then threw Charles's body
into t14 river from the bank.  I then assisted Sam in doing the same
Shabalala's body.  We put the clothes into the black b. Branches were
broken off the trees and the bloodstajns wiped away.  We spent about an
hour making sure that the area was clean and that the bodies had sunk."
if Extract from Darren Taylor's radio interview with Lorens du Plessis
4

What is of utmost importance is to examine the backgrounds in which we
grew up.  I mean that's where we were moulded.  I'm not accusing
anybody, but people were placed on a pedestal.."  not, .1 think, by
intent, but it was carried over from the family conversations... What I
would have liked to have done is to follow my conscience, because I
really id have..  . the knowledge that we were doing wrong.  I could
figure it out for myself.."  those who never experience a prick of
conscience, haven't got a conscience.  I would really like to have the
courage ... to live according to my convictions, because during the
seventies, I started feeling uncomfortable about things.  I said on
many occasions to my colleagues:

You know, we're wrong!  We're oppressing these people.  But this is as
far as it went.  I must say that I had a family to feed..."  (DuPlessis
is a former SADF colonel.  His name appears on the depth signal'
calling for the permanent removal from societ$of the Cradock Four.)

Extract from Darren Taylor's interview with Gerrie Hugo

An experiment was done to test the strength of motherhood with a
baboon, a female baboon with a baby.."  where it was put in confinement
and the floor started heating up, so as to test how strong motherhood
is, to check how far it will go before the baboon, drops the baby.."
and gets on top of the baby to get away from the heat.  In the end, the
baboon couldn't take the pain any more and dropped the baby and got on
top of the baby to get away from the heat.  And I feel this is
happening within the rank and file of the security forces where the
baby, being the operative, honestly believes that he will be protected
by the powers that be, but the powers that be, the designers of the
system and the planners, are starting to feel the heat and
eventually.."  they drop the baby.."  and the operative must take that
in mind, that that is going to happen to you.  And the only way that
you can protect yourself is to come forward now and come clean."  (Hugo
is a former Military Intelligence operative in Namibia and South
Africa.)

Shame strangles the remembrance of you

It was different before.  Victims told their stories to the Truth
Commission.  In another hall, at another time, in front of another
committee, perpetrators explained their deeds.  But the amnesty hearing
of police captain Jeffrey Benzien seizes the heart of truth and
reconciliation the victim face to face with the perpetrator and tears
it out into the light

Never before had the double-edged relationship between the torturer and
the tortured been depicted as graphically as it was that week in the
small, stuffy hall of the Truth Commission in Cape Town.  Initially the
body language of the tortured was clear: no one else counts, not the
Amnesty Committee, not the lawyers, not the audience what counts today
is you and me.  And we sit opposite each other, just like ten years
ago.  Except that I am not at your mercy you are at mine.  And I will
ask you the questions that have haunted me ever since.

But it isn't that easy.

The first indication of the complexity of the relationship between an
infamous torturer and his victim is the voice of Tony Yengeni.  As a
Member of Parliament, Yengeni's oice has become known for its tone of
confidence sometimes tinged with arrogance.  When he faces Benzien,
this is gone From where I sit taking notes, I have to get up to make
sure that it really is Yengeni speaking.  He sounds strangf different
his voice somehow choked.  Instead of seizing le moment to get back at
Benzien, Yengeni wants to know tie man.  What kind of man... uhm...
that uses a methbd like this one with the wet bag to people.."  to
other human begs repeatedly.."  and listening to those moans and
crieiand groans.."  and taking each of those people very near tokheir
deaths.."  what kind of man are you, what kind of nan is that, that can
do... what kind of human being can do that, Mr.  Benzien?  ... I'm
talking now about the man behind the wet bag."

At Yengeni's insistence, Benzien demonstrates the wet bag method.  I
want to see it with my own eyes."  The judges, who have come a long way
from meticulously sticking to court procedures, jump up so as not to
miss the specta e. Photographers come running, not believing their
luck.  And the sight of this bluntly built white man squatting on the
back of a black victim, who lies face down on the floor, and pulling a
blue bag over his head will remain one of the most loaded and
disturbing images in the life of the Truth Commission.

But for this moment, Yengeni has to pay dearly.

Back at the table, Benzien quietly turns on him and with one accurate
blow shatters Yengeni's political profile right across the country.

Do yu remember, Mr.  Yengeni, that within thirty minutes you belayed
Jennifer Schreiner?  Do you remember pointing out Bogani Jonas to us on
the highway?"

And Yengeni sits there as if begging this man to say it all;

as if betrayal or cowardice can only make sense to him in the presence
of this man.

A special relationship' is what Benzien says existed between him and
Ashley Forbes.  Forbes, biting his upper lip, tries to get Benzien to
admit to acts which had clearly plunged him into months of hell,
driving him to the point of suicide.

BENZIEN: You I can remember especially because I think that the two of
us, after weeks of your confinement, really became quite close..  . I
may be mistaken, but I would say relatively good friends in a way..  .
I assaulted you that first day.."  but then I took you on a trip... and
I'm not saying this flippantly .. . you said that it is the most
Kentucky Fried Chicken you've ever ate.."  and then we went to the
Western Transvaal where you pointed out arms caches... Do you remember
the time when you saw snow for the first time... what happened in the
snow next to the Ni..  and the trip to Colesberg, how you braaied with
me?  FORBES: Is it true that you tortured me every month on the 16th as
a kind of anniversary of when you arrested me?  BENZIEN: In the spirit
of reconciliation, you are making a mistake... FORBES: On the second
occasion I was wrapped in a carpet... my clothes were removed and the
wet bag method used on me... Do you remember that you said you were
going to break my nose by putting both your thumbs into my nostrils,
ripping them until blood came out of my nose?  BENZIEN: I know you had
a nosebleed but I thought that was a result of the smack I gave you.

Benzien reminds Forbes that he always brought him fruit on Sundays, and
how at great risk he smuggled Westerns Forbes's favourite reading
material into the cell.  The images of snow and fruit blend into the
relationship of the protector and the vulnerable a union in which both
could live out fantasy and nightmare.  When Forbes mentions anal
penetration, Benzien purses his lips disapprovingly: I deny that, and
I'm deeply disappointed that you say that."

All this time, Ashley Forbes's wife is sitting in the row behind her
husband's torturer.  When Benzien mentions the kind way she greeted him
that morning, he is overcome with emotion.  A torturer's success
depends on his intimate knowledge of the human psyche.  Benzien is a
connoisseur.  Within the first few minutes he manages to manipulate
most of his victims back into the roles of their previous relationship
where has the power and they the fragility.  He uses several t. niques
to achieve this during the amnesty hearings.  He alone, for three days,
in the same grey suit and tie.  At conference afterwards, the victims
remark how strange it to see him so alone.  He constantly drinks water.
He in the past his children had to be escorted by police he was such a
hated man.  How they knew about blanket kept in the bath in case of a
petrol-bomb attack on the  house.  Benzien remembers his victims' code
names, words they spoke, their unique mannerisms.  All 61 them confirm
that he was feared nationally he could get the information he wanted in
less than thirty minutes.

Cape Town had the same potential as Johannesburg, Pretoria and Durban
for shopping-mall bombs but I, with respect Mr.  Chairman, did my work
well."

Gary Kruser is now a director in the police force, in command of the
V.I.P protection unit.  Neatly nd professionally, he asks Benzien: What
happened after you arrested me?"

I didn't arrest you, sir," says Benzien.  Perhaps you confuse me."
Kruser snaps: I KNOW YOU.  It was you!"  But Benzien does not
remember.

KRUSER: Is it not true that you and Goosen assaulted me throughout the
trip in the combi... that you sat on my head ... after you arrested me
outside the bio scope BENZI: I cannot remember the rest... but if you
say we ass4lted you in the combi then I would concede that in all
provability we did... I don't know how though... KRUSER: Do you
remember when we arrived at Culemborg you hung me up?  BENZIEN: Hung
you up!  What you refer to as hanging up' is that handcuffing you to
the burglar-proofing?  KRUSER: Yes..  . so that my feet do not touch
the ground and then hitting me in the stomach... Then Kruser breaks
down and the protruding eyes of Benzien look concerned that this man,
who is now his boss, is crying.  Considering the whole state of affairs
Benzien's expression might be saying what happened to you does not seem
so bad.

But for Kruser it is too much for flesh and feelings: that this
experience, which has nearly destroyed his life, made not the slightest
imprint on Benzien's memory.

KRUSER: (in a stern voice) Did you ever get information out of me?
BENZIEN: (snappy) No sir!

KRUSER: Was anybody ever arrested because of me?  BENZIEN: No sir!

Then Kruser sits up straight the way he was sitting before the hearing
started.  Behind Benzien sit the victims of his torture in a row
chained by friendship and betrayal.  Yengeni betrayed Jonas, Jonas
pointed out people in albums, Peter Jacobs betrayed Forbes, Forbes
pointed out caches, Yassir Henry betrayed Anton Fransch.  During the
tea break they stand together in the passages with their painful truths
of triumph and shame.  As everybody is leaving Benzien grabs the hand
of Ashley Forbes tightly in both his own Forbes smiling shyly under his
thin moustache.

SBJTRCJACOBS

Police captain Jeff Benzien's first torture victim Peter Jacobs has
accused him of not making a full disclosure to the Amnesty Committee.
Jacobs now a National Crime

Intelligence superintendent says Benzien has only conceded to the truth
about his other torture methods following information from his former
victims in cross-examination.  Antjie Samuel reports:

TRANSCRIPT OF VOICE REPORT: Benzien has not come out with the whole
story, says Peter Jacobs.  During crossexamination, Benzien admitted
that he had shocked Jacobs with an electric device in the nose, ears,
genitals and rectum.  He also described the so-called watch ruse', when
policemen changed the time on their watches to give Jacobs t'.
impression that he had been interrogated until the after non.5 Benzien
said that when they told Jacobs thty would continu9 the next day, he
volunteered to.  show where Ashley Fobe was hiding.  Jacobs knew Forbes
would be gone by 1i afternoon.  Benzien also admitted telling Jacobs:
I'll take y4il to the verge of death as many times as I want to."
Aritle Samuel SABC Radio News Cape Town.  I

Beyond the Grape Curtain by Sandile Dikeni

And so continues the torture of Tony Yengeni.  Yengeni broke in under
thirty minutes, suffocating in a plastic bag which I' denied him air
and burnt his lungs, under the hands of Benzien.  In the mind of
Benzien, Yengeni, freedom fighter and anti-apartheid operative, is a
weakling, a man that breaks easily... I said I am not gonna write no
more columns like this, but the torture of Yengeni continues, with some
of us regarding him as a traitor to the cause, a sell-out, a cheat and,
in some stupid twist of faith and fate, his torturer becomes the hero,
the revealer, the brave man who informed us about it all.

Tony Ygeni in my eyes remains the hero.  Yengeni is one of the m4y
people in the ANC executive who stood by the TRG, knving that certain
issues about the ANC would be revealed the most mocking and degrading
way by their torturers.  In my eyes, Yengeni of Guguletu is one of the
people who still gives me hope amidst the caprice of the present.  And
not only Benzien, but many of us, owe him an apology.  And now, as I
look at Yengeni, yes, I see blood, his own blood on the hands of
Benzien and the Apartheid state.  I see blood.  The blood of Yengeni's
friends and comrades crushed and sucked out of their lungs by the
heroes of Apartheid in under forty minutes, says the torturer, in his
clinically precise full disclosure'.  I said I am not gonna write no
more columns like this.  I made a mistake.  (Cape Times)

For the first time, the Amnesty Committee calls and cross examines a
psychologist.  Ria Kotze, who testifies on the psychological aspects of
Captain Jeffrey Benzien's personality, has been counselling Benzien
since 1994 when he had a nervous breakdown.  Initially Kotze was
treating Benzien's wife for depression, but she was called in to treat
him too after an attack she describes as an auditory hallucination.  I
go to speak to her after her submission.  What does auditory
hallucination' mean?

It means he heard voices, but more I cannot tell you.  This was the
only thing that Benzien asked me not to talk about."

Now why was that?"  It's the only thing he has left this little
incident and it is his pride that he has kept it to himself."  When
Benzien comes out for a smoke break, I ask him about the term.

I can't tell you, except that I thought I was going out of my mind." He
smokes shakily.

But is it accusing voices, new voices, familiar ones...?"  He walks
off: Leave me... God, just leave me alone."  The clearest description
of what Benzien was experiencing comes from Kotze's testimony.  She
says Benzien was sitting on his veranda one evening, smoking a
cigarette, and then he had a flashback so intense and real that he
burst into tears.

His wife called Kotze and told her that when she asked Benzien what was
wrong, he kept on saying: I cannot tell you

I'm too ashamed."  Kotze says Benzien suffers from a severe form of
self-loathing.  The Amnesty Committee uses the opportunity of Kotze'
appearance to explore the issue of memory loss.  Sever perpetrators
claim not to remember certain things and the Committee is obviously not
sure whether people are genuinely traumatized or whether they are
deliberately hiding information and so do not fulfill the amnesty
requirement of full F disclosure.

The first issue raised by the victims' advocate is the teutbook
definition of post-traumatic stress' it can only be experienced by a
victim.  And the fundamental characteritiq of the victim is a feeling
of helplessness, intense fear 44 powerlessness..  Surely Benzien cannot
be classified as a victiu4 (If this definition is accurate, why do the
Commissioner$, the briefers, the statement takers, the journalists all
4t psychological treatment?)

Benzien was a victim of his inhumane working conditions, Kotze says. He
was a good cop at Murder and Robbery.  But he was so good that he was
moved to Security where he had to create these torture methods to
fulfill the expectations about him.  This destroyed his whole sense of
self.

The Amnesty Committee wants to know how Benzien can I' say one minute
that he does not remember and insist the next minute that something did
not happen.  Is it possible to forget and be quite sure at the same
time?

All of this centres on what advocate Robin Brink describes as the nasty
broomstick episode'.  Famous Western Cape MK member Nicla Pedro was
caught on his way to Lesotho, where he was supposed to meet with MK
cadres.  Their names were in a letter which he was only to open once he
had crossed the border.  When he was caught he told the security police
he had swallowed the letter I lied," says Pedro.  Benzien then took him
t4 a separate room, spread a newspaper and ordered him to deljz ate.
Then the nationally famous torturer put on surgical gves and worked
through whatever was on the newspaper.  When nothing was found, he
pushed his finger up Pedro's anus.  Then he took a broomstick and told
Pedro: I'll find the letter, even if I go up to your stomach."  Pedro,
just released from an institution for alcoholics, testifies in tears
before the Committee.  Benzien emphatically denies that he ever used a
broomstick.  He looks quite shocked when the claim is made.  He denies
it, over and over.  To reconstruct your memory, to beautify it, is an
ordinary human trait, says the psychologist.  Most people do it.  But
there are probably three kinds of memory loss.  The first is voluntary
you change your memory because you are under threat, because you cannot
bear to live with the reality.  The second kind is involuntary
something is so traumatic that it rips a hole in your memory, and you
cannot remember the incident or what happened just before and after it.
But there is also a third kind of memory loss and that occurs when you
testify in public.  Kotze says Benzien's stress levels were so
compounded by having to testify and his anxiety about how this might
affect the last bits of life he has with his wife and children, that it
is quite possible he remembered even less than usual.  How to
distinguish between lies and memory loss?  Slowly, as if speaking to
herself: In my job there are, in a sense, no lies all of it ties in,
reacts to, plays upon the truth..."

Two WOMEN: LET US HEAR

ANOTHER LANGUAGE

ITII

THE PREVIOUS DAY IT WAS CHRISTMAS.  We saw these poe with white
scarves, the witdoeke, and other peop1 4o were blowing whistles..

When I came home, I saw there were many white Then, they kicked my
door, they kicked it and they went in am sure I nearly died that day.
They missed when they s1of they missed me on my forehead.  Another
sidier approached the soldier was sitting on top of the car and he was
pointing at me.  He started shooting at me while I was trying to open
the door.  Now these bullets looked like pellets and they were black.
Then I went in next door and I, tried to wonder how did my children
survive.

During that time, Mr.  Ndamana couldn't run away, was too old.  He
threw a stone on the house, then he criel.I,

Oh!  How can they kill Jackson like that!"  After they killed my
husband Jackson, they threw him in the garden.  These people with white
scarves came into the house.

Now these men came in and one of the women knelt down to pray.  Some of
the houses were on fire.  There were white men all over and they were
shooting.  We heard them, that they were going into the toilet my God
help me!  and I closed the door.  I heard bullets going into the
toilet, somebody hit my door, one of the children said, Mama, let's
lye, let's go out, my father is coming, he's calling us."

Apparently that was the last time he spoke.  The white scarf people
axed him, houses were on fire, there was just fire all or.  There were
bullets flying all over, I don't know what was going on there.  Around
4 p.m. I thought we were all dead already, it was just dark and there
was smoke.  Apparently now they were leaving, around four.  We were
tramping over dead bodies, there were lots of them.  Some of these
children were put on fire.  When they put me in the van, this van was
already full of people.  I was taken to Tygerberg.

My fifteen-year-old son Bonisile ran away with his sisters.  When they
arrived they found out that their father was already dead.  They cried.
Some of the men who survived that day came to my house, now these men
picked up my husband.  He was he was put on top of his own son... This
child, who was also full of blood, kept on asking

Daddy, can you see me, can you see me?  Daddy,.  can you see me?"  Now
I heard when they got there at Conradie Hospital, when they were in
this passage on their way to Conradie, he died.  These bullets in me
feel like steel thorns... The undertaker took us to his mortuary.  I
saw him, I was with my elder daughter.  When we got there, his eyes
were hanging, we could see that there were dots, black dots all over
his body.  And we could see now the big gash on his head, the gash
caused by the axe.

I am still sick... my feet were rotten and my hands were all rotten, I
have holes, I can't sleep well.

Sometimes when I try to sleep, it feels like something is evaporating
from my head until I take these pills, then I get better.  All this is
caused by these bullets that I have in my body.

My son- Bonisile, who was smeared with his father's blood on him, was
never well again after that, he was psychologically disturbed.  Ms GOBO
DO-MADIKLZELA: He passed Standard 6 with symbol A, symbol B and C... I
can't see this clearly, but from this certificate it looks like he has
60, 70 and 80 per cent.  It looks like before he saw this horrible
sight of his father, he was a good son.  Thank you, Mama, I am going to
let you go now.  (Elsie Gishi)

IT WAS OUR CHRISTMAS PARTY..  . I suddenly became aware of something
that sounded like firecrackers.  I saw Rhoda Macdonald throw back her
arms and die, and Ian did exactly the same thing.  I swung around to
look at the door to see what was happening and I saw a man there with a
balaclava on his head but not over his head with an 47, and my
immediate reaction was, Oh my goodness, this is a terrorist attack!"
After that I blacked out and I don't j remember anything else until I
was on the helicopter being 7 flown to Bloemfontein, when I was aware
of somebody j telling me, You've been in a terrorist attack and we re
taking you to an I.C.U."

The next moment I became conscio6s was actually ii I.C.U, I was aware
of my family and friends around me.  And the most terrific experience
to me in the Intensive Unit Wz1 the fact that every evening as dusk
fell this man wo4l appear at the window.  I initially thought it was a
security guard.  I couldn't communicate with my family exzjpt through
writing, because obviously I had tubes everywhere, and I just used to
write to them: Please tell them to take the man away from the window.
[Tape ends.J

Eventually my eldest daughter was very clever and after about two
weeks.."  my daughter brought a photograph of one of the suspects .. .
and it was .. . this face at the window.."  and this was the gentleman
at the door with the AK-47..  . So that actually was a tremendous
healing thing for me, because suddenly I'd found him and I knew who
that hallucination was at I.C.U.

I spent a month in I.C.U.  It was quite traumatic, I had to learn to
walk again.  I came home.  My children were unbelievable, they used to
fight over who was to bath me, who was to dress me, who was to feed me.
I don't know whether I could ever have made it without them.  I had
open-heart surgery I had a hole in the aorta and I actually stopped
breathing.  And I also had half my large intestines remove I've got
really very ugly scarring up the middle and I hive a damaged thumb from
the shrapnel.  I've still got shrlpnel in my body, but all it means is
that the bells ring when I go through the airport, and that makes life
exciting.  And I have an injury on the knee.  But all in all, what I
must say is through the trauma of it all, I honestly feel richer.  I
think it's been a really enriching experience for me and a growing
curve, and I think it's given me the ability to relate to other people
who maybe go through trauma.

But while I was in hospital I was really quite touched that members of
the ANG did come to visit me, just popped in to see how I was doing.  I
thought that was very touching, and of course Bloemfontein, and really
the whole world, sent out messages, and in fact I was quite spoiled.
(Beth Savage testifying on the King William's Town Golf Club attack)

GUILT IS ON THE MOVE WITH I'

ALL HER MANTLES

IT IS A quarter to six.  Monday in the first week of MatthK The Amnesty
Committee has already adjodrned.  In a desekte4 part of Pretoria's
Munitoria Building, only the radio tean j still working.  I am busy on
the computer.  I have a report file, but my mind is working overtime:
what is a narrativ#?  Two versions of the murder of policeman Richard
Muse and his wife in November 1987 were put before Committee today by
the amnesty applicants.  Roland Bartties said: Narrative does not show,
does not intimate ... [ItsJ function is not to represent, it is to
constitute a spectacle."  Does this mean that the narratives about the
Mutase killings are not true but simply spectacles for an occasion? And
the occasion happens to be amnesty?  I transcribe CAPTAIN JACQUES
HECHTER'S version:

We got out a distance from the house.  We were wearing dark clothes and
balaclavas.  Mamasela's wasn't over his face, just rolled down low.  He
knocked on the Mutases' door and asked if he [Richard] was in.  We were
standing around the corner and listening.  When Mamasela told us that
Richard's wife was expecting him, we decided to wait for him inside.
Mamasela knocked on the door again.  When the woman opened the door,
Mamasela pushed her with a gun to a back room, where he had to keep her
from seeing us.  We switched off the lifts, but left the television on
so that it seemed that someone as there.  We then hid behind the couch.
Then a vehicle arrived: his Mazda.  He came to the door and found it
locked.  He was struggling with the lock when we jerked him inside.  He
immediately realized there was trouble.  He struggled violently he
fought like a tiger and he shouted wildly.  To bring him under control
I started to strangle him

I switch the tape recorder off will I ever again hear the word said
like that, with such apparent relish?  Through clenched teeth, Hechter
says: Ek her horn gerg..."  but the r' is rolled half a second longer
than usual and the dry, scraping g' catches in his throat.  and Van
Vuuren smothered him with a pillow over his face.  He then fired four
shots with his AK-47 the pillow was a silencer.  Loots was also present
and he accidentally hit me with the stock of his AK-47 against the arm.
Then we called Mamasela: Come on!  We're finished.  Just as we were
walking out we heard a shot from inside the house.  When Mamasela
joined us we asked what the shooting was about.  He told us that he
killed the woman because she saw his face.  It was only afterwards that
we learned that there was a child in the house."

Angie, with earphones on and eyes closed, is editing sound bites.
Somewhere something rings like a doorbell, but since we're visitors we
ignore it.  Suddenly she pulls off her earphones and crinkles her nose:
Something is burning.  When my eyes are closed my sense of smell is
very good."  I leave the media room, go down the passage, winking as I
pass one of my ancestors in a portrait: Magistrate Krog thick,
hairy-necked and framed in golden tresses against the wall.  And then I
see it: a heavy stream of smoke billowing around the corner down the
passage.  I run back.  There's a fire burning at the end of the
corridor!"  Angie calmly carries on working.  I run to the lift to go
and warn security that something is burning.  As the doors close, the
often-repeated warning against using the lift during a fire strikes me.
Too late.  The lift is already descending.  I break into a sweat.  I
have never been afraid of anything, but always stupid, stupid" stupid!
The SABC's inimitable Crispy Krog!"  one of my colleagues jokes later.
When the doors finally open on the ground floor, the air is thick with
white smoke.

Get Out, you stupid bloody woman the whole place is burning!"  screams
one of the guards as he yanks me out of the lift.

But my colleague is still working up there on the thir4t floor."  I
cough and make for the stairs.

The Fire Brigade will save them..."  but we both shoot up J the
staircase.  Upstairs what do we take, what do we leave behind?  j
Certain that the fire will soon be under control, we leav behind our
laptops, the tape recorders, notebooks, a new packet of cigarettes and
a roll of wine-gums.  We take our bays and cellphones.  Outside the
sirens blare.  We see smoke and a wide range of whites, greys and
blacks, but no flames.  On the pavement I take from my bag an Afrikaans
novel that contains a fictionalized account of the Mutase murder The
writer John Miles based his novel Kroniek uit die doofpc(t on
documentation that was given to him in a Checkers packet by Mutase's
lawyer.

I read JOHN MILES'S version:

(At the front door he walked straight into the trap.  The next morning
the packets of take-away food still lay on the ground I next to his
half-open car door.)

He shut the front door behind him.  The light switch did nothing but
click.  The mains, he thought I have to get to the back of the settee,
to the pistol I hid there.

But he fell over the settee as his head snapped to the left: it was the
first glancing blow.

Someone caught him round the shoulders, someone around the thighs.
Fiercely they fought.  He kicked out and knew he'd found a mark.  He
bit the fingers over his mouth... My eye!  he thought sperately, as
something sa,zk deep into it... he was finis he4 There were too many of
them.  They fell.  My eye!  The same she as my dead ear.  God, they're
turning me into a half-person

Had he heard..  . a laugh?  The reek of stale sweat, he thought.  How
well he knew it!  The smell of stale human sweat soaked into a uniform.
Uniform sweat.  You never forgot it.

He was in the kitchen, in front of the new stove.  He was pitch-black
in the face; I'd never seen him so black and his face what was left of
his face a huge hole in the back of his head on the sticky floor.  They
used a pillow as a silenr... pushed the pillow against his head, shot
through it, the place was full of feathers.  And what a mess!  It
looked as if a tornado had gone through the house: everything lying
broken, the TV beyond repair, the kitchen cupboards and chairs
everything except the new stove."

Miles also offers the SOWE TAN's version:

A former Bophuthatswana policeman and his nursing sister wife were shot
dead in their home in Temba township, near Hammanskraal on Monday
night... Their six-year-old son, Tshidiso ....1 who was unhurt, was
left crying alone the whole night in the house, apparently because he
did not know what to do with the bodies... Neighbours said they heard
shots fired at night but they did not take any notice.  After the
shooting three men were seen leaving the scene in a blue combi.

I use a cellphone to call the current affairs programmes from the
pavement: We are busy with a package for tomorrow on the murders of
Richard and Irene Mutase."

Please brief us: who are they?"

Mutase was assaulted by a white superior so badly that his eardrum
burst.  He put in claims against this man as well as the Minister of
Law and Order, and shortly after that he and his wife were murdered.
Maybe you should line up the writer John Miles for tomorrow.  He wrote
a book about the episode.  He saw in Mutase's story a model of the
ordinary man's quest for justice in the Apartheid era."

What time will we get the package?"

At the moment we're sifting on the pavement in front of the Munitoria
Building.  We've been evacuated because there's a fire somewhere."

Take a smoke break," laughs the producer.  And maybe mention the fire
in your last paragraph."

But the fire becomes much more than a postscript.  Within an hour, the
area around Munitoria has been transformed j into one of the biggest
fire-fighting actions in the history of, Pretoria.  The hoses alone,
says the Fire Chief, would stretch j from here to Sandton if they were
connected ?ogether.  And a* the fire grows from smoky to fiery,
J.eaping from floor to floor we report it blow by blow to the news
programmes on or cellphones.

I phone the Amnesty Committee's Leader of Evidence The building in
which the five policemen are appearing is on fire Silence on the other
end of the line: Come again?"

I repeat myself.  Can't you hear the sirens?"  He starts laughing
hysterically.

Hechter and Van Vuuren each told their own story today.  And their
stories became part of a whole circuit of narratives: township stories,
literature, Truth Commission testimonies, newspaper reports... The
murder was the clay.  The political climate, the amnesty conditions,
the presence of Tshidiso Mutase and his grandmother, the lawyers all of
these were the hands forming the clay.  So there are actually two
stories: the story and the under-story, the matrix, the propelling
force determining what is left out, what is used, how it is used.  And
at the heart of this force are the amnesty conditions.  Today they gave
rise to long descriptions of who gave the orders to create a context
for political motivation.  And then the gory finer details of the
murders to create the impression of full disclosure.  Ceaiy,he
narrators walked a fine line between providing enough detail to impress
the legal teams and avoiding the more gruesome details for the sake of
the Mutase family.  Whereas Irene Mutase's mother graphically described
how something white protruded from Mutase's ear after he was killed,
and fixed her eyes on Van Vuuren and Hechter.

But there is also the invisible audience the imagined audience on the
horizon somewhere the narrator's family, colleagues, the new
Government.  And every listener decodes the story in terms of truth.
Telling is therefore never neutral, and the selection and ordering try
to determine the interpretation.

Truckloads of firemen are brought in.  They file past us in their heavy
protective clothing most of them can barely be twenty.  From the
outside it doesn't look as if the fire has reached the media room with
its expensive translating, sound and television equipment.

Angie and I are called aside.  National Intelligence is here.  They
have orders to save the Amnesty Committee's documents.  They have been
told that we are from the Commission do we know where the documents
are?  We look at each other guiltily.  One evening when we were working
late I went looking for some tea or coffee to plunder.  The first open
room was the Amnesty Judges' and yes, there was Hassen Mall's case of
documents.  I sifted through them.  Against the wall was a row of
cabinets.  In some of them there were stacks of confidential amnesty
applications, but in one I found tea, coffee and delicious cookies
dipped in white chocolate.

We're from radio, not from the Truth Commission," we mumble.  But the
documents are on the third floor, the third room on the right down the
passage, in the second, third and fourth cabinets from the door."

This is PAUL VAN VUUREN'S version:

There was a big noise, he was screaming terribly.  And.."  me and
Captain Hechter .. . (sighs) worked together without talking.  Each
knew what he had to do... I can just explain to you that at that stage
in the operation time is a factor and one only acts without thinking...
On that specific night we were not discussing whether the woman would
see Mamasela.  We did not take it into consideration, which was a
mistake on our part, we should have considered it.  But I knew that
Captain Hechter's wife was divorcing him at the time and we did not put
pressure on each other.

After we fought with Richard Mutase and Captain Hechter put the pillow
over his head, and I fired four shots with a AK-47, Captain Loots and
Captain Hechter went out the door.."  and I can't remember if Captain
Hechter told me go and call Mamasela.  I went to the room... if I
rememljqr correctly, the woman's head was under the blanket, or sheet,
but her head was covered.  I told Mamasela: Yo4 nst come, we are
finished and then I turned around and, an out.  Heard shots.  When I
got outside, Mamasela was not to me.  I said, What did you do?  He told
me that he shot the woman also because she saw his face.  I just want
to meption that at the time it was not strange that people would
recqgnize Mamasela.  Because Mamasela and I were reasonably big friends
and he told me that he was going to get plastic surgery at the state's
expense.  He often spoke to me about his personal stuff.  So as far as
I'm concerned, Mamasela's face was to be changed later."

A spectacle of fire.  The tongues change colour as differnt materials
catch alight.  They lap together and explode into flames, branching
thunderously into giant columns of fire tossing skyward.  On the
pavement you feel and hear the vibrations of a massive flaming drum.
And still the building stands.  In ribbons of flame.  In spines of
coal.  While parts of it slowly sag... sag into an insane windmill of
fire.

We report the statistics.  On the edges of the building stand the black
figures of the firemen with hoses spurting water up walls of flames
several storeys high.  On each floor is a fire team.  gown on the
pavement a table has been set up with a pin-board on which the entire
strategy of the fire-fighting is plottejj Each team, each replacement
noted.

Wehave to know who is where," says the man who is conducting this
operation like a small war.  If parts collapse, we have to know whether
we have to warn or rescue.  You must remember that inside the building
it feels like an earthquake."

The protective suits that the firemen wear push their heart rates up to
150 beats per minute.  Fifty thousand cubic metres of water per second
are pumped into the fire and eventually it takes more than fifteen
hours to bring it under control.

A sweaty, black-sooted fireman taps on my shoulder:

Please give me a cigarette," he gasps, I need some air.

We file this report: The fire in the municipal building, which broke
out late yesterday afternoon, is still smouldering.  But the hall in
which the hearings of five former security policemen took place was
apparently not touched by the blaze.  National Intelligence personnel
are still on the scene to ensure that the amnesty premises are sealed
off.  They were sent yesterday evening to retrieve sensitive and
important documents.  At this stage it is not clear whether equipment
belonging to the SABC or the Truth Commission was damaged by the blaze.
But the Fire Department says that everything will be soaked with water
and soot."

And this one: Grocery trolleys full of documents of the Amnesty
Committee are currently being pushed out of the damaged wing of the
Pretoria Municipal Building.  The documents, among which are court
records, are either wet or scorched at the edges.  Other documentation
of specific cases such as that of the Kwa-Ndebele Minister Piet Ntuli
has been drenched.  Truth Commission personnel are standing around
dismayed while an alternative location, is being organized.  Technical
personnel say that the.  translating equipment will not be dry in time
to continue our hearings today."

Our computers are warped from the heat and caked with soot.  Our tape
recorders are still working.  The packet of wine-gums must have burst
open because the table is covered with colourful blobs.  Our bags smell
of smoke.

So does mine," says Judge Hassen Mall the next day, it's almost a
souvenir."  The smell lingers for months afterwards.

In an interview some months after the fire, Joe Mamasela gave his
version of the Mutase murders in an unbroken stream words: F

I was talking to her [Irene Mutase in the back room ofer home] to lie
to her that her husband was," involved in ro$.beies and stuff like that
and I asked, didn't he bring in any 4zoey, and generally she was quite
concerned that no, the nan' did not bring any money, at the back of my
mind you knoi4' felt pi... I did not know what I can do to help her.."
at Then all of a sudden Hechter came in, and when they were hting with
her husband she got concerned, she was calm all the time because I
tried as much as possible to keep her calm, but during the struggle,
myself I was disturbed, I was perturbed, and she was uncontrollably
agitated, and Hechter came it and said: Jy staan en gaap, hoekom maak
jy me die vrou dood?  [ You're standing there gaping, why don't you
lill the woman?  ] Then he took my revolver and HE ordered Ier to get
into the bed and he shot her about four times in the direction of her
head, I could see the body, the blood..."

And the child?"

No, the child was in the other room.  He was sleeping.  THEN he gave me
the gun and said: Nou gaan maak die d... gaan ski et daai kind.  [ Now
go and kilt.."  go and shoot the child.  ] So I took the gun and I
opened the door where he was sleeping and I saw this innocent little
thing, and his face mirrored the face of my own child... I just
couldn't do it."  j

So slept through all the noise, all the bullets?"

NoV'e slept through the noise... I had a gun in my hand, I could have
killed the boy in cold blood.  It was killing my own child... I then
fired two shots in the direction of the bedroom, where the wife lay,
then I closed the door.  Then Hechter said to me You did not shoot, I
did not hear any shots.  I said, No I shot.  He said, Bring the weapon
here.  And he took the gun and opened it and I was glad that I managed
to shoot at random, otherwise I would be killed for defying an order.
So in a way I believe I'm happy that I didn't kill the child whilst
that thing was going to haunt me for the rest of my life.  I don't
think I would have retained my sanity the way I've retained it."

The stories stay with me.  How they correspond.  How they differ.  The
stylistic traits of the oral narrative.  The story does not turn around
a single climax.  Rather, it collects smaller episodes: the murder is
just as important as the arrival at the house, the strategy inside the
house equals what happened thereafter.

And the iconic images: Hechter sketching the dark house with the
flickering TV.  Van Vuuren describing the struggle, the choking and the
shooting, without a word passing between the antagonists; adding a
sensitive touch: I knew his wife was divorcing him... I didn't put
extra pressure."  Miles, the writer, uses the take-away food abandoned
next to the car and the feathers of the pillow sifting down like dust
everywhere in the house after the shooting.  Mamasela talking about the
sleeping child.  The stories often make use of direct speech, seldom
have more than two characters per scene and quickly switch from one
episode to the next.

Every narrative carries the imprint of its narrator.  Hechter draws
pleasure from detail.  He articulates crisply and rasps particular
sounds.  He also describes: fighting like a tiger, struggling with the
lock, Loots accidentally hitting him with the gun.  By comparison Paul
van Vuuren's tone is almost casual.  His pronunciation has the
bluntness of a workingclass background hidden behind a careless,
arrogant tone of voice.  He insists on using proper titles, and
stumbles when constructing long sentences.  He also says: after we
fought'

with Richard Mutase as if there was something equal about the contest.
But in his story he also presents himself as a friend to Hechter and
Mamasela.  Mamasela's flow is a hasty stream full of well-worn cliches.
But he portrays himself as a sensitive person: disturbed... no pert
urbe by death.

Oral narratives, the academics say, are driven by reiiembered core
phrases and images that carry the distillation of the entire story.
From these cores the action, the characters, the conclusion all unfold.
And though the narratives may differ on the information they bear, the
core elements stay the same.  They overlap.

One such core moment is that of coAfrontation.  H4eh4r, Van Vuuren and
Miles all focus on the moment Muse entered the house.  And they all use
the kernel image!  ofPthe pillow initially it a cushion from the couch.
Hecht&ays that Van Vuuren used the pillow first to smother Mutas4 and
then to silence the shots.  Van Vuuren says Captain I-hter put the
pillow over Mutase's head.  In Miles's book, a family member tells of
how a bedroom pillow was used and feathers, blood and destruction were
strewn all through -the house.  Mamasela tells of how Hechter shot
holes in the blanket in a attempt to kill the woman.  In all the
stories a landscape is created where the powerful are struggling with
the powerle the armed with the defenceless, and the landscape is fill4d
with misunderstanding.

It'sworth noting where the stories differ on the question of
accountability.  No one will admit to killing Irene Mutase, because no
political reason could possibly exist why an ordinary nurse had to be
killed.  According to Hechter they called Mamasela, walked out of the
house and then heard the shooting.  According to Van Vuuren, he went to
the back room to call Mamasela.  When he got outside, Mamasela was next
to him telling him that he had to shoot her.  Mamasela says Hhter and
not Van Vuuren was with him, and Hechter shot Irene Mutase.  Does the
bond of friendship that Van Vuureijspeaks of still exist between him
and Mamasela?

Haifg on a second," a disparaging voice pipes up in my head.  What's
the point of all this textual reading ?  You're just neutralizing the
story of the death of Richard and Irene Mutase.  You're wrenching the
heart out of the horror.  You can live comfortably with the details,
once they've acquired no more than academic relevance."

But I argue back.  The things revealed by such a reading aren't
academic at all.  What's academic about the attempt by everyone
involved to avoid responsibility?"  Take this thing about the pillow,
then.  Here's the motif, class.  It's just a literary trick."

But doesn't it bring something important to the surface?  The image of
the Mutases, butchered under soft pillows and fluffy blankets, says so
much about the brutality of the crime.  And at the same time it
explodes a whole series of cliches like the white fear of being killed
in your bed, or the idea of living with your head in the clouds under a
sweetly scented pillow."

While a building is being destroyed in front of me by a beautiful,
all-consuming fire I argue with myself, I compare versions of truth.

Out of this must now be taken: The Truth?  It must be so.

The truth is validated by the majority, they say.  Or you bring your
own version of the truth to the merciless arena of the past only in
this way does the past become thinkable, the world become habitable.
And if you believe your own version, your own lie because as narrators
we all give ourselves permission to believe our own versions how can it
be said that you are being misleading?  To what extent can you bring
yourself not to know what you know?  Eventually it is not the lie that
matters, but that mechanism in yourself that allows you to accept
distortions.  Either Hechter or Mamasela killed Irene Mutase.  The
truth does not lie in between.  There cannot be a compromise between
the two versions.  Is the truth known only to the dead?  Between the
bodies, the child Tshidiso remains.  Which truth does he inherit?  It
is for him that the truth must be found.

And so, if the truth is to be believed in this country, it must perhaps
be written by those who bear the consequences of the past.

It is asking too much that everyone should believe the Tkuth
Commission's version of the Truth.  Or that people should be set free
by this truth, should be healed and reconciled.  But perhaps these
narratives alone are enough to justify the existence of the Truth
Commission.  Because of the narratives, people can no longer indulge in
their se parte dynasties of denial.

We cannot Judge our homeland.  The sword of just ire will stick fast in
our personal disgrace.  Joseph Brodsk

The reason I know I am NOT insane is because, unlike my brother, I feel
guilt.  The insane do not feel guilt.

Frank Bidart

It's them!  It's truly them... I go cold with recognition.  That
specific salacious laughter, that brotherly slap on the hairy shoulder,
that guffawing circle using a crude yet idiomatic Afrikaans.  The man
ne  More specifically: the Afrikaner man ne  Those who call their sons
pa se you rammetjie' , or my ou bull' [ Dad's little ram' or my old
bull'].  The nightmare of my youth.

The bullies with their wives the chatty women with impressive cleavages
and wellbehaved children.  The moustached men who, for decades, turned
life on the platteland into a spiralling infernf destruction,
brutalization and fear.  Ingal'enoboya.

The stand in a group, the five: Cronje, Van Vuuren, Hecht&, Venter,
Mentz.  The journalists, lawyers, victims,

If visitors walking into the foyer of the amnesty venue in Pretoria
give them a wide berth.  We all know: they were the doers.  Killing,
for them, was not dressed in the official pastels of eliminate',
remove' or take out'.  Their task was not to make speeches or shuffle
papers. Their task was to murder.  Aversion.  I want to distance
myself.  They are nothing to me.  I am not of them.  I find myself
overcome with anger. Anger for being caught up in their mess.  Watching
them out of the corner of my eye, trying to act normally, laughing,
smoking a slushy fear invades me.  Emanating from Paul van Vuuren with
his sullen, fleshy face, his hard dark hair and moustache, his blank
black eyes. The Afrikaans he speaks makes my tongue go dry the tone,
the delabialized vowels and thick, arrogant rhythms must be the
undercurrent of every activist's nightmare.  When the amnesty hearing
begins, I go sit in a bench close to them.  To look for signs their
hands, their fingernails, in their eyes, on their lips signs that these
are the faces of killers, of The Other.  For future reference: the Face
of Evil.

1989.  A rural suburban afternoon like any other.  My youngest is
sitting in the kitchen with me, reciting the route of blood through the
body.

Good, start again, from the lungs it goes..."  The phone rings.  The
dog barks.  24543."

Is that Antjie?"

Yes," I say.  I cover the mouthpiece.  The kettle, switch off the
kettle."

Is that the one who spoke to the ANC?"

I am silent.  It is that kind of sluggish Afrikaans.

Do you know the Wit Wolwe?  We're coming for you tonight.  A traitor
and slut like you must be shot like a dog."  The phone goes dead.

I remain standing there.  Suddenly I can see everything.  I hear my
blood.  My heart beats messily like an overripe pear.

A crumb, a Romany Cream crumb, on the table.  Even the minute, almost
invisible movements of my breath through my nostrils I see.  The house
is suddenly invaded by an unbearable weight of jasmine.  I replace the
receiver.  Make coffee with precise attention to detail.

I take the children out to the farm.  I go back home.  It already dusk.
Should I lock the door?  Must we close the blinds?  Switch on the
lights?

Later I hear John in the study.  He comes out with a forgotten gun.

What the hell are you doing?"

Well I don't know about you, but I'm not going to let myself get killed
in my own house by a fucing crazy raci4'

Are you off your head?  Are you planning to spend h4 whole evening
sitting in your lounge waiting, gun in hdnd like a bloody
Voortrekker!"

We both look at the gun.  The barrel is rusted and spider' webs are
dangling from it.  We laugh.  I don't even have the bullets," he says.
We sink down on the floor next to each other.  Our legs have suddenly
forsaken us.

He pours us each a drink.  I open a packet of peanuts.  It's already
dark.  My head is turned as if I'm listening for something.  John locks
the gate.  We go and sit in front of the TV.  He turns off the sound:
You can't hear the gate."

We wait.

If the gun was working and I used it tonight, what would disturb you
about that?"

I would have despaired completely.  If that man wants to shoot he must
shoot, then it's on his head.  But I won't shoot another person."

Jesus, woman, it's not you shooting, it's me.  And I'll shoot anyone
who wants to shoot me or my wife or my children."

Hysteria builds in me.  This is about a goddam principle the only
principle you and I actually have.  If you shoot him, he can just s
well shoot blacks, anyone can shoot anyone.  Do you want o live in a
place like that?  Do you want your children tcJ live in such a
country?"

Spare me your cliches about the struggle tonight.  Get reaL We're
sitting here trapped in our own home and in an hour's time we could
fucking well be dead!"

The word hangs between us.

Nine o'clock.  We wait.  We drink, but it has no effect.  If someone
shot you from the stoep, he could hit your body.  From the street the
angle would be less lethaL Every time a car goes past we prick up our
ears.  The dog barks endlessly.

Ten o'clock.  And I realize we're waiting for nothing but that sound.
The final invasion.  Perhaps that is what kills you not the bullet, but
the shock of having the fragile privacy of the body brutally destroyed,
for ever.

Eleven o'clock.  We know this is nothing, absolutely nothing compared
to what other people in this country have endured.  Still my whole
being pleads for that sound.  Let it happen, let it pass.

Twelve o'clock.  Our bodies sore from listening.  We go to bed.  We lie
next to each other.  Our eyes scratch the darkness.  When the sparrows
start rummaging in the gutters, we fall asleep.  Day breaks over the
platteland town like all other days.

For more than a month the five security cops have been sitting opposite
their victims and talking about their deeds.  And unlike Dirk Coetzee,
who was always only watching, these men did it.  Every single gruesome
detail, their hands did, their eyes saw, their brains sucked.  Their
testimony has changed the debate among white South Africans.  Whereas
before people denied that atrocities happened, now they deny that they
knew they were happening.  As the weeks drag on, the toll becomes
apparent.  By the last week of hearings most of the legal jargon and
procedures have disappeared.  Five exhausted men and five despairing
Amnesty Committee members finally complete the process.  For me they
have become more real than my own life.  I ask their lawyer whether I
can interview each of them separately.  I want to know (although I
don't tell him this, of course) whether they are deranged freaks,
murderers who committed crimes in the name of the Government, or
whether they are forcing the Afrikaner to confront himself.  More to
the point what do I have in common with the men I hate the most?  Jack
Cronje was the first one to catch me off guard.  The way he sat, day
after day, before the Amnesty Committee, in his grey suit and his
inoffensive tie he could have been my own Qom Albert from Reitz; he
could have been sitting in the ouderlingsbank in Morewag Church.  But
Jack Cronje has j resigned from the Hervormde Kerk.  I know what I
did... and I don't want to burden the church..."

He is sixty years old.  Sometimes he is conpletely confusd when he
testifies.  His doctor is testing him for Alzheimer's," says the
lawyer. The judges, who are more or less his own age, find difficult to
slate him for contradictory evidence.  Cronje ha' three children.  His
daughter is in the police.  He doesn't want to disclose where his sons
work.  I don't want them to be identified as the sons of Jack
Cronje."

His moustache quivers.  This is what my life has come to All that I
have, my best years, all that I know of loyalty and honour, I gave to
the police.  Now I find myself disgraced by politics.

When I drove back in the mornings after an operation, and people passed
me on their way to work, I thought: I did it for you and for you.." you
could sleep safe and sound, because I was doing my job.  This country
would not have held a week if it weren't for the security forces... For
myself I didn't do it, also not for my pocket.  I did it for my
country.

Vlakplaas," he brags, was different under me.  You saw on television
the looks of Eugene de Kock's men.."  a man with such long hair would
not dare put his foot on my farm.."  we didn't have this jolly-geid ...
we worked there..."

I interview em one after the other in a quiet corner of the Pretoria
Syjkd hail.  You know, your whole body langauge and tone of' voice
change when you are with these men," says an English-speaking
colleague.  I couldn't hear what you were talking about, but there is a
definite intimacy .. . I say nothing.  When I spoke to them I did use
all the codes I grew up with, and have been fighting against for a
lifetime.  But now I want a good story and I want to understand them. I
take the interviews to psychiatrist Dr.  Sean Kaliski of the Valkenberg
psychiatric unit.

You can't sit in this grand building and explain how things were in
those times.."  the people stir around in our souls and they don't
understand the circumstances of those days."  Warrant Officer Paul van
Vuuren nonchalantly swivels his chair while I interview him.  I talk to
you because you smell nice," he tells me.  Later I erase it from the
tape.

It is not easy to sit in this chair," he says.  You expose your soul to
the nation of South Africa, white and black.  And they look at me and
they think I am a monster.."  for sure I can feel it..  . their
attitude and the way they look at me... I can actually say that I see
the fear in their eyes as well as the hatred... The victims' lawyer
says we must talk to them, but it is difficult.."  because every time
we say we're sorry they shake their heads and say they don't accept
it... and that is also acceptable to me... You know, you say you're
sorry, but on the other hand, it is also empty words .. . do you
understand what I am trying to say?  I mean here I walk up to a person
I don't even know ... and I say, listen here, I'm sorry.  I mean isn't
it just empty words?"  Kaliski calls it anomie.  The norms you are used
to following no longer apply and you, alone, are now called upon to
explain your actions within a totally different framework.  So it is
with the five applicants.  They are no longer buffered by an Afrikaner
culture in power.  They have to explain themselves to a Commission
appointed by a new Government.  Three of the Commissioners are black.
Day after day, different groups of black victims file silently into the
benches opposite them.  Sometimes they are being challenged in
sophisticated English by someone like the son of Fabian and Florence
Ribeiro, the popular Mamelodi doctor and his wife.  Other times,
mothers and aunts shake their heads uttering disgust in countless
mother tongues.  Van Vuuren shot Richard Mutase, a fellow policeman and
colleague, with an AK-47.  Mutase's wife, Irene, was also shot that
night.  The couple's small son Tshidiso attends the hearing.  I,

I mean he sat there and he looked at me and I kilkd his father.."  and
I (a long, slow sigh) can understand that h should hate me in his heart
and his whole soul... But I didn even see him that night... There were
tears in his eyes at hearing today.."  that I saw myse... so I feel so
sorry r him... I mean you can't get past that.  I truly feel sory %r
him... If I could do something for hint and he calls ne d says do
something for me, than I will do it..  . and if le ys take me to Cape
Town then I will take ... but I nan what the hell does one do?"  4 That
cry has been echoing in my head ever since.  What the hell does one
do?

Kaliski talks about the legitimacy constructed in the past around these
extreme forms of violence.  The lawgivers made the laws, the lawyers
executed them, and they were assisted by a whole lot of other
professions.  This created a normative structure that legitimized the
killings.  And the basis was not a fear of Communism, Kaliski says.

We believed black people were not human; they were a threat, they were
going to kill us all, and then waste away the country until it was
nothing but another African disaster area."  He talks about a recently
published book, Bad Men Do What Good Men Dream.  While some men were
out killing black people, many whites were busy dreaming of a life
without black people: separate laws, separate amenities, separate
churches, separate homes, separate towns, separate countries... Of all
the cops, Captain Jacques Hechter is the most inaccesble.  I was warned
beforehand that he does not speak to joualists.  When I asked him for
an interview, he swung around irritably on his crutches and barged off.
I ran after him and barred his exit.  I repeated my request.  He hissed
through clenched teeth: I don't talk, it's sore, everything is too
sore."

But shouldn't people know about that?"

Why?"  he barked.  It's all games.  The former politicians played games
with us, and this whole Truth Commission thing is a game of the new
Government.  I know that I will not get aes... The only thing I can
tell you, I'm not going to jail."

What will you do?"  He glared at me.  Think for yourself."  And limped
away.  According to a psychiatric report by Professor Jan Robbertse,
Hechter suffered from dyslexia as a child.  Dyslexics are often unable
to integrate their needs and wishes with reality, and as a result find
it difficult to form an enduring sense of themselves and others.  This
is why, says the report, Hechter has been a loner since childhood.  The
report also deals with Hechter's personality disassociation'.  He has
developed two personalities that do not associate with each other and
alternate autonomously in the dominant position.  And this helps to
explain his reign of terror in the eighties.  By day Hechter had the
personality of a cop, a just man working in an office.  By night he
became a hangman.  In his own words: a white Afrikaner terrorist."  He
worked alone.  He would put on his balaclava, a pair of gloves, take
one of his old cars and go out to kill people in the township.  He
delivers his testimony about scores of murders without emotion.  His
pronunciation is crisp, with a particular relish in gutturals and
occlusive consonants.  Through it all, his green eyes stare straight at
the table in front of him.  Those eyes (he told the psychiatrist) are
always open.  He cannot close them neither to sleep, nor to pray.

Strangely enough, the-two personas prevent Hechter from suffering any
post-traumatic stress symptoms.  The moment he becomes uncomfortable
and tense in one persona, he switches to the other.

Hechter will be remembered for the deaths of Jackson Maake, Harold
Sefolo and Andrew Makupe.  The fact that he allowed them to hold an ANG
flag and sing Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika' before they were killed, says
Hechter, is proof that he is a just man.  He cannot remember
electrocuting them, but he remembers other things:

JUDGE BERNARD NGOEPE: Are you able to remember that on a certain day in
1987 on a farm near Pienaarsrivier, you electrocuted three people?  :1
HECHTER: I can.."  the elrocution... I can remember after (J it was
told to me.  But it was completely out of my thoughts iF I consciously
banned these things from my thoughts... I haven't thought about it for
ten years... NGOEPE: But you remember trivialities.  HECHTER: Yes, I
remember terribly... I can remember path.."  it was a white chalky
road.."  and there were guinea fowl.  I can remember things like that,
but the really the worse deeds.."  those I do not remember... Common
themes weave through the lives of the Vlakplaas five.  Most of them
came from relatively poor families, and the police force (like the
civil service) was a security net for poor and ambitious Afrikaner
boys. Other shared characteristics are their devotion to the Church and
the National Party and the role their fathers had in their lives.  Both
Colonel Roelf Venter and Captain Wouter Mentz do not talk of their
fathers as Pa': they prefer the Old Testament term Vader' in Afrikaans
a term reserved only for God.  Another marker is hunting.  Venter was
taught to stalk from a very young age he was so small he had to be tied
to his father with a rope so that he wouldn't get lost.  Venter says
this about his actions: Then I was not sorry because I thought it was
right.  Now I know that it was wrong and I regret my deeds.  This
sounds very ordinary, but according t psychiatrists Venter has made a
very difficult and crucial lea with this statement allowing for a space
where change is jbssible: then it was right, now it is wrong. What
makes thia psychological breakthrough is that it is almost impossible
to acknowledge that the central truth around which your life has been
built is a lie.  At the risk of the disintegration of your self-image,
you would rather keep on denying any wrongdoing.  Venter's neighbours
have asked him to move to another area he has become a stigma.  Dr. 
Kaliski describes this as a major disservice done by the Truth
Commission.  Some individuals are targeted as the scapegoats for past
atrocities.  And that allows other citizens to deny any complicity."

Wouter Mentz seldom reads his evidence from papers.  He answers in a
soft, accommodating voice the only sign of tension is the constant
jerking of his legs and feet under the table.

My circle of friends has shrunk, my family have distanced themselves
from me, I have problems with relationships... I was engaged for three
years to a lawyer... before that I was divorced.  A sword is hanging
over my head... I'm not a state witness of the Attorney-General and if
I don't get amnesty here, I will be prosecuted.."  then I will have to
go to jail where they will surely kill me... so one cannot sleep at
night I live from the morning to the eveg... I cannot plan anything for
next week or next month... I cannot go and ask for work who will give
me work?  If you walk into a place, people stop talking and look at
you.  That time, people slept safe while we were fighting terrorists.."
and now we are the criminals I never stole money I'm not Eugene de
Kock."

Mentz, according to the psychiatric report, shows symptoms of
shell-shock.  He was deeply marked by a traumatic childhood. Apparently
his father used to kick open his door at four o'clock in the morning,
shouting: Why the fuck are you still sleeping?"  Mentz had to take care
of the chicken farming.  He also suffers from trichotillomama a
compulsive affliction in which people pull out their hair.  In an
effort to be accepted into male culture, Mentz joined the police force
and was keen to become part of the elite unit one of the Vlakplaas man
ne How can you brutally kill someone and then go home and pick up your
daughter and put her on your lap?

Ag, many times I didn't even go home," says Mentz.  I only went back
the next morning when I knew that my wife and daughter were already out
of the house.."  because if I go just after.."  because you can't, you
want to wash yourself six times to get it out of you.."  many times I
didn't go home for two or three days... you can't go home and take a
beer and pour some wine for your wife and then tell her that you saw
this murder or that armed robbery one cannot do that."

What do I do with this?  They are as familiar as my brothe, cousins and
school friends.  Between us all distance is eraseR.  Was there perhaps
never a distance except the one I have built up with great effort
within myself over the years?  From  the faces alone I can tell who was
taken up in the Broedrl4nd, who is a Rapportryer, a Ruiterwag, who is
working el(ssfI'he Mentzes, I know, have a musical bloodline.  Whether
our name is Jack or Paul or Johannes it means somethg.  In some way or
another, all Afrikaners are related.  If sox body says his father
bought land here, or he grew' up in Odendaalsrus or Welkom then I know.
From the accents I can guess where they buy their clothes, where they
go on holiday, what car they drive, what music they listen to.  What I
have in common with them is a culture and part of that culture over
decades hatched the abominations for which they are responsible.  In a
sense it is not these men but a culture that is asking 4or amnesty.

For days I am in a daze.  I do a radio profile on each of the five.  I
try to find an entry point for each character.  I use the music of
Coenie de Villiers:

Calvyn de Wet van Zyl was in Boer in murg en been met n sluimerende
droom van In land wat sonder skroom' on met is deur n donker idea al

Cal4yn de Wet van Zyl was a Boer in bone and marrow with a slumbering
dream of a land that is without shame not tainted by any dark ideal...
Calvyn de Wet van Zyl knows the country is bought at a price that is
why he becomes more prepared even carries a gun in the street against
the evil odds of the Black Danger

When Venter talks of hunting, Coenie de Villiers sings in the
background:

My Dad was a hunter he was a man of steel

Don't be afraid my son don't disgrace your skin you are Boer in bone
and marrow what more can you ask?

Moenie vrees me my seun jy kom jou vel te na jy is Boer in murg en been
wat meer kan jy vra?

I am powerless to ignore what vibrates in me I abhor and care for these
five men.  I get up one morning with my face all swollen from a rash.
My scalp itches so much that I have to empty a bottle of cortisone on
it.  The question haunts me: why do I want to give evil a human face?

Half an hour after the first profile is broadcast, the phone rings.
Listeners are outraged.  You suggest that all Afrikaners are
murderers."

Those guys are psychopaths."

I have nothing to do with all of this.  I live on a farm in Hofmeyr and
I will not allow you to make me an accomplice."

Jack Cronje conned you beautifully!  Ask him who built the swimming
pool in his backyard?"  (And this, of course, is the call that upsets
me most.)

Not just Afrikaans listeners.  Don't pretend it's whites.  It's the
work of Afrikaners and Nationalists."

In my own humble way I did my bit don't classify me in your us ."  I

I do a follow-up package on the four categories of giilt formulated by
German theologians after the Second W(orld War: criminal guilt for the
people who did the killiijgs; political guilt for the politicians and
the people who wked them into power; moral guilt for those who did not
do enough, who did not resist, who were passive; aigl %*stly,
metaphysical guilt if I survived white the other was killed, I am
guilty of my very existence.  I quote KarP Jpers:

Thousands in Germany sought, or at least found dfath in battling the
regime, most of them anonymously.  We tvivors did not seek it.  We did
not go into the streets when oJewish friends were led away; we did not
scream until we to were destroyed.  We preferred to stay alive, on the
feeble, if logical ground, that our death could not have helped anyone.
We are guilty of being alive."

The dermatologist diagnoses a trauma-related rash.  I get pills and
ointment, and key into the Internet search engine: collective guilt

I.

The cobblestone courtyard of the Cultural History Museum in Adderley
Street: the National Party is entertaining journalists.  The Leader
moves benevolently from circle to circle.  Someone warns him: This is
perhaps not the most appropriate time to join this circle.  We are
discussing the Truth Commission."

But I like talking about the Truth Commission," the Leader says.  And I
just want to reiterate that I am just as shocked and palled by these
things as you are."  (I've had this conversation before.  With Roelf
Meyer.  Who also didn't know.  I asked him: The morning you switched on
the Radio and heard that Dulcie September had been shot what did you
think?"

Let me get you another glass of wine," he said charmingly.)

Maybe so," I bite back, but the five policemen say they did it for
us."

He narrows his eyes in sincerity.  But I never asked anybody to commit
these deeds in my name or in the name of my party."

My last reserves desert me.  I walk up to him.  I push my hand in his
face.

I spoke to them all.  They were members of your party.  They all say
they did the dirty work for you and for me.  And all of us are trying
to deal with that, with the responsibility of that, with the guilt of
such a claim.."  and where are you?  Where the fuck are you!"

The hasty arrival of a bodyguard and senior politicians brings me to my
senses.

You have fallen hook, line and sinker for the ANG's attempts to put the
blame on the Afrikaner.  And I am sorry I will not take the blame for
people who acted like barbarians, who ignored the parameters of their
duties.  They are criminals and they ought to be punished."

I look at the man in front of me.  He has aged.  Where once his face
was smooth and full, the skin is creased and his smile sticks in his
cheeks.  His nose seems to be made of a different substance.  And I
look at him as he stands there with his glass of whisky and his
cigarette and I think of my father.  And other blood-nationalists like
him.  Ordinary people.  Good people.  And how they have been left on
their own to deal with what they hear.

After Dr.  Verwoerd was stabbed to death in Parliament, my mother wrote
an essay picturing the Afrikaner psyche.

As long as I live, I will never forget that Thursday morning when I was
far from the house alone in the veld.  A clump of trees grows there
that I water regularly.  Everything was bitterly dry.  I stood with my
foot on the wire fence watching how the thin stream trickles over the
cracked earth.  But suddenly I became conscious of a drone from the
south-east.

In one way or another it was different from any other plane that I have
heard.  I looked up and remembered that I had heard over the radio that
the coffin with the body of the Prime Minister would be taken to
Pretoria that day.  Could it be?  And I looked again.  But no, I
thought, this is only one klane.  There should be a whole squadron of
our most bea4tiful, noble air-giants to take this man to his last
resting place.  {t was a lonely, heavy bomber.  It flew lower than I
have ever seen a plane before.  And its motors, I don't know ho4',
sounded muted.  And its flight very still, as if it should be handled
with the utmost tenderness.  And I realized, it *9 so that I am
standing all by myself on the pale Free ate landscape, while the body
of this great man passes me by In this moment the life of the man I
only saw and admi4d (from afar, had touched my life.  And I don't have
the arrogzne nor the confidence of the new generation to control such
ipuch.  It moved in my soul.  And I was wondering what I shoijd do?
Should I go out on the streets and call upon people to insider what is
happening to our country?  Should I call on them with the only call
that I know that of concentration camps, tears and blood?... And I
prayed that my hand should fall off if I ever write something for my
personal honour at the cost of my people and what has been negotiated
for them through years of tears and blood; that I will always remember
thai to write in Afrikaans is not a right, but a privilege bought lind
paid for at a price and that it brings with it heavy
responsibilities."

I think of her and how I love her.  How I was brought up with what is
the best and the proudest in the Afrikaner.  And I wonder about the
responsibility of a Leader.  Shouldn't he be establishing a space
within which we can confront ourselves and our past?  Shouldn't he
bring to the table the Afrikaner's blunt honesty and fearlessness to
grapple with the impossible?  So that we can participate in the
building of this country with self-rejpect and dignity?  Can't he just
say: I didn't know, but I will' ake the responsibility.  I will take
responsibility for all the ai ties committed under the National Party's
rule over the last fifty years.  I will lay wreaths where people have
been shot, I will collect money for victims, I will ask forgiveness and
I will pray.  I will take the responsibility.  I will take the blame."
Is truth that closely related to identity?  It must be.  What you
believe to be true depends on who you believe yourself to be.  I look
at the Leader in front of me, an Afrikaner leader.  And suddenly I
know: I have more in common with the Vlakplaas five than with this man.
Because they have walked a road, and through them some of us have
walked a road.  And hundreds of Afrikaners are walking this road on
their own with their own fears and shame and guilt.  And some say it,
most just live it.  We are so utterly sorry.  We are deeply ashamed and
gripped with remorse.  But hear us, we are from here.  We will live it
right here with you, for you.

I put my glass on a table and flee outside into Adderley Street the
polite applause for the Leader's coming speech blown in my back by the
Southeaster.

I think of the piece that my mother wrote.  How easily and naturally
the story shifts from politics to langauge.  And is this not where the
heart lies?  It has been stated openly that Afrikaans is the price that
Afrikaners will have to pay for Apartheid.  Was it not a debate for
years on Robben Island: What do we do with the language of the boere?

And I also wonder: is it better to have a leader like Verwoerd
mesmerizing a people to do the wrong thing blindly?  Or is it better to
have a De Klerk, doing the right thing but unable to convince himself
or his people of the rightness of it, the morality of his stance, and
leaving them to stumble along in guilt and despair, nearly as resentful
as their victims?

At the entrance to the Truth Commission's offices further down the
street, my colleague Sello and I bump into someone.  It's Wilhelm
Verwoerd.  Help me make sense of the five cops," I plead with the young
philosophy professor.

He smiles.  I anyway wanted to give you a quote from Paul Russell: If
truth is the main casualty in war, ambiguity is another ... one of the
legacies of war is a habit of simple distinction, simplification and
opposition.."  which continues to do much of our thinking for us."

Nee man, what does it mean?"

It deals with war psychosis.  It means that in the past we had no
choice but to live by simple white or black guideliAes.  ,j But we
shouldn't continue being dictated to by oversimplified j credos during
times of peace.  We must try and make space for j ambiguity."  When he
walks off, Sello asks: Who is that?"

The grandson of Dr.  Verwoerd."

Sello stops.  He gapes at me.  His eyes widen.  Then had si down flat
on the pavement notebooks and cassettes scatte&.

This man?"

Ja," I say.

And where does he work?"  4

He now works for the Truth Commission."

Sello hurls himself backwards, his feet stick right out into busy
Adderley Street.  He shrieks with pleasure.  He trammels his fists on
the paving.  It becomes quite a spectacle, among the hawkers underneath
the statue of Jan Smuts.  Sello sits up and wipes the tears from his
eyes: Jirrre!  Julie Boere."  [ Jesus!  You Boers!"]

I ran to the Kadett... someone seated on the rear left-hand seat fired
three shots at me... a person stretching across the car shot at me...
he pointed the gun at me.  I saw his hand ... it was a white man's
hand.  I can still picture the orange spark coming from the ... Iran
back home... I found my father sprawled at the drain in our courtyard
with 25 bullets in his head.  My mother was spreadeagled further away
with one shot only.  he didn't seem injured.  There was no blood.  I
held her in my,ms and she sighed that was her last breath."  - Chris
Ribeiro

THE POLITICAL PAGE CURLS

OVER ITSELF

IT'S ONLY WHEN the Truth Commission's offices are filling up with more
foreign accents than usual that we realize something special is
happening.  And make no mistake, Truth Commissions are a worldwide
industry.  The swarm of overseas journalists is speedily followed by
flocks of demure commentators and troops of mild-mannered, bespectacled
academics.

Because they are particularly interested in the victims of Apartheid?

No, because for the first time politicians and political parties are
making submissions before the Commission.

There have been seventeen previous Truth Commissions in the world, and
politicians have participated in none of them," says an American
professor, squinting in the sun outside the building where the
Worcester hearings are taking place.  How on earth did you do it?"

No idea," I answer.

It is not just that one is tired of the people who jet in for a week,
squeeze in an interview with Archbishop Tutu after a visit to the
Kruger National Park, attend three days of hearings, endlessly pester
local journalists for information and sexy quotes, and then go away to
produce a thesis or a book it is not that.  It is rather because one
also doesn't understand the inscrutable machinery of politics.

Sometimes I try to explain that the process was inclusive from the very
beginning, from the first submissions on what the legislation should
contain.  That in a way politicians in this country still feel
accountable to the public.  They may well lie and deceive, but to
explain to the people' has always been the way of doing things around
here.  But that is so naive that silence offers its neck.  Sometimes I
say that politicians are opportunistic enough to realize that a
political party can1 get more mileage out of a very public, highly
moral forum an out of any number of mass rallies.  Or that the richness
of the victims' testimonies has moved political parties to want to tell
their side of the story.  I also suggest that our isolation ma have
played a part: people have never been exposed to thjf sort of process
and so they don't realize that refusing o participate is an option. And
then there is the groundiwq4c done by many Commissioners, the personal
meeting id discussions with each party leader.

I offer all these explanations, because it sounds to arrogant to say
that for the first time in the history of the the Big Question was
resolved: how to break the hegemoiy of the security forces.  We did it,
says the chairperson of the Justice Portfolio Committee, Johnny de
Lange, by individualizing amnesty applications.  And it was in fact the
National Party who first insisted on individual applications for
indemnity before they would allow Umkhonto we Sizwe members, into the
country prior to the elections in 1994.

Whatever the case, the contrast between the politicl hearings and the
others is striking.  It is strange to see t14e Commissioners among the
political elite.  The posters that read The Truth Sets You Free' are
suddenly drained of meaning.  And so are the Commissioners' rituals,
gestures, tones of voice.  In cavalcades, with enthusiastic audiences,
the two main parties arrive.  The hall smells of silk, aftershave and
testosterone.  Jose Zalaquett's comment comes back to me:
reconciliation is not possible if the two main parties do not have a
secret agreement about what they see as mutually important.

Gonejs the dearly bought language.  Over the months we've realizedAvhat
an immense price of pain each person must pay just to simmer out their
own story at the Truth Commission.  Each word is exhaled from the
heart, each syllable vibrates with a lifetime of sorrow.  This is gone.
Now it's the hour of those who sc rum down in Parliament.  The display
of tongues freed into rhetoric the signature of power.  The old and new
masters of foam in the ears.

The long-awaited meeting between the Truth Commission and Inkatha
Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi late in the year could hardly
have started in a more jovial manner.  With a sweeping gesture and
amidst raucous laughter the Minister produced a framed photograph of
himself and the head of his church: Archbishop Desmond Tutu.  When the
media have been told to leave, the Archbishop sits down with Minister
Buthelezi and IFP National Council member Joe ews... and prays.

Buthelezi is the last major political leader to meet the Commission.
And the purpose of the meeting is to secure a political submission from
the party that has branded the Commission an ANC witch-hunt.

After a two-hour meeting there is a press conference.  The Archbishop
says: The talks were full and frank.

Then, while Tutu and Boraine listen, the IFP leader slates the
Commission.  A memo is handed to the media describing the Commission as
a perverted mechanism created by a centralized ANC in an effort to
portray themselves as the only righteous anti-apartheid force in the
country.  The Commission is compared to the McCarthy Commission and the
Spanish Inquisition.  The IEP believes, according to the statement,
that the combination of amnesty, compensation and truth-finding is a
recipe for great evil.  People will say anything to get money and
amnesty.

But Buthelezi promises to make his own submission on how the LFP was
the main target of the ANC's armed struggle.  The ANC, according to the
memo, killed far more [FP members than the supporters of Apartheid ever
did.  *

Buthelezi's role in the Truth Commission process has been that of a
spoiler at worst and a reluctant participant at best.

Some sense of his role in the IFP can be gleaned from an issue of the
party's own parliamentary publication.

The title is sturdy: 1FF Communicator.  But the subtitle wobbles on
interminably: The Inkatha Freedom Party National Assembly Whip's
Internal Weekly Report.  On the first page there is some advice from
Proverbs:

Whoso keepeth his tongue, keepeth his soul."

The entire middle section of the publication is devoted to j profile of
Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi.  He has no fewer than five honorary
doctorates in law one each from the F Universities of Zululand and Cape
Town, and three from, universities in America.  He was made a Knight
Commander of the Star of Africa by Liberia.  He received the Key to the
City of Birmingham.  In India he was hailed as an Apostle f Peace.  The
last award he received was in 1989 the year f before the release of
Nelson Mandela.

On the final page, IFP parliament aries get their thought for the week:
When tomorrow comes, today will be gone for, ever.  I hope I will not
regret the price I paid for it."

Throughout the life of the Truth Commission, Buthelezi has been
promising: if people want the country reduced to ashes, then they must
subpoena him to appear before the Commission.

I,

The other leader not coming to the Truth Commission is Eugene Terre'
Blanche  At the time of the local elections in 1996 the AWB already
stated clearly that they refused to be absorbed into one of the most
bizarre democracies in the world a democracy in which the unemployed
have finally taken charge of those who work, the ineducable now rule
the productive, and squatters govern the suburbs.

Despite this claim that things have changed so dramatically, a town
like Ventersdorp still calls its municipal pamphlet Die Mieliepit (Tl
Mealie Kernel).  You still pass by two phallic pillars biddi* you:
Welkom in Ventersdorp.  Just beyond that stands a gi4 white egg.  The
main thoroughfare of the town is still called-Iendrik Potgieter Street.
Yes, and the shops: the

Knip en Slik, Dies Nes, or even Die Mikstok (The Cut and Stitch, The
Nest, The Forked Stick).  The virile and lewd themes are continued
inside the Walk Inn Hotel, where the cocktails are named Blue Movie',
Lang Plesier' ( Long Pleasure') there is even a Springbokkie' and an
ANC Multi-Racial' consisting of layers of yellow, green and black
liqueur.

In the barred cage of Terre' Blanche sunny enclosed stoep m
Ventersdorj, stands an ossewa with full harness.

The political submissions to the Truth Commission are a radical
departure from its public focus until now: a shift from individual
tales to the collective, from victims to the masterminds, from the
powerless to those in power.  Political parties have been asked to
state their case and sketch the frameworks j within which South
Africans killed one another.  Will they come?

No need to worry.  Whether their politics required them to govern, to
protest, to pray or simply to make money they are coming.  At the
eleventh hour the DP realizes that an opportunity to bestride the moral
high ground wrapped in the honourable cloak of the Truth Commission
does not often come a party's way.

For an obedient organization like the National Party, the issue of
participation must have been complicated.  It was surely not without
relief that the Nationalists first heard that each party would have
ouly ten minutes to explain its role in outh Africa's past.  A week
before the date, the party was raring to present a somewhat slender
submission under the leadership of Leon Wessels (The Leader Himself was
away on leave).  Then the ANC withdrew.  Then the date was postponed..
Then the venue was changed at the insistence of the ANC.  It's no
longer the small, newly painted offices of the Truth Commission, but
the spacious Good Hope Centre home of the wrestling match, the pop
concert, the religious revival and the political rally.  Then more time
was allowed for each submission.  Now the National Party suddenly finds
itself with a full day to tell how it ruled the country from 1960
onwards.  At the last minute, Leon Wessels is replaced by party leader
F.W. de Klerk.  No one knows what to expect.  What will the parties
say? Will the NP gloss over its responsibility for the past thirty
years? It's been said at as fast as the shredders destroyed crucial
documents, photostat machines were churning out copies.  Several foot
soldiers ac apparently walking around with documents signed by wJlknown
politicians.  Will the party acknowledge its past?  j Similarly, will
the ANC, which has found it very difficult to.  admit to mistakes since
it came to power, turn in a elf righteous performance?  Will the pahy
expose the rotten apples in its midst?  Or will it protect them under
the ue of collective responsibility?  Will it treat disadvantage as
alibi or will it force individuals to own up to their actions?

And what about the IFP?  7 They say they are still busy writing their
submission thank you, and they will come when they are finished.

But everybody expects the political submissions to see the emergence of
the real debate around the Truth Commission that of personal
responsibility.  Is the individual merely a puppet in the hands of
politicians or appointed authorities?  Or is the individual, soldier or
comrade alike, ultimaely responsible for his own actions and deeds?  Is
the phrase I as only carrying out orders' a good enough reason for
having committed murder?

The corridors and caucuses are alive with speculation on what will come
out.  The puppet-masters keep mum.  The audience wonders which of the
rulers will be clutching a Kleenex.  The media installs its run-down
equipment in the Good Hope Centre and tries to get hold of copies of
the submissions.

The d Hope Centre: Solid and vault-like, it is a building that infuses
to interact with its surroundings; preferring an aura f sec re It has
no face, no concentrated point of entry, no windows that could open the
structure to the world, no walkway leading up to it to offer the
visitor perspective.  If a building's exterior can be said to serve and
reflect the outer skin of the body and mind of a society , then this
centre speaks of isolation and division.  Its name, the centre of good
hope, is more a paradox than an explanation.

A vast domed and concrete shell, the centre rejects the vulgarity of
seduction.  It confounds the senses, constrains the libido and marshals
the collective and restrictive idea.  The Good Hope Centre seems to
flinch from the common gaze, ask not to be seen, or conversely, the
centre seems to destroy one's capacity to see."  (Ashraf Jamal, 1993)

F.W. de Klerk, accompanied by a large, jubilating coloured contingent,
accepts responsibility for some of the repressive measures undertaken
by the National Party Government, including the 1985 State of
Emergency.  De Klerk admits that this may have created circumstances
which were conducive to human rights abuses.

There is that which was wrong with the NP past and that which was
right.  It is my responsibility to admit to that which was wrong."  Yet
his submission contains no specifics on any high-profile abuses.  He
says he cannot provide information on cases he does not know anything
about.  He cites the case of the Cradock Four.  If we had known what
had happened, and who committed this crime... the perpetrators would
have been arrested, tried and, if found guilty, sentenced.  No
President can know everything which takes place under his management
not even an Archbishop."

De Klerk says he sanctioned the use of unconventional strategies, but
they never included the authorization of assassination, murder,
torture, rape, assault.  I've never been part of any decision taken by
Cabinet, the State Security Council or any committee authorizing the
instruction of such abuses.  I personally also never authorized such
action."  De Klerk makes it clear that those who committed abuses had
their judgements clouded by overzealousness or negligence.  It is not
my intention to gloss over the many unacceptable things that occurred
in the period of National Party rule.  They did happen and I want to
reiterate my deepest sympathy to those who suffered from it."

The ANC presents a much longer and more detail el document.  It
contains specifics as well as spy reports.  It teljs the Commission
more about National Party violations that the National Party's own
submission. 4

During the eighties, South African forces invaded, tfr,ee capitals and
three countries in five years.  In the same ve4pd, South Africa tried
to assassinate two prime ministers4aked dissident groups that brought
chaos to Angola and Mozambique, disrupted oil supplies to six countries
and attacked the railway routes to seven.  More than one up dred
thousand people died as a direct or indirect result 0fthese actions,
most of them from famine.  More than a ifrllion people were displaced.
The damage done in the region during this period amounted to $62,45
billion.

The ANG provides a list of those who died in its training camps.  I
become aware of the absolutely still presence of Dumisane Shange, one
of the journalists on my team.  The ANC submission lies like a thrown
weight in his hands.

Dumi?"  I ask.  All around us a babble of shouts and nois.  I touch
him. Behind his glasses his eyes are expressionless.

He flips open the document, pages to the back.  A long list of names.
His finger goes down and then stops.  This is my brother."

I read the heading: Died in Angola."

We never knew that," he says.  (We seize on the story like vultures and
file this report: Journalist finds the name of his brother on the ANC
death list.)

The MC's whole submission centres on the notion of a just wAr.  Because
the war was just, the battles were just.  Necking, they say, was never
part of official policy.  And they roid spelling out the chain of
command that led to incidents like the Magoo's Bar bombing.  After the
ANC's appearance, Deputy Chairperson Alex Boraine confirms that the
Truth Commission has received more information from their submission
than from any other.

The Democratic Party tells the Commission about the deadly combination
of un accountability lies and false information that came together in
Parliament to produce the building blocks of Apartheid.  First there
was the cornerstone: the Popular Registration Act.  Then the rest
followed:

the Group Areas Act, the Native Labour Act, the Black Affairs
Administration Act, the Labour Restrictions Act, the Bantu Education
Act, the Separate Amenities Act, the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages
Act, the Suppression of Communism Act, the Terrorism Act, the Riotous
Assembly Act, the Gathering and Demonstrations Act, the Protection of
Information Act, the Publications and Control Act, etc.  etc.

Helen Suzman says: These laws went hand in hand in Parliament with
patently inaccurate and deliberately false or untruthful information.
One such instance was when former Progressive Federal Party leader Van
Zyl Slabbert was told in 1976 that no South African soldiers were in
Angola.  It turned out they were actually 125 kilometres outside
Luanda.  And then the parliamentary process was further flawed with the
presence of the State Security Council.  They usually got together just
before a Cabinet meeting to create a decision making momentum that
dominated Cabinet.  All their activities were clothed in secrecy."

Freedom Front leader Constand Viljoen always presents a dilemma.  He
claims to be speaking on behalf of ethnic Afrikaners?  What is an
ethnic' Afrikaner?  One of those who still speaks about kaffers'?

If you have to ask what an ethnic Afrikaner is, then you aren't one,"
Viljoen once told me.  But afgedwaaldes like you, they wander so far
off the track that they usually end up with you again."

Viljoen tries to explain the past: When the realizatiM sank in that
black people actually wanted what we had..  that the black liberation
struggle already had links with Commuxijsm for the ethnic Afrikaner it
spelt atheism and diale&Jcal materialism.  There was no turning back we
were with bur backs against the wall.

We were reminded about past atrocities in Africa and already
experienced a visible decIin'e in the qualiy f our lives.  Yet.."  as
the rich and the liberal moved to ar and more lucrative homes elsewhere
on the globe, the Afrikaner braced himself to stay in Africa, to which
he was in4ienous.  Naturally he dug in his heels.  But don't blame him
for not being concerned and for not being able to show sen4tivity at a
moment when his world was turned upside down.

The foreign media react with scepticism to De Klerk's apology.  Some
foreign journalists feel he has stopped short of really apologizing;
others think he was too vague in specifying what he was apologizing
for.

The Chairperson disagrees.  To say the words I'm sorry

Now, you know, I know that some of the most difficult words in any
language are: I am sorry.  And because it is such a delicate business
in which we are involved, let us not blow out the flickering lamp.  If
you had been with us on the many delegations that went to meet with Mr.
De Klerk when he was still State President... where we were trying to
say to him: Apartheid is evil ... and when you remember how he hedged
around qualifying his apology where we are now is a ye significant step
forward."

TIs is the advantage of growing old, says the Archbishop, you won't put
everything under the microscope.  I've learnt not be cynical or
sceptical.  I find it wonderful that someone can say on a public
platform what many people find difficult to say face to face."

But didn't he say," I ask the Archbishop, the way someone would say to
his wife I'm sorry I hit you, but you know, you deserved it ?"  He
bursts out laughing.  If he hadn't said anything people would have said
How callous!  If he had not said something towards that side we would
have criticized him.  He is in a no-win situation.  Because even if he
had... What did you want him to do?  Grovel?  Go on and say: Pleeease,
Archbishop, I'm verrry sorry ... ?  Then you would have said:

Is that genuine?  Isn't he putting it on?  I mean he can't win.

Although the new South African flag flies over Parliament, Louis Botha
still rears up on his horse as Statesman, Warrior, Farmer.  Queen
Victoria still grips her little melon next to the Senate.  But the
paintings inside Parliament have been removed, at last.  Three of the
largest paintings provide an insight into three distinct eras of our
past.  In the parliamentary dining hall there hung a massive painting
of the legislature at the time of Union in 1910.  Those in the painting
are all bearded, all white, all sombre.  And of course all male.  Yet
some light trickles in from a window.  It took the personnel of the art
museum a whole day to remove this painting from the wall, lower it to
the floor, take it out of its gilded frame, roll it up into a numbered
bag and carry it off to wherever these works will be stored.

By contrast, there is no light to be seen in the painting of Hendrik
Verwoerd's Cabinet, which also hung in the dining hail.  No windows not
even a crack of light.  The members of the Cabinet sit in a
wood-panelled room around a table.  Their studied attention is focused
tightly on the Architect of the homeland ideology indeed, he is
explaining it to them.  He is standing like a schoolteacher pointing to
a large map of South Africa.  His wrist may be limp, but his eyes are
steely.  The only conclusion to be drawn is that he is pointing out the
borders of the bantustans the linchpin of his policy.  Outside the
tight circle of seated Cabinet ministers, three younger men appear two
of whom are John Vorster and P.W. Botha.  Some twenty years later the
painting of P.W. Botha's Cabinet found its way into the lobby of
Parliament.  It Ijiung on the right as you entered the building, a
gigantic pikture painted by someone called Fleur Fern.  The gold-framed
artifact, in shades of civil-service green and pure-new-woo suit blue,
pictured the swan song of the Cabinet on 26 1984.

They emulate the seating arrangements at the Last Around a table.  An
empty table.  Here and there a piece of paper and a pen or two.  Each
body is supported knurled timber of a chair; each body's head appears
been screwed on afterwards.  This creates a sense jointed ness a
feeling of togetherness in deformity.  together, but there is no
interaction. Uniform and in Every hair on the head is accounted for. 
The cur taws are open, yet the windows offer no glimpse of an outside
world.  The only visible watch belongs to a Deputy Minister.

The chief apostles sit together around the table.  However, P.W. Botha
is not in the position of Jesus the central area is taken up by the
four crown princes: Gerrit Viljoen, Lapa Munnik, F.W. de Klerk and
Chris Heunis.  De Klerk, FeVri prophesies, is the Judas.  He is the
only one looking directly, yet humbly at P.W. Botha.  Indeed, P.W.
finds himself squeezed to the head of the table next to a limp flag,
clutching a pencil, glowering in the direction of Pik Botha.  Pik and
Louis le Grange sit back to back.  Hendrik Schoeman, pipe in hand,
seems unusually sour and burdened for the Cabinet's official joker.
Prophet Fern draws him without a neck.  Vathom-Dawie, his hand
artistically draped over a nameless book, sits wrapped in a blond halo
if he is not the Messiah, then the former Springbok rugby captain is at
least the belovedjJohn.  Magnus- Malan, his profile brightly lit, lends
the only 4eh of indulgence to the massive canvas with his
goldeninkie-ring.  Barend du Plessis, behind the Agriculture Minist&
with the bywoner face, shows his shiny chafed kneecaps.  The only
Minister who is happily looking off in his own direction, and whose
hands are not visible above the table, is Pietie du Plessis currently
in jail for fraud.  Behind all this, in a corner, the Deputies are
chatting in miniature.

10

RECONCILIATION: THE LESSER bF Two EVILS

THIS THING cALLED reconciliation... if I am understanding it
correctly... if it means this perpetrator, the man who has killed
Christopher Piet, if it means he becomes human again, this man, so that
I, so that all of u4 t our humanity back.."  then I agree, then I
support it aliJ

Cynthia Ngewu, mother of Christopher Piet, one of the' uguIetu

Seven.

Once there were two boys, Tom and Bernard.  Tom lived right opposite
Bernard.  One day Tom stole Bernard's bicycle nd every day Bernard saw
Tom cycling to school on it.  After a year, Tom went up to Bernard,
stretched out his hand and said, Let us reconcile and put the past
behind us."

Bernard looked at Tom's hand.  And what about the bicycle?"

No," said Tom, I'm not talking about the bicycle I'm talking about
reconciliation."

Father Mxolisi Mpambani told this story during a lunch hour panel
discussion on the subject of reconciliation at the University of Cape
Town, organized jointly by the Truth Commission and the Department of
African Studies.

In an interview after refusing to forgive Dirk Coetzee for killing and
braaing' her son, Mrs.  Kondile says: It is easy for andela and Tutu to
forgive.."  they lead vindicated lives' n my life nothing, not a single
thing, has changed since my n was burnt by barbarians.."  nothing.
Therefore I

cannot forgive."

But the word reconciliation' is used most often by Afrikaner
politicians.  Although you might expect them to use it as a cover-up
for their fear that they alone will be held responsible for the
country's shameful past, they mainly prefer to use it as a threat: give
us what we want, or we won't reconcile with a black government.  They
use reconciliation to dictate their demands.

The dictionary definitions of reconciliation' have an underlay of
restoration, of re-establishing things in their original state.  The
Oxford says: to make friendly again after an estrangement; make
resigned; harmonize; make compatible, able to coexist.

The Afrikaans dictionary says: weer tot vriendskap bring [to restore to
friendshipl, accept; not resist.

But in this country, there is nothing to go back to, no 5 previous
state or relationship one would wish to restore.  In these stark
circumstances, reconciliation' does not even seem like the right word,
but rather conciliation'.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu's reconciliation theology ties in with the
classical definition of reconciliation.  Academics say that
reconciliation has formed an integral part of his theological thinking
since 1979.  But Tutu has Africanized' the concept in such a unique way
that it shows up the usual Western Christian motive for reconciling as
sometimes being too far removed from the world to be of value.  The
Church says: You must forgive, because God has forgiven you for killing
His Son."  Tutu says: You can only be human in a humane society.  If
you live with hatred and revenge in your heart, you dehumanize not only
yourself, but your community."

In the African Weltanschauung a person is not basically an independent,
solitary entity.  A person is human precisely in being enveloped in the
community of other human beings, in being caught up in the bundle of
life.  To be .. . is to participate."

Michael Battle, an African-American Christian Ethics Professor in
Tennessee, who has studied Tutu's unique theology, writes: Central to
Tutu's life and thought is his appeal to his society to move beyond
racial distinctions as determinative of human identity.  People should
not kill because they are black and white, but they should rejoice in
how they are created differently so that new meanings ad identities are
always poible... As Tutu's Ubuntu theolqy unfolds it gives access to a
new identity for South Africans; it also appeals to ancient African
concepts of the harmony j between individual and community which John
Mbiti J concludes as: I am because we are, and since we are,
therefore.?  lam."

Although the best-known exponent of reconciliation i' South Africa is
President Nelson Mandela', it is interest ii to look at the way in
which his successor, Thabo Mbeki, Ac reconciliation and forgiveness. 
At the end of 1996, the University of Natal prese1t$ Mbeki with an
honorary doctorate at their Reconciliatn Graduation Ceremony'. 
Initially Mbeki seemed a so meat illogical choice to honour in this
way.  It also seemed after the motivation for the distinction and
Mbeki's curriculum vitae had been presented at the ceremony that the
University itself was not familiar with the re conciliatory actions its
honoured candidate might have undertaken.  The mere bestowing of an
honorary degree on an ANC leader by ai former English liberal
institution' was perhaps the University of Natal's version of
reconciliation.  No one mentioned the major personal part Mbeki has
played in some of the most effective peacemaking achievements in a
province that has been racked by violence and revenge.  ANC sources say
that Mbeki has spent weeks and weeks in Natal, consulting and paving
the way for reconciliation.

Before the ceremony Mbeki's speech on the subject of reconciliation was
distributed to the media.  But when the time came he took out a totally
different set of notes about the achievemts of his recent European
visit, and so the speech on reconliation was never delivered.  However,
it contains three il lag paragraphs.  Where reconciliation for Tutu is
the beg of a transformative process (one must be able to transcend
one's selfish inclinations before one can transform oneself and one's
society) for Mbeki reconciliation is a step that can follow only after
total transformation has taken place.

What are the essential building blocks for the construction of true
reconciliation?  .. . Replacing Apartheid with democracy real
reconciliation cannot be achieved without a thorough transformation and
democratization process."

He returns to this thought later in the speech: The point we have
sought to make this evening, is that given the history of our country,
true reconciliation can only take place if we succeed in our objective
of social transformation.  Reconciliation and transformation should be
viewed as an interdependent part of one unique process of building a
new society."

Mbeki is clear on what he regards as transformation.  He quotes Chief
Albert Luthuli: There remains before us the & building of a new land.."
a synthesis of the rich cultural strains which we have inherited... It
will not necessarily be all black, but it will be African."

At the risk of oversimplifying, it seems there may be a conj tradiction
between the versions of reconciliation propagated by Mbeki and Tutu.
Tutu believes that black people have access almost to a superior
humanity, which enables them to $ do things that surpass cold logic.
When a woman at the Truth

Commission hearings says that she forgives the killers of her son, Tutu
tells her: You make me so proud, Mama, to be a black person like you."
What the world lacks, black people have.  In his view the main thrust
of reconciliation is between people of all colours embodied in the idea
of the rainbow nation.

Mbeki, on the other hand, doesn't necessarily care what the world
lacks.  He spelt this out in Durban.  He wants black people to work
together to transform the country and the continent.  He talks about an
African Renaissance.  He wants to show the world that black people can
run a country and a continent successfully.  For him reconciliation
should take place among all black people with white people in peaceful
coexistence.

At the panel discussion on reconciliation held at the University of
Cape Town, most of the inputs range between these two positions.

Reconciliation is already taking place on a large scale as individuals
and communities invent ways and means reconcile their lives with what
has happened."  Prof essbr Pamela Reynolds of the Anthropology
Department underscores Tutu's vision that in a wonderful way people are
already busy forgiving and reconciling.  The fact that no revenge
attacks have taken place in the wake of revelations at.t the hearings
mean that people in their everyday lives havei already weighed up the
costs of reconciliat6ion and reveng.  U

For Abner Mofokeng reconciliation walks hand in liin4 with survival. As
the Human Resources Manager at Soute# Life, his analysis is practical:
The South African experiende has taught us that reconciled coexistence
is essential for 4ivival.  Personal survival is inextricably linked to
the survivor others."  Reconciliation will only take place, as far as
Nozipho January-Bardill is concerned, the day whites also feel offended
by racism, instead of feeling sorry for blacks.  (To feel sorry' for
blacks has lately become the ultimate crime the speciality of the
bleeding-heart liberals, to use the catch phrase

Shirley Gunn brings the audience back to some basic!  questions: Who
should be reconciled?  Who will gain from reconciliation?  What will
they gain?  She ties reconciliation in with delivery and echoes the
words of Charity Kondile: It is easy for Mandela to forgive his life
has changed; but for the woman in the shack, it is not possible.

Abner Mofokeng confronts Gunn: It is simply not true that Mandela is
not conscious of the woman in the shack.  But Mandela keeps the bigger
purpose, the fuller picture in mind and because of that, in the end her
children or grandchildren will benefit."

A Professor from America conjures up an unexpected picture
reconciliation.  True reconciliation in America was vi silt when we saw
on television how whites and blacks together looted a furniture shop.."
you cannot carry furniture alone and they simply worked together in
selfinterest."

Then a tall young student stands up at the back and goes straight to
the issue that has been carefully skirted thus far: I would like to say
something about the issue of racism now surrounding the Commissioners
themselves.  If there is one thing that irritates me, it is when the
new black elite whines about racism while in actual fact all they want
is the power and the positions of the whites so that they can exercise
those very same values."

Everyone avoids everyone else's eyes.

When Professor Mahniood Mamdam of Uganda, the current AC.  Jordan
Professor at the University, is asked to conclude the discussion, he
startles us by asking: If truth has -. replaced justice in South Africa
has reconciliation then turned into an embrace of evil?"

We gasp.  Words like amnesty', blanket amnesty' flash though my mind.

Five years ago, if someone mentioned to me: a new democracy and a
genocide I am not sure I would have fitted South Africa and Rwanda into
the correct slots.  What I still ask myself is whether it is not easier
to live with perpetrators than with beneficiaries?"

Beneficiaries?  With precise language Mamdani cuts the whole debate
loose of the hazy black and white distinctions stifling most of the
current thinking.

An article in the Sunday Times provides the perfect example of what
Mamdani was trying to get away from.  The article suggested that whites
should pay for the wrongs of the past by means of a special tax and by
giving up all their privileges.  The following deadlock in readers'
responses to the piece was only to be expected: all the whites say, I
won't pay because I'm not guilty, I was not one of the perpetrators';
and all the blacks say, Yeah!  It's about time someone tells these
whites what they ought to do."

Mamdani says: In Rwanda there are a lot of perpetrators and a few
people who benefited; in South Africa there are a few perpetrators, but
lots and lots of beneficiaries.  Should reconciliation take place
between victims and perpetrators; or between victims and beneficiaries?
The legislation guiding the Commission's activities, he says, forced it
to narrow down the injustice to murder and torture, and the victims to
militants.  And he warns that resentment could follow if the majority,
who understandably expected to gain from reconciliation!  are
excluded.

In a review of Reconciliation through Truth, by Kader Asmal et al,
published in the Southern African Review of Books, Mamdani elaborates
on this point: It becomes a problem when the history of resistance is
seen as synonym with the history of the ANC... then Apartheid bee6
reduced to a terror machine and resistance to the struggle."  Mamdam
uses the 1992 referendum as an ex nile of how complex the issue of
resistance is.  At the time he whites-only referendum, in which whites
had to vote f or against the notion of power-sharing, was regarded by
4any South Africans as nothing more than a moment of narow
self-interest.  In fact, it was a milestone, he says, the historic
moment in which, for the first time, a white settler minority on the
African continent reached out towards a settlement with the majority
Without this moment, any talk of reconciliation would have been wishful
thinking."

Mamdani asks whether the basis for reconciliation after the Anglo-Boer
War was not redistribution to Afrikaners, rather than punishment of the
English?  Were the English and Afrikaners partners in a common crime
(Apartheid) against humanity or was apartheid a programme for massive
redistribution, reparation, of today's loot in favour of yesterday's
victims?"

This upsetting analogy raises the difficult question: Is the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission then the equivalent of the symbolic Ossewa
Trek of 1938 a tool to create a particular nationalism' rather than a
new South African identity?  The story goes that Alan Paton
participated in the ox-wagon trek, organized by the Broederbond to
comme more the Great Trek, because he believed that it was the
beginning of an authentic new South Africanism.  But after listening to
the speeches at the laying of the foundation stone for the Voortrekker
Monument, Paton went back home, shaved off his boere beard and said,
There was no space for me there."

Mamdani's analysis may be making space for both the seemingly
contradictory formulations of reconciliation put forward by Tutu and
Mbeki.  Mamdani says durable reconciliation will only be built if its
basis straddles both races and ethnicity.  Race was meant to define the
identity of the f privileged, ethnicity the identity of the oppressed;
race was urban, ethnicity rural.  So if Tutu deals with racial
reconciliation and Mbeki with ethnic reconciliation, they could
complement each other.  And if some evil is embraced in the process may
it be the lesser of the two.

Between about 8 and 9 a.m. on Sunday morning I was taken to another
office in the police station.  There were a lot of white men in the
office.  All the men were dressed in plain clothes.  These men in the
office pushed me backwards and forwards from one to the other and
smacked me.  I was like a soccer ball that they were playing with.  All
the time they asked questions about the neck lacing [which had taken
place in George in March 19861 and the George Youth Congress.  The
pushing went on for about fifteen minutes... On Monday afternoon at
about 2 p.m. I was taken to Mossel Bay by Coetzee ... Captain Van der
Merwe and Kruger were present and they interrogated me about the neck
lacing

I said: Even a dog can see that you are stupids surely you know that I
wasn't there.

They got angry and one of them said, We'll see who's a dog, and they
closed the doors, the windows and the blinds.  Kruger put paper and a
piece of cloth in my mouth.  Van der Merwe bound my hands and eyes.

Kruger took off my jersey and my shirt and pulled me up to the desk.
One of them took off my bra.  They forced me to bend over the open
drawer so that one of my breasts would hang in the drawer.  They then
slammed the drawer shut so that my breast was squashed.  They did this
three times to each of my breasts.  Their actions caused me a lot of
pain and my whole body became weak.  They also pulled handfuls of hair
out of my head.

They then untied my hands and left me in the offi&e.  I unbound my eyes
and mouth and noticed that my nipp had split and a watery sticky
substance was flowing out.  I took the cloth from my mouth and dried my
breasts.  I kept the hair a the cloth and when I went to the toilet I
found a plastic packet and put the hair and cloth inside it.  I still
have this packet if my possession.  I

After they did that to my breasts I started Iav g nightmares, which
carried on throughout the time I Ya in detention.  I found it difficult
to sleep and would often i4ake up very early in the morning and then
not be able to fall asleep again.

Throughout the time in detention I felt tense and kinely.  But it did
not help when I was with other people as it became difficult to be with
others and to communicate with them.  For example, when I was in a cell
with other women I knew, I found it difficult to be with them.  Being
with them made me recall the times I was tortured..."  (Ntombizanele
Elsie Zingxondo, Beaufort Wejt)

II

AMNESTY: IN TRANSIT WITH

THE GHOSTS

THAT THE TRUTH Commission would be controversial was to be expected.
Also that the most vociferous resistance would come from the
perpetrators.  But what could not be foreseen was the effect the
Commission would have on the ANC.  From the very beginning, the ANC's
reactions to the Commission have been clumsy and uninformed.  So
uninformed, in fact, that one is often left wondering why members of
the Executive don't consult people like Johnny de Lange, Willie Hofmeyr
or Priscilla Jana before they make statements about the new
legislation.

I secure an interview with Joe Modise, former Commander of Umkhonto we
Sizwe and current Minister of Defence.  Will he be applying for
amnesty?  Yes, he says, because many things can happen under your
command that you don't plan for.  I put the story out on the news.
There is an angry call from an ANC spokesperson: Modise is not applying
personally for amnesty, but will form part of a collective ANC
application.

But the law doesn't allow for collective amnesty," I say to this man,
who suddenly sounds a bit like Eugene Terre' Blanche Johan van der
Merwe and Constand Viljoen on the subject of amnesty.

Lady, who would know better what the ANC is saying you or me?"

Shortly after this another ANC politician tells me that amnesty is
unnecessary.

But people will sue you," I say.

Our people will never sue us; we brought them freedom."

Yes, but the whites will sue people will sue Robert McBride for the
Magoo's Bar bomb."

I'll get back to you on that one."

But then decisive confusion strikes in the form of the man with the
astonishing name of Bantubonke Holomisa.  14 begs the Commission to let
him testify.  Although the hearings are primarily for people who have
no other forums in which o tell their stories, permission is granted.
And all hell breaks loose.  It's not his revelations of National Party
and Thd Force involvement in violence that do the trick, nor the
shoeboxes full of documents he hands over.  It's his claim ter
described by Dumisa Ntsebeza as an old-news one7 ling that Public
Enterprises Minister Stella Sigcau, back inhedays when she was still a
Minister in the homeland government of Transkei, received a RSO 000 cut
of a R2 million bribe allegedly paid by Sol Kerzner to Transkei Prime
minister George Matanzima for gambling rights in the homela4d.

The Truth Commission was initiated, promotdd and eventually set up by
the ANG.  It had the obvious blessing of the party from the President
down to the lowest-ranking Member of Parliament.  But the ANC's
reaction to Holomisa's testimony is unexpected.  Is he telling too much
truth?  Is he pulling a General Johan van der Merwe on the ANC
leadership?  Or is the party merely using his testimony a9 an excuse to
dump him?  Everyone knows he's a loose cannon.  Holomisa is called for
a disciplinary hearing.  Suddenly there is tension between a high moral
position and the survival of the party in power; between morality and
unity.

The ANC takes the opportunity to force its high-profile members to
stick to the party line.  And the party line is unity.  The chairperson
of the Disciplinary Committee, Kader Asmal, is tasked with providing
the moral motivation for the ANC's insistence that it vet its members'
submissions to the Truth Commission.  Asmal says that while one is free
to approach the commission in one's private capacity, one still has a
moral obligation towards one's colleagues within the party.  But t
impression remains that unity is more important than truths

The Commission issues a statement.  It finds the ANC's stance
astounding.  It is incredulous that a party would seek to muzzle its
rank-and-file members by demanding to check their statements.

It is clear that the Commission has taken on a moral life of its own
and is willing to oppose even the party that gave it birth.  This
stance raises serious questions for both the politicians and the Truth
Commissioners.  When the Truth Commission says, The truth will set us
free' is the ANC adding, The Truth as determined by us'?  When the
Commission says, Tell your truth, as you have experienced it' is the
ANC adding, The truth as approved by us'?

And then the final straw.  Mpumalanga Premier and legal adviser to the
ANC, Mathews Phosa, says that ANG members do not have to apply for
amnesty, because the war against Apartheid was just.  Boraine issues a
statement: unjust acts can be committed within the framework of a just
war, no less than just acts in an unjust war.  Tutu takes the bull by
the horns and announces that he will resign if the ANC grants itself
amnesty.  He refuses to be abused by a party that will not accept equal
treatment before a Truth Commission.

There are opposing opinions on the merits of applying for amnesty.  The
one is that all the applicants deserve some praise at least they had
the guts to come forward.  The other is that it is foolish, and for a
politician fatal, to acknowledge any wrongdoing.  Rather take your
chances with the courts.

A lot of these people applying for amnesty, if they were my clients I
would have advised them not to apply, simply because there is not
enough evidence to convict them."

So why do they do it?"

I think some of them have been sweet-talked into amnesty by Tutu
morally it's the right thing to do.  A lot of greedy lawyers are
swarming around too, hungry for state money."

The first applications from politicians still in government come from
Joe Modise and Ronnie Kasrils.  The Commission responds with
unequivocal praise: these applications underline the fact that leaders
are accountable and this will set their followers free to come
forward.

But another key force driving people to apply for amnesty is the threat
of impending court cases brought either by the Attorney-General or by
private individuals.  What should one read into the fact that neither
De Klerk nor Buthelezi has applied?

And then there is the question of dates.  3 The controversy is about
two dates: the cut-off and t amnesty deadline.  The cut-off date
concerns the vio4lio&is themselves: deeds committed beyond this date
will dot t,e considered for amnesty.  The deadline concerns the a4my
procedure: applications for amnesty will not be accepted after this
date.

It's not clear why the Justice Portfolio Committee ver really dealt
with this matter.  Right from the beg, political and police leaders,
whose cooperation was absolutely necessary for the Commission to
fulfill its task, were asking for the cut-off date to be extended.  The
Committee argued about it for weeks.  Then, on the morning when the'
date was supposed to be finalized, the matter was quickly resolved by
stipulating that the cut-off date would be: as LIFE Constitution
states.  The date given in the Constitution is 6 December 1993.

Why have you just left it like this?"  I asked an ANC Committee member
at the time.

I don't know.  We'd like to move the date, because then the Shell House
shooting would go away like a bad dream.  But apparently Mandela
himself doesn't want it changed."

Another Committee member alleges that it was left open ended so that it
could later become a sort of bargaining chip for the Commission.

Thoswho are now arguing for the cut-off to be extended say that6
December 1993 was an arbitrary date established by the empt on Park
negotiators.  Few of those who were involved in violence even knew
about it.  On the other hand,

the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as President was a clear signal to
everyone that change was under way, and this should be the new cut-off.
If the date were to be moved to 10 May 1994, then the Election Day
bombers and the attackers involved in the Heidelberg Tavern and St.
James Church shootings would also become eligible for amnesty.  But
changing this date requires a Constitutional amendment, and that in
turn demands a two-thirds majority in a full parliamentary process.

The amnesty deadline is simpler.  It can be changed by the President.
But what complicates things is the fact that the deadline depends to
some extent on the cut-off date, and changing the one necessarily means
changing the other to allow time for a new flood of applications.

Ten days before the amnesty deadline, which is on 14 December 1996, and
the uncertainty surrounding the two dates is crippling the amnesty
process.  Both dates need to be fixed: one by Parliament, the other by
the President.  A meeting is scheduled for the Commission and the
Government to discuss the deadline, but then the Deputy President goes
to India.  The President postpones the meeting until a day before the
deadline officially expires.  What is more, Parliament is already in
its December recess, and apparently the changing of the date in the
Constitution is not even on the agenda.

The Commission is battling to preserve its credibility.  If the dates
are not extended, if important figures in the ANC do not apply for
amnesty, then the Commission will limp into its second phase the
following year without having achieved much more, in the end, than any
of the other Truth Commissions.

Three days before the amnesty deadline.  I'm sitting in one of the
passages at the Truth Commission offices, studying the amnesty rulings
on twelve applicants.  The Amnesty Committee has made its flndmgs
public under pressure from the Truth Commission itself: desperate
lawyers and advocates have been complaimng to the Commission that only
two amnesty rulings have been made so far.  As a result, legal
representatives cannot fathom how the Amnesty Committee is interpreting
the law and don't know how to advise their clients or prepare their
cases.  And the Committee offers them no guidance.

As I'm writing down the names in my notebook, I heat Alex Boraine
roaring down the hallway: Bring it all to my pffice I don't understand
these people."

I crane my neck: Boraine never raises his voice.  I grab a s f member
who comes running by.  What's going on?"

Actually, you're not supposed to be here yet.  Please 4eh't report
about the amnesty rulings, we 1still have to skme names to the list." i
4.

I do some calculations.  Of the twelve amnesty applca' ons, seven were
awarded.  All seven are black ANC menibe#s.  Of the five who were
refused, four are white.  This wilF 1of go down well among the people
who are being encour4ed to apply for amnesty.  When the list is
eventually released, it includes the names of another four successful
applicants.  All four are white right wingers

Now where is this coming from?

When Boraine saw the initial list, I hear later, he was furious.  He
phoned one of the Judges: Have you not given amnesty to any white
people?"

No well, we have.."  where are those names?.."  they must be here
somewhere."

Then send them through," Boraine hissed.

From the beginning it's been clear that the Amnesty Committee has
decided to work closely and calmly within the framework of the law and
legal procedures.  For the most part, it seems as if none cif the
members of the Committee have a real sense of the political climate or
the broader political picti4.  They go from case to case.  Sometimes
one feels their attitte will be disastrous; it is totally out of touch
with Thabo Mbeki's request that the Truth Commission complete its task
of granting amnesty speedily and not leave the new Government burdened
with the mess of the past.  Yet at other times one thinks: No, hold on
to the letter of the law, please hold on.  In the end, when the
political screws are tightened, that will be what saves you.

It is a small office with a standard-size desk.  Boxes of files clutter
the desk, the chairs, the table, the floor.  This is where the official
life of all amnesty applications begins here on the desk of Mandisa
Dukumbana.  And it's two days before the deadline expires.  The phone
rings.  Someone rushes in to ask her something.  I snoop around:
several brown envelopes addressed to Die Komitee oor amnestie. Although
the preposition is wrong, the spelling of Committee' is correct: one m
and one t' in Afrikaans.  On the desk lies a big parcel covered in
courier-post wrappings.

The applications arrive in different ways: by post, in faxes, some are
brought in by attorneys, others are sent twice to make sure.  Some
people bring them in personally.  They're usually somewhat stiff and
nervous at first, but when they see the stacks and stacks of
applications they laugh sort of helplessly, and then relax."

As the deadline approaches, the pace has picked up.  Dukumbana says the
number of enquiries increased first, followed by urgent requests for
application forms to be faxed.  She's also noticed that the enquiries
are no longer being made by attorneys, but by prospective applicants
themselves.

The first thing I do is stamp the date and give it a reference number
and from there put it in the database."  It seems special arrangements
have been made with people who phoned to say their applications won't
be on time.  Their names have been entered into the database and their
applications will be processed the moment they arrive.

After the applications have been scanned for information by the
Investigative Unit, they are locked away in a safe.  The third safe in
fact the other two are full.."  chock-a-block.  I shudder..  . the
Amnesty Committee suddenly seems too frail,

too busy with meticulous, step-by-legal-step procedures to deal with
three dark safes crammed with secret confessions.  Just a few days ago,
I discover, APLA, the PAC's armed wing, paid a visit to the Truth
Commission.  They wanted to know: What exactly is amnesty?  For how
long will such an amnesty be valid?  I

How is it possible that they still don't know?  Npthing focuses the
mind like a deadline," says Archbishop Tutu.  f

I add a note for the news desk: Mandela discusses two dat4 tomorrow
with the Truth Commission please keep inminll that there is a
DIFFERENCE between cut-off date 4d deadline.  I get a snotty note back:
accorling to the dictbnky, there is NO difference between cut-off date
and deadlMie,l President Mandela graciously agrees to the extenioi of
both dates.  The new cut-off date is 10 May 1994 and thejnew deadline
10 May 1997.  With a sigh of relief everyone gs on holiday.

Rumours abound that the army is orchestrating an effort to ignore the
Truth Commission and avoid public hearings.  At a gathering of former
military personnel to discuss their approach to the Commission, the
infamous Colonel Jan Breytenbach cried out, Me, apply for amnesty?  Se
[ Like hell!"] The extradition of an Australian paedophile from
Jeffreys Bay a week later makes many army men sit up and take notice.
What extradition agreements does South Africa have with Lesotho,
Namibia and Angola?  And with Britain and France?  Could the family of
Dulcie September charge a suspect in Paris and ask the South African
Government to hand him over?  The legal implications of amnesty become
crucial.  It is being said that amnesty means a clean slate, and
nobody, not even the' Government, can touch you.  Does this mean at you
cannot be removed' from a position you hold or e4adited to another
country?  This leads to more ques tins  Do other countries have to
honour these amnesty agreements?  Or could they do as the Americans and
Israelis have done elsewhere in the world, and sneak into South Africa,
kidnap someone and take them back to their own country to stand
trial?

This is what worries him so much, says the legal representative of
Generals Jannie Geldenhuys and Kat Liebenberg.  There is a growing
tendency in Africa to form war-crime tribunals which are heavily
supported by the United Nations.  What he wants to see is special
legislation that will oblige the Government to protect successful
amnesty applicants against extradition, kidnapping, prosecution and
arrest.  Then former SADF members will be able to travel overseas
without a care or go hunting in neighbouring countries.

Recently, Craig Williamson, a former spy who has extensive business
interests in neighbouring countries, was arrested in Angola.  He has
been linked to the bombings responsible for the deaths of Ruth First,
and Jenny and Katryn Schoon, as well as an attack on ANC headquarters
in London.  Williamson also approaches the Government to ask for
guarantees that he will be protected against prosecution.

In the meantime, the hourglass keeps running.

But there is a thin line between establishing credibility and
overplaying one's hand.  Sunday newspaper headlines read: TRC's gloves
are off TRC raids military base.  The next day the Truth Commission
issues a statement: it was not a raid.  Barely a day later this
front-page headline: TRC probes internationally.  And another statement
follows: it was not a probe, it was merely a request to a Dutch NGO to
collect documents relating to covert operations overseas.

Are the media looking for action and goading the Truth Commission?  Is
the Commission still trying to find its feet after shifting its focus
from victims to perpetrators?  Or has taking on the previous regime
proved too rough a ball game?

Then the incident that caps everything.  At ten o'clock one Friday the
SADF announces in a terse two-sentence statement that it is postponing
its submission to the Truth Commission scheduled for the following
Monday.  At eleven o'clock Alex

Boraine, his voice hard with anger and conviction, announces that the
hearing on Monday will go ahead.  Everything has already been organized
the security, the translation, the panel.  The Truth Commission will
ask Minister Modise to see to it that the Generals come.  If they do
not, they wilj be subpoenaed.  Subpoenaed?  Are they serious?  What
lighprofile person has been subpoenaed before now?  Bit so decisive is
Boraine's tone, and so vigorous are the assent in nods of his colleague
Dumisa Ntsebeza, that for a moment 4 seems the great test has come.

The test of power.  Does the Truth Commission carry enough weight with
the Government to f9rce the authoriiesI*o back them?  Do Minister
Modise and his deputy Kasrilh live the clout to force Generals Meiring,
Klopper and Mortine#to appear on Monday?  And more importantly, does
the Tith Commission really have the teeth and the will to useittiem
against the powers that be and the powers that were?

In the late afternoon of that same Friday, the army ises a statement
that its attempts to involve former members of the Defence Force have
prevented it from finishing its submission on time.  Seconds later, the
Truth Commission puts out a reply that is in sharp contrast to the
earlier threat to issue subpoenas.  It says that Monday's hearing has
been cancelled because there is no sinister motive behind the SADF's
delay The Truth Commission's major task is to find the truth.  But to
do this, it needs hard information.  And getting that might be the
Commission's real test of strength.

The deadline for amnesty applications expires at midnight on Saturday
10 May 1997.  Amnesty applications are still streaming in on Saturday
morning, and when the offices close at midnight the total number of
applications received since the Commission started its work stands at
about 7700.  My God, when wk took this job' on, we were told to expect
about 200 applicaons," a member of the Amnesty Committee tells me with
ah udder and now there are 7 000!"  Among the lastmmute applications is
one from Vlakplaas Commander

Eugene de Kock.  The Commission believes that about 2 500 of the
applications will warrant a public hearing.

There are several surprises among the piles of paper.  Piet Koornhof is
seeking amnesty for the forced removal of three million people while he
was Minister of Cooperation and Development.  With this application,
says Koornhof, he wants to say all of this was wrong and he is sorry.
There are also applications from Civil Cooperation Bureau operatives
like Joe Verster, Staal Burger, Slang van Zyl and Calla Botha, and this
sets the cat among the pigeons.  A former military commander once
remarked: Joe Verster is the military equivalent of Eugene de Kock. The
day he talks, he will take everyone down with him."  Then again, an
Eastern Cape artist wants amnesty because, she feels that she didn't
reflect the atrocities of Apartheid in her paintings.

The ANC applications arrive shortly after lunchtime in a huge box. They
are neatly arranged in large brown envelopes, and include close to 40
applications from senior ANG leaders and about 400 from MK cadres and
Self-Defence Unit members.  The high-profile ones are those of Deputy
President Thabo Mbeki, and Ministers Mac Maharaj and Joe Modise.

Just before midnight, six black youths walk into the Truth Commission's
offices in Cape Town.  They insist on filling out the forms and taking
the oath.  Their application simply says: Amnesty for Apathy.  They had
been having a normal Saturday evening jol in a shebeen when they
started talking about the amnesty deadline and how millions of people
had simply turned a blind eye to what was happening.  It had been left
to a few individuals to make the sacrifice for the freedom everyone
enjoys today.

And that's when we decided to ask for amnesty because we had done
nothing."  They went to a nearby shop, asked the owner if they could
use his computer and typed out their

Amnesty for Apathy' statement.

But where does apathy fit into the Act?"  a Truth Commission official
asks.

The Act says that an omission can also be a human rights violation,"
one of them quickly explains.  And that's what we did: we neglected to
take part in the liberation struggle.  So, here we stand as a small
group representative of millions of apathetic people who didn't do the
right thing."

With applications like this, the amnesty process has become more than
what was required by law.  It has become the only forum where South
Africans can say: We may not ha'e committed a human rights abuse, but
we want to say that what we did or didn't do was wrong and that we're
sorry.  j

Every respectable historical building has its own live-in ghost.; 7 The
South African Parliament in Cape To6wn has severalV Ini!  this
labyrinth of hollow corridors, forgotten cellars, unaerk ground streams
and echoing chambers, it's not very cle4 to burn the midnight oil.

When the bells chime at St.  George Cathedral (whee Archbishop Desmond
Tutu's throne still stands), they say itat Parliament swarms with
ghosts.  The old parliamentarinds," the workers there maintain.

Hulle skuur-skuur so fangs iou boude ver by as jy by die wash ak buk."
I'They squeeze past behind your bum when you're bending over the
washbasin."]

One night a guard had to put away the flags.  He saw a light on the
second floor.  From the committee room came laughter.  i As he walked
past the open door, he saw a group of parliamentarians with wineglasses
in their hands.  And by chance," he tells me, by pure chance, I looked
down towards their feet and saw that some of these guys in the woollen
suits had no ankles yes, between the polished leather shoes and the
trouser legs there was... nothing... absolutely nothing."

The more powerful the politician, it seems, the more formidable the
ghost.  In Parliament's new wing the former Speaker, Louis le Grange,
has no rest.  He is always pacing up and down The footsteps of a very
tall man," the cook says.  The lift n to his office keeps on opening
and closing by itself.  An4t only stops if you jump a little into the
air and say:

Laat lose Grange!"  [ Let go, Le Grange!"]

The most famous ghost in Parliament haunts the corner office that was
once used only by Ministers, but is currently occupied by the SABC-TV
news boss.  This is the ghost of Prime Minister Louis Botha.  The story
goes that he committed suicide one rainy night in his office.  Jan
Smuts discovered the body, quickly had it moved to Botha's house and
then announced that he had died of natural causes.  Botha, with deep
sorrow etched in his posture and face, regularly haunts on rainy nights
in that part of the Marks Building.

One night TV cameraman Pieter is working late on an Agenda programme.
Because it is raining outside, he waits in his boss's office for his
wife to come and fetch him.  He switches on the light and then the TV.
After he sits down on the sofa, he becomes aware of somebody behind the
desk.  A man with his head bowed, his arms and hands held despairingly
in front of him.  I first made sure that it wasn't a computer or a coat
or something, but it was definitely a man."

On another occasion Pieter is on his way back to the studio to fetch a
pair of glasses left behind by a TV guest.  A man is waiting at the
door.  The glasses are lying on the table," says the man.

I know, thank you," Pieter says.  He takes the glasses.  At the front
door he asks the guards: Who else is in the building?"

Just you and your guest went in tonight.  I'm waiting for you, and then
I'm locking up."

But do I know about the ghost of the tall Cabinet minister?  The
waitresses from the new wing huddle together and talk in guilty
whispers.  He was very tall, n, and they couldn't find a coffin for
him, ne.  Go and ask his secretary, she still works here... The
Minister's wife sent an air ticket to this secretary to attend the
funeral.  Because the Minister could do nothing without her, he took
her everywhere.  So this secretary flies to Johannesburg, rents a car,
but on her way to the town where he's going to be buried, she passes
the hearse.  She stops the hearse and says that she had such a bond
with the man, could she not see him one more time.  Alone, where there
are not many people.  The driver opens the coffin she's thinking that
it doesn't seem quite long enough for the deceased.."  and she
discovers that the poor man's legs have been sawn off at the shins and
fitted in next to him with his shoes still on.  Sowaar, go and ask her,
they tell me.

I track down the shy, unmarried secretary, and struggle to formulate my
insensitive question.  So did they manage to finl a coffin for such a
tall person?"

It wasn't really long enough," she says after a while apd stares at the
floor in front of her.

How do you know that?"

I saw the body and he was lying crumpled up at the neck."i F This is
definitely not the whole story, the workers in sit Why does he haunt
like that.."  floating ar9und at night with H his empty pants' legs
fluttering?  4

Is there a Verwoerd ghost?"  I ask.  Hey, we have to get bcJ{ to work,
they tell me.

One morning I meet a cleaner in the old Assembly H41 busily cleaning
the carpets.  Look at this spot," she mumbs.

This stain is where Verwoerd's blood spilled.  They've got ting
professionals to come and wash the carpets, but after a day or so, the
stain is back again..."

One of the messengers explains to me why the stain is next to the bench
and not in front of it.  Verwoerd apparently sat down just before the
start of the afternoon session, with his one arm across the bench
behind him.  When he was stabbed, i this messenger heard him say: No
son, what are you doing?"  The blood then streamed from his chest, ran
down his arm, and poured from the end of his sleeve on to the carpet.

The National Party left the large bloodstain there for months.  Later
it was covered by a light carpet.  After months all the carpets in the
hall were dry-cleaned and a day or two later, the stain was back.

I2

THE POLITICAL TONGUE AT ANCHOR

THE ANC, UNDER the leadership of Deputy President Thabo Mbeki, will be
the first party recalled to answer the list of questions sent to them
by the Truth Commission.  This time there will be no opportunity to
claim the moral high ground or sketch the broad frameworks.  The
Commission has questions and it wants answers.

Mbeki's first words are: Can we take our jackets off?  It's a bit hot."
A perfectly simple request carrying two messages: today you are the
boss, we will ask your permission to do things; and secondly, we're
here to work.

But the direction of certain questions catches the delegation off
guard.  They are clearly no longer used to being called to account in
public by those with no political power.  And these are not the
lightweight questions of journalists looking for a headline.  Maharaj,
Modise and Kasrils shuttle between questions and struggle to explain.
At one point Mbeki sounds a warning: We should avoid the danger whereby
by concentrating on these particular and exceptional acts of the
liberation movement, which could be deemed as constituting gross human
rights violations, we convey the impression that the struggle for
liberation was itself a gross violation of human rights."

The questions posed by Truth Commission lawyer Hanif Vail are sharply
focused and backed by evidence: incident, speaker or activist, date and
direct quote.  They are also the kinds of questions that have long been
on the lips of South Africans, whether supporters or victims of the

ANC.

Questions about the murder of black policemen, the violence of the
Self-Defence Units, neck lacing slogans inciting people to kill, as
well as stories of torture and executions in ANG camps.  And all these
questions are formulated in such a way that the ANC is forced to
abandon its rhetoric.  When it slips into habit, the Chairperson puts
his foot down: A characteristic of your evidence today was the absence
of elf justification keep it like that."  9 The Truth Commission has
obviously been trying to provide a safety net so that political parties
can look human rights violations squarely in the eye.  And, with
sustained pressure, that's what the AN CejJ From their multifaceted
answers you can tell that e violations have been debated thoroughly
over the year B t whereas previously the issues were presented simply
as dilemmas, now the Deputy President, three Cabinet mini trs and a
provincial Premier can admit that they were wrong.t's quite a strange
experience to see this high-powered delegation sitting there for two
solid days trying to provide answers, to the best of their ability as
politicians, while secretaries with cellphones, bodyguards, liaison
officers scurry around these people are busy governing the country,
after all.  At one point a short break must be called because Mandela
is on the phone for Modise.  I

Ii, On the issue of Self-Defence Units, cross-examination is incisive.
How could grass-roots supporters be given weapons without control being
exercised?

I think it's clear that when the thing changed in character, when we
realized that people were not being issued with firearm licences, which
is how we thought the SDUs would work, but that arms were being
distributed at random, we should have reviewed the situation," Ronnie
Kasrils acknowledges.  It was a mistake."

The party admits to several other mistakes: that its first tribunals ad
fundamental flaws, that' they extracted evidence under torture, that
cadres were charged and sentenced without gal representation, that they
waited too long before condemning necklace murders.  The slogan Kill
the Boer, kill the Farmer', they concede, was not a political statement
and should not qualify people for amnesty.  And they admit that none of
their members were authorized to engage in violence against the LFP.

On the first day of the submission, Mbeki was just an ANC leader
accounting for human rights abuses.  But on the second day he is the
President-to-be, pleading for reconciliation.  Without it, he says, the
Government will inherit an insoluble problem.  The ANG will make a
third submission, he says, this time about reconciliation, which is
fundamental to the country's future.

Despite this successful session, uncomfortable questions remain.  To
what extent was the submission an exercise in political damage control
after the party's blunders about the Truth Commission?  Why was it so
vague on who did what and who gave the orders?  No information was
given that really went beyond what is already in the public domain. The
burning questions of parents whose sons died in ANC camps were not
addressed at all.  Some observers are also disappointed that the party
did not deal openly with its role in the death squads in KwaZulu-Natal.
The delegation did not really seem convinced that individuals should
own up to their actions.

The National Party.  A new panel of Commissioners and a new
cross-examiner.  In the morning, with the appearance of

F.W. de Klerk, there is already a buzz in the corridors.

Today he will be taken to task," says a Committee member in the media
room.  An excellent set of questions was worked out around the issue of
bad apples .  We will start at the bottom, with the ordinary cops.  Are
they bad apples?  And then we'll work our way up to General Johan van
der Merwe.  Is he also a bad apple?"

Today is obviously the day.

As usual, the Chairperson lays the table for the fatal encounter.  He
praises De Klerk for his contribution to peace in the country, he
quotes from the Bible, he prays, he speaks Afrikaans, he smiles.  But
across the table De Klerk seems in total control.  He alone takes the
oath.  He alone is going to speak.  Former State President P.W. Botha
has refused to cooperate with the NP on its submission.  No
predecessors, no Ministers, no Generals to escort De Klerk.  His
isolation from the senior leadership of the past is total.

And it becomes a battle of lawyer against lawyer!  In his submission,
De Klerk says that the gross human rights violations committed in the
past were due to the bad juement, overzealousness or negligence of
individual policeman.  In his cross-questioning, Glenn Goosen takes up
De Kldk's phasing.  It becomes a chorus: The Cradock Four, these j*ho
were responsible was it bad judgement, overzealoins or negligence? The
Pebco Three, those who were respnble was it bad judgement,
overzealousness or

But this is ridiculous," De Klerk protests.

Please answer my question," says Goosen.  It quickly becomes apparent
that the Truth Coission will get nowhere with this line of questionidg.
The Commission sees De Klerk as a leader come to explain the past; but
in fact he is fighting for the survival of his party.  The Commission
has not taken into account the fact that the National Party is in
serious trouble; Roelf Meyer, De Klerk's second in command and the most
prominent NP figure in the negotiations, has resigned just a day before
the submision.  De Klerk isn't there to look the past in the eye.  He's
there to minimize the damage and to play on the sentiments of his
voters.  And these are: we did not know, we are just as shocked as you
are and we feel that these people are criminals who should be punished.
De Kierk states repeatedly that his whole upbringing, his entire
experience of politics allowed no room for the kinds of atrocities now
coming to the surface.  And yes, then everybody, from General Johan van
der Merwe who misled him, down to the foot soldier who did the deed, is
a bad apple.  As he resists the line of questioning, the documents
used,jthe assumptions made, his' delegation erupts: Shame!  ks!...
Witch-hunt!"

Tl end of the hearing is in sharp contrast to the previous day.  No
inspiring words, no prayer from the Chairperson,

who sits deeply sunken in his chair.

I go to the cross-examiner: What the fuck did you want him to say?"

I wanted him to say: Although I didn't know about it, the fact that we
never condemned these killings outright may have led people lower down
in the ranks to believe it was our policy.  '

My God, but that is not so impossible to say!  Except that you allowed
him only one route to get to it, and that is the route he as an
embattled political leader could not afford to take."  K I pack up my
recorder, laptop and cassettes.  Outside in Adderley Street someone
tugs at my skirt.  Do you know

Brecht's poem In favour of a long, broad skirt ?"

I am so distressed, so full of unformulated despair that I cannot
answer.  Come," he says.  He pulls the bags off my shoulders and we get
into a taxi.  We drive out high above the city to Vlaeberg.  Actually
you should close your eyes now."  He leads me through the rooms.  Do
you want some wine?"  I sob for air.  At my feet is a swimming pool and
above me Lion's Head so close that I feel I can touch it.  Of stone and
of green.  He gives me wine.  He ties up my hair.  He washes my feet in
the cool water.  He feeds me thin slices of raw meat.

Help me make sense of De Kierk."

It's easy.  The safety net they strung up for the ANG yesterday was not
there today.  They were out to get him.  And they couldn't."

Then why do I expect better from the Commission, but not from De
Klerk?"

There you are wrong.  De Kierk has just disappointed millions of people
because he refuses to think of more than covering his wickets against
Roelfie.  De Kierk has always been like that.  All the changes were
made because of some small, practical reason he has never had a
vision."

But the Truth Commission are the moral lot.  If they give up on De
Klerk and the Afrikaner, then how can they expect the rest of the
country to live with us?"

The late afternoon sun lies long and soft on our skins.

The Afrikaner can in no way detach himself from the past," says
Constand Viljoen as leader of the last party being recalled for
questioning.  But we must be allowed to make for ourselves an
honourable role in the new dispensation.  Th Afrikaner feels
disempowered, unsafe, his languagei threatened, his educational
structures are in pieces in shojt, the Afrikaner feels flooded by the
majority and he has nowhere to turn."  4

Viljoen also tackles the issue of a just war head-on.  For a war to be
just, it must comply with four requirements: the 7 aims must be just,
the war must be fought b a recognized aid h accepted authority, the
relationship between the means d4 the ends must not be
disproportionate.  Lastly, all otiet avenues of resolving the
differences must be exhausted befod violence becomes an option."
According to Viljoen, neith the previous Government nor the ANG tried
out all lje options available to them before they started fighting. Al,
the means employed to secure ultimate ends were often out of
proportion.  We all have dirty hands," he says.  Terrorism and
revolutionary war are as evil as nuclear war."

The conflict of Apartheid was essentially political in nature.  Viljoen
says that the army begged the Government for years to find a political
solution to the conflict, because this was the sort of war the army
could not win.

Viljoen claims that General Johan van der Merwe admitted to him that
agents infiltrated the AWB, but that they were never used to manipulate
events.  This is difficult to believe.  It is unbelievable to see how
well we've planned.."  and we can do proper, detailed planning.."  how
at that crucial moment at Kempton Park, when we were on the point of
stating our case to the negotiators at Codesa here is Eugene Terre'
Blanche and the AWB with an armoured car.  Who arranged that car? Who
decided on the exact time?  To me it's just fishy.  jin Mmabatho, when
we undertook to protect President Iacas Mangope from ANC violence, the
same thing happened..  everything was planned to the last detail and I
deliberatel$r prohibited the AWB from participating.  That night
everything was in place, we were deployed, disciplined, organized...
but here they come charging across the borders in their bakkies,
shooting at people and shouting racist insults.  They just moved in and
destroyed the whole cause and made fools of us.  Is Eugene Terre'
Blanche being used by the security police to destroy the right wing or
to strengthen the NP's quest for concessions from the new
Government?"

To assimilate truth piece by piece

The Commissioner spreads the photos on the table.  A slope of tamboekie
grass, a wind-blue sky, some fresh soil.

He shows us the place... we dig.."  we find red topsoil mixed with
black subsoil.."  we ow... and then the spade hits something..."

She was brave this one, hell she was brave," says the grave indicator,
the perpetrator, and whistles softly through his teeth.  She simply
would not talk."

Next photo: the earth holding a bundle of bones.  Delicately they are
chiselled loose.  Cigarette butts, an empty bottle.  It's hard work,
digging," says the grave indicator.

A man in short sleeves puts the bones on a small piece of canvas next
to the grave building blocks.  A vertebra.."  the thin flattened
collarbone... The skull has a bullet hole right on top.

She must have been kneeling," says the Commissioner.

Ribs.  Breastbone that once held heart.  Around the pelvis is a blue
plastic bag.  Oh yes," the grave indicator remembers.  We kept her
naked and after ten days she made herself these panties."  He sniggers:
God.."  she was brave."

The Commissioner's eyes are purified in the brilliant yellow of anger.
It is he who said: sometimes at night I wake up with a rage pounding in
my breast.."  as if to wipe me out like a veld fire.  It was he who
tried during the last half-hour of F.W. de Klerk's political submission
to pin down a connection between National Party policy and the deaths
in KwaZulu Natal.  But like the Truth Commission's lawyer, like the
other Commissioners, he just slid like water off F.W. His head knuckled
back into his shoulders, shaking in disbelief.

De Klerk and his hostile delegation leave.  The room and passages are
filled with rage.  People swamped with fury apd desperation.  Dejected,
the Commissioners stand arouAd.  Archbishop Tutu's skin hangs dull and
loose from his fice His shoulders covered in defeat.  I want to go to
him, to make I some infantile gesture or other.  To kiss his ring, to
touch his

When De Klerk walked out, it was as if something slippe' through my
fingers for ever.  ) I

Speechless I stand before the Archbihop.  Whence words now come?  For
us.  We who hang quivering ar from this soundless space of Afrikaner
past?  What does say?  What the hell does one do with this load of
skeletons, origins, shame and ash?

That was the day the day the Big Dip' began.  The Dat of the Undeniable
Divide.  One moment it was the closest, the next moment the farthest
apart that people in this country have ever been.

The National Party immediately started mobilizing on anti Truth
Commission sentiments.  Those in and around the Commission showed
symptoms of the untenable the impossibility of the process, the
futility of the dream of reconciliation.

What we have hoped for, will never be.

Some journalists want to be moved to other beats.

We cannot leave now," says a colleague, we must see the process
through, otherwise we will be dangling in the air for ever."

We ask the Commission about its plans for the rest of the year.  Any
special occasion lined up to get rid of six solid months of perpetrator
hearings, any ceremony to conclude the workings and set people free of
the past?  The Commission is vague.  is obviously more concerned at
this stage with the final repft and with two vaults full of amnesty
applications which 4 Amnesty Committee must work through at its
tranquil race.

Why do people hang in there?  Has the Truth Commission become the last
empire of naive righteousness and impossible dreams?

But those in and around the Commission have been singed into their own
versions of Vlakplaas units.  We from the press can only talk to each
other.  We look each other up, we buy food for each other, we live each
other's stories we experience the process through a thousand eyes.
Every second person in the street looks like a Commissioner, every
group looks like the Investigative Unit on its way to a breakthrough.
We are on first-name terms with the guards.  We all want to resign.  We
all yearn for another life.

At Tzaneen a young Tswana interpreter is interviewed.  He holds on to
the table top, his other hand moves restlessly in his lap.  It is
difficult to interpret victim hearings," he says, because you use the
first person all the time.  I have no distance when I say I ... it runs
through me with I."

Now how do you survive it?"

I don't.  After the first three months of hearings, my wife and baby
left me because of my violent outbursts.  The Truth Commission provided
counselling and I was advised to stop.  But I don't want to.  This is
my history, and I want to be part of it until the end."

The end.  We all wait for the end.  And we assume the Truth Commission
will provide this end.

That is a disastrous attitude," says Dr.  Sean Kaliski, the Valkenberg
psychiatrist.  People thought that the Truth Commission would be this
quick fix, this Rugby World Cup scenario, and that we would go through
the process and fling our arms around each other and be blood brothers
for evermore.  And that is nonsense absolute nonsense.  The TRC is
where the reality of this country is hitting home and hitting home very
hard.  And that is good.  But there will be no grand release every
individual will have to devise his or her own personal method of coming
to terms with what has happened."

Antipathy for the Truth Commission blasts into the open.  The
Commission is bombarded with demands and legal threats, Parliament
besieged with Truth Commission debates, those who report on the
Commission targeted with hate mail.

A columnist in the Free State writes: Reject the Truth Commission with
the disgust it deserves on untested evidence it tries to portray the
Afrikaner as the icon of all evil.  Untested evidence has become the
truth of the boerehatSs'.

Don't despair," says Kaliski.  The fact that a person reels compelled
to say: These things are not true, these things areA biased, points to
the first step in dealing with the Truth 2 Commission.  Previously
people said nothing, now at least they are denying the information." He
refers to the five stag experienced by terminally ill patients: denial,
rage and is accepkan lation, bargaining, and depression, out of which
will eventually surface.

I think people are too impatient.  I personally would R,e very
concerned if, overnight, whites could integrate information that turns
their whole world-view upside down.  It' vill take decades," he says,
generations, and people will assimfiate the truths of this country
piece by piece."

Kaliski says that Afrikaners in particular are feeling terribly
exposed.  If you personalize it: a very proud person who is publicly
exposed as a scoundrel will hardly ever respond with humility and
contrition, he will almost always respond with anger and outrage.  The
community feels exposed becaus they have been caught out, shown up as
evil, and this is very hard to deal with."

The vocabulary around the Truth Commission has changed from phase to
phase, but the word that turns up most often is: underestimate.
Everything about the dynamics of the Truth Commission has been
underestimated'.  The only nightmare is the possibility that the
Commission will stumble so badly that it wipes out all its successes.
Of late, overestimate' has become a popular word.  And this shortly
before the Commission has to pass its last two milestones.  Two
impossible ones: reconciliation and reparation.  And then two go hand
in hand.  The one cannot be without the other If people don't get
reparation, they won't forgive.  If people are not forgiven, they won't
offer reparation.  Or rather, this was my thinking.

De Klerk was nothing more nor less than a politician looking for a
forum to sort out tensions in his own ranks.  The single-minded
strategy adopted in the questioning of De Klerk provided him with the
stage he was looking for.  Don't worry," someone says, the Commission
has enough evidence on De Klerk.  He will eat his words."  And if he
eats them, and has his nose rubbed in them, what will happen then?.  I
wonder.  Will he then be forgiven?  Will people assist with reparation
because they feel deeply humiliated?  Will white and black in small
rural towns now work jointly for the benefit of those who suffered the
most?

I take a Jewish colleague aside: What kind of reparation was done by
the Germans?"  He provides an impressive list, ranging from pensions
and free transport, to leaders kneeling at Jewish memorials.  And money
money from the Federal Republic of Germany was the largest contributing
factor to the full industrialization of Israel .. . I listen perplexed,
thinking about the unimaginative document on reparation work shopped
some months ago.  They could come up with nothing more inspired than a
lump sum of money.  No special study fund, housing subsidy scheme,
pension provision, medical assistance just a sum of money that the
Government has to dish out.  And if it cannot afford to do so, the
Commission can wash its hands and say, It's not our fault."

I also know better than to ask my Jewish colleague whether anyone was
forgiven on the basis of reparation.  Is contrition in the form of
reparation then just as futile as denial?  And suddenly it is as if an
undertow is taking me out... out.."  and out.  And behind me sinks the
country-of my skull like a sheet in the dark and I hear a thin song,
hooves, hedges of venom, fever and destruction fermenting and hissing
underwater.  I shrink and prickle.  Against.  Against my blood and the
heritage thereof.  Will I for ever be them recognizing them as I do
daily in my nostrils?  Yes.  And what we have done will never be
undone.  It doesn't matter what we do.  What De Klerk does.  Until the
third and the fourth generation.

Famished.  Parched, one waits for Constand Viljoen's party to make its
submission.  They form a modest group.  Viljoen speaks as if he wants
to capture something, bring something back, confirm some essence of
Afrikanerhood that is wholesome.  I want it too but at the same time
mow it not to be.  When Viljoen talks about how the Britishtook away
the land of the Boers, an English-speaking journilist utters
sarcastically: Ah shame!"  I cannot help it.  I spit like a flame: Shut
up, you!  YAJ didn't utter a word when De Klerk spoke... Viljoen i it
least trying."

You must be joking this poor man is an anachronism."  My anger shrivels
before his Accent.  And his T4thk

Viljoen was the only political leader who recieed that a special
Reconciliation Commission be set up in future to deal with the
hardening of attitudes I experience daiIr.

After the first political submissions in Augfist 1996 I interviewed
Archbishop Tutu.  Weren't you irrit4ed that you had to listen to four
versions of South Africa's past?"

He spreads his four skinny fingers under my nose.  Four versions...
four... exist of the life of Christ.  Which one would you have liked to
chuck out?"

I try another question.  Why did the last part of the ANC's submission
sound so paranoid?  As if the whole worJ is in a conspiracy against
Thabo Mbeki."

Tutu tilts his head in surprise.  You should be the last person to ask
me this.  You are sitting with me daily, listening to what happened in
the past Many people are the second and third generation of being
persecuted.  And if you don't know the past, you will never understand
today's politics."

A friend who has emigrated visits me in the office.  She answers a call
for me: It's your child.  He says he's writing a song about Joe
Mamasela and he needs a word to rhyme with

Vlakplaas ."  She lowers the phone.  Who is Joe Mamasela?"  A massive
sigh breaks through my chest.  For the first time months I breathe. 
The absolution one has given up on, the hope for a catharsis the ideal
of reconciliation, the dream of a powerful reparation policy... Maybe
this is all that is important that I and my child know Vlakplaas and
Mamasela.  That we know what happened there.

When the Truth Commission started last year, I realized instinctively:
if you cut yourself off from the process, you will wake up in a foreign
country a country that you don't know and that you will never
understand.

BLOOD RAINS IN EVERY LATITUDE 7'

THAT MOMENT I remember.  I was called in and told: the," South African
Government wants to kill you.  AAd I remember i the indescribable
solitude of the mont... because it was so if : personal..  . they
didn't want to kill ANC members, but me specifically."

Father Michael Lapsley.  Born in New Zealand, trained in Australia as
an Anglican priest in the Society of the Sacred Mission, and then in
1973 sent to the University of Natal in South Africa.

I was a convinced pacifist when I arrived in South Africa but quickly
discovered that in this country neutrality was impossible.  During my
ministry; I met students from several backgrounds and it was clear to
me that if you were white and did nothing to change the situation, you
were actually a functionary of the Apartheid Government.

Although I did not then have any political affiliations, the South
African Government deported me.  In neighbouring Lesotho, I trained
Anglican priests."

A friend from Lesotho: Michael's house was open to anybody in Lesotho.
For I who am from quite a closed white community, it was the first time
that I met black South Africans on an equal basi... and we discussed
and argued about everything ... we also prayed, because Michael's house
was essentially house of prayer."

While Micijel Lapsley was visiting his family in New Zealand, a grap of
well-trained South African soldiers made a cross-border raid into
Lesotho.  Phyllis Naidoo, who survived the attack, describes that night
in her book Le Rona Re Batho: At 1 a.m. on Thursday, 9 December 1982,
Lesotho was held captive by the moon.  It was a beautiful clear moonlit
night as only the Maluti mountains can produce.  Ironically, it was the
moonlight that assisted the South African Defence Force in their
killing spree.  They came in helicopters, guided by searchlights,
frightening off the usual night walkers... 42 people died that night..
. The ANG moved Michael Lapsley, who was then a member of the
organization, to Zimbabwe.

It Was a normal warm autumn day... April... when I became the focal
point of all that is evil.  I returned from a series of lectures in
Canada.  A pile of mail had accumulated on my desk, among others
something with an ANG letterhead.  The envelope stated that it
contained theological magazines.  While I was busy on the phone with
someone, I started opening the manila envelope on the coffee table to
my side.  The first magazine was Afrikaans... that I put aside, I can't
read Afrikaans.  The second was in English.  I tore off the plastic and
opened the magazine .. . and that was the mechanism that detonated the
bomb... I felt howl was being blown into the air .. . throughout it
all, I never lost my consciousness..."

A friend from Lesotho: I visited Michael three days after the explosion
in the Harare Hospital .. . It was terrible to witness... his face was
charred and black.."  his beard had melted into his face which was
swollen to twice its normal size both his hands had been amputated, and
he had to keep the stumps in the air, since anything touching them
caused him insufferable pain.."  he lost one eye.."  his eardrums were
burst... I wanted to comfort him; I wanted to hold ... but there was
nowhere I could touch him."  Michael Lapsley: When I made my political
choice, I often thought of death.  What I never thought of was being
maimed.  After the explosion I felt that it would have been better if I
were dead, because now I am someone without hands and I had never.."
never before met someone without hands.

Hands transmit love .. . tenderness .. . I endured an endless and
intensely overwhelming sorrow over the loss of my hands.."  when they
brought me the prosthetic hands, I started cing... because they were so
uy... Now I have these.."  and it is actually amazing what they can
do... It is these stainless-steel pincers that Father Lapsley raised to
take the oath before his submission to the Trpth Commission: So help me
God... But it is also these in ers that prevent him from wiping away
his tears like other victims.  When their stories cut too close,
victims often bury I their faces in their hands, and wipe their eyes
with tissues.  But7 J how do you hold the fragile veil of a tissue in
such pincers?  V How do you complete the simple action of blowing yo
nose?  Several times the pincers move towards his face n reflex action
as if he wants to cover his face with his ln4s and every movement
flashes the inhumanity of $of{h Africa's past into the hall... hard,
shiny and sterile.  r

I do not see myself as a victim, but as a survivrof Apartheid.."  this
is part of my triumph of returning to ith Africa and living my life as
meaningfully and joy full as possible... I am not captured by hatred,
because then they would not only have destroyed my body, but also my
soul... Ironically, even without hands and an eye, I am much more free
than the person who did this to me... I say to everyone who supported
Apartheid, your freedom is waiting for you..  but you will have to go
through the whole process.

Someone had to type my name on the manila envelop somebody made the
bomb.  I often ask the question: What did these people tell their
children that they did that day?  However, the fact that such a
sophisticated bomb found its way through the post to me, after 2
February 1990, after Mandela's release and on the eve of important
discussions between the NP and the ANC, I lay sole responsibility for
that with F.W. de Klerk.  De Klerk knew of the hit squads Frederik Van
Zyl Slabbert himself told me that he told De Klerk about them but De
Klerk chose to do nothing about it.

Forgi I will be able to, but then the asking of forgiveness must tale
place within the framework of pentance... but from j direction of De
Klerk not a single sound of admission has come.  And I also want to
know, what is a person doing now to make up for what he or she
destroyed in the past?"  Archbishop Desmond Tutu: There is always a
special silence when Michael takes the Communion.  First you think
people are nervous that he may knock the cup over with his pincers but
then it becomes absolutely quiet... And it is as if light beams from
him..

And you know that you are in touch with something that will always
triumph over darkness.  And I give to God the glory for you, Michael,
and I am thankful for you... because you can talk of the crucifixion
and the resurrection, because it is in your body."

Obviously moved, Tutu stands up, followed by the whole hall, and prays
while Michael Lapsley slowly sinks back into his chair.

Queenstown.  On the surface a normal platteland town among the soft,
grass-covered mountains of the Eastern Cape.  But Queenstown holds
buried the most gruesome of histories... something which is never
talked about, never referred to.  Not one of the cases that the Truth
Commission listened to in Queenstown gave any indication of the unusual
extent of horror in the town.

Queenstown is unique.  It is known as the Necklace Capital of the
World.  In August 1985 the first person to be neck laced Bill Mentoor,
was killed because he ignored a consumer boycott instigated by the ANC
Youth League.  It is thought that 39 necklace murders took place here
over the next four years more than nine a year, almost one a month..  .
while in the great majority of South African towns such a thing never
happened.

Nozibele Madubedube testifies on two murders in her family.  Later I
run into her in one of the side rooms of the Queenstown.  City Hall,
crying.  The Truth Commission treated me like dirt.  Commissioner
Bongani Finca kept on asking: But didn't you know that the people were
against councillors?  So?  Is he saying we deserved to be neck laced

The big woman in the navy cardigan then tells me her story:

My sister Lungelwa came home specially from Johannesburg for her
birthday.  She would have turned eighteen.

That morning the comrades surrounded the house.  They were singing: Let
the impimpi die .. . They shouted: if Lungelwa does not come out, the
house will burn ... I wet out with Lungelwa... they grabbed her... I
cried out, ut they immediately closed around her.  I could not see
her..  I could only hear her cries... I ran to the police .. . They
told me afterwards .. -Lungelwa burnt in a different way to anyone
else... theyj1 poured petrol over her, they put a tyre ar9und her
neck

J..1

We will make you pretty, they said, necklace upon necklace... And
perfume?  And they poured petrol on the t#r4' They also told her to
drink the petrol, for the flames to ha a shiny path... Then they
called: Time for sparks!  Th they threw matches... They say Lungelwa,
whose hands and feet were stilled with wire, kept lying down until she
caught fire and everybody had to stand away from the roaring flames. 
They say Lungelwa suddenly became stronger than a man.." stronger than
an animal and she was young!  she sat up on the ground.." her arms and
legs broke loose from the wire... the tyre around her chest she pulled
off with a powerful gesture and hurled it into the hysterical crowd. 
Never, never again will you burn anyone like this! she screamed and ran
to a sandy gully where she rolled and rolled until the flames on her
body were extinguished... She died the next day in the hospital in
Queenstown."

It is bitterly cold in Queenstown.  The Truth Commission adjourns.  I
eat dinner in a badly lit cafe.

Queenstown is different to other places," the waitress confirms.  There
are two madhouses here, you know?"  The next day Ijestablish that this
is indeed so: Queenstown had two psycatric sections for years.  Here in
the mornings, necklacernd victim sit in the sun together.

The local history teacher suspects some innate weakness in the place
after a century of conflicting tensions.  Queenstown was the first town
founded by the English after the final victory over Xhosa in 1847. This
region is also the home of the Mfengu, the first black people ever to
be proclaimed British subjects, and since early times they have been
under pressure to do away with tradition.  They are also, according to
Noel Mostert, the only group in the Eastern Cape who refused to take up
any Khoisan into their tribe.

I track down a leader of the ANG Youth League in the town.  Yes, he was
in Queenstown during those days, but he thinks that people are blowing
this neck lacing business out of proportion:

You must remember how it was here during that time.  Two bantustans
bordered on here.  You could trust no one.  No one.  When I slept at
night, two groups had to stand guard and also keep an eye on each
other.  I know people say the word necklace originated here from
Queenstown.  But we heard it from other Xhosa-speaking people from
Johannesburg.  We called it tyre-to-tyre .. . We had no weapons, but
tyres and petrol were easily obtained.  It was also a way of
controlling the community and your comrades.  During a neck lacing
everybody observed each other carefully.."  if you burnt with less
fervour than the others, then maybe you had something on your mind .. .
With the advent of F.W. de Klerk, the necklace murders stopped..  . we
suddenly felt things were changing.

Impimpis.  Spies.  The police manipulated the idea of informers.  They
will say to you in passing: Just check tonight, around s... just check
what Vuyo is doing... you know what, we're going to catch all of you.
And then we keep an eye on Vuyo while we're planning strategy.  And
yes, every now and then he wants to know what the time is.  When it's
exactly six, he says he has to go.  When we grab him two days later and
ask him where he was the other evening, then you see how startled he
is.  Anyway, even if he tells you a hundred times that he visited his
sister in hospital, then the fear in his eyes and the fact that the
police pointed him out is enough proof to know: it's either him or
me... Nozibele Madubedube: It's not true, they targeted us because they
were jealous.  My parents were educated people.  My father belonged to
the ANC long before they were born, but because he served on the local
town council, they said that he sold black people out."

The ANG youth leader: These bourgeois councillorslThey enriched
themselves through the system.  The lot of black people never bothered
them .. . it is us, the youth, the hooligans as they like to call us.
It is us who through our oJn discipline, strategy and actions drove
this country to change during the eighties.  That old Madubedube... two
street of families had to share three toilets when he was copc4kor;
today he can vote, and his haughty daughter too, be4u4 of what we
brought here for them."

Nozibele Madubedube: Less than a year after rVly ister Lungelwa's
death, the comrades also grabbed me one porning.  They did exactly the
same to me... When I swowed the petrol, my husband fell down on the
ground and sciamed sounds that I had never heard before on this earth
and have never heard again .. . my children hysterically tried to pull
him up from the ground..  . I felt the petrol burning in my stomach and
saw the comrades' shoes dancing right in front of my eyes... shoes you
know... tattered shoes... suddenly our neighbour stormed in amongst the
crowd and she kneied over me... To this woman you will do nothing, I
know her, she is not an impimpi but actually I was alive, but also not.
If any light flickers anywhere, I instinctively think it's fire. My
whole family is... just partly alive .. . only parts of us have to do
with one another .. . When we're driving in the car, I look at my
husband and my children and I feel... I see them..  . and I do not see
them at all.."  when I touch them it feels as if there is a thick skin
over my han... especially my oldest child always seems to be afraid of
me.  My husband looks like an exhaued human being.  In 1989 I was
converted and baptiid with water.."  it was so cool, this water.."  and
I can lnestly say, this is why I'm still functioning.  This mornfhg
when I sat in front of the Truth Commission, I saw two of those who
grabbed me and my sister in the hall..  . and they are still..  .
nothing..  . only..  . now I am also nothing.  My life keeps on
slipping through my fingers."

Chief Anderson Joyi punctuates the -names of every one of his nineteen
generations of forebears with his knobkerrie on the floor:

King Thembu begat Bomoyi; and Bomoyi begat Ceduma; and Ceduma begat
Mngutu; and Mngutu begat Ndande; and Ndande begat Nxego; and Nxego
begat Dlomo; and Dlomo begat Hala; and Hala begat Madiba; and Madiba
begat Thato; and Thato begat Zondwa; and Zondwa begat Ndaba; and Ndaba
begat Ngubenuca; and Ngubenuca begat Mtikara (this is the house where
Matanzima comes from, the right-hand house); and Mtikara begat
Gangeliswe; and Gangeliswe begat Dalindyebo; and Dalindyebo begat
Jongiliswe; and Jongiliswe begat Sabata; and Sabata begat Buyelekaya;
and this is where I begin.

The Xhosa interpreters come out of their booths.  Man!  that was deep,
deep Xhosa.  We had to use the King James version of English to give
people a real impression of how this old man is talking."

Why do you start your testimony with your lineage?"  I ask him
afterwards.

Their names organize the flow of time," the interpreter explains to me.
Their names give my story a shadow.  Their names put what has happened
to me in perspective.  Their names say I am a chief with many colours.
Their names say we have the ability to endure the past.."  and the
present."

THIS GOES BACK TO 1976.  I took a train from Barbehon to Komatipoort.
As I alighted from the train at Kaaprnuida and we just took a few
drinks, then the train arrived and qe boarded for Komatipoort.  Most of
my friends got off lIt Hectorspruit.  As the train arrived at
Komatipoor I as aslp... I'm not sure because I was drunk a bit.  Ad ien
the railway police came in they wee searching the train and they asked
me, Where are you going?"  - I aid,

Komatipoort."  r [...J He took me to the railway police offic... ,l
said I must agree that he found me at the border.  Then said,

What are you telling me now?  Why are you forcin' me to say something I
don't know?  I can't allow that."  Then he came closer to me and said I
must agree and he called a black policeman to stand by the door.  Then
he went out and called a station commander.  When they came they said
to me I am a communist.  And then I said, What is a communist?  because
I don't know what a communist is' Then they said to me, You are the
communist, why are you having this document?  This document is from
Mozambique."  I once visited Mozambique and I got this document,
because at one stage there was a person I negotiated with to get
cattle.  Then they said to me no, and they took my ID and they said I
must agree that they found me without an ID document.  I said, No, I
can't allow that, I am a bona fide citizen of South Africa you can't
say that."

Then they changed my name.  I am no longer Mahlasela Paul Mhlongo, I'm
now Carlosh Tjhira ... now I was surised actually'... (audience
laughter) where do they col* ... YAS41 Sooi: Please.."  remember the
witness is supposed to lie telling the story.  Whilst I will not
completely say you are not allowed to laugh or to... be merry, I think
you should allow him to speak his story and allow him some dignity.
MHLONGO: At that juncture they said to me, You are Garlosh now we are
giving you a new name you are Carlosh,".  and they had to beat me and
as they were beating me I was also defending myself.  Then they took a
wire, they tied it to my toe and they took a towel and they blindfolded
me so I cannot see whatever is happening.  I could not speak and I
could not see, and they shocked me and they tied my hands at the back.
And they said to me Do you still disagree that you are from Mozambique?
That you are an alien?"  And they said, You are a kaffir," and then
from there they tied my genital parts with that wire, and my hands were
tied to the back, and they shocked me on my parts... And if I told
them, I am not from Mozambique," they were beating me, shockiig me..  .
I was so surprised!

I'm not from Mozambique!  I'm not an alien!"  Think properly, you
kaffir," they said to me.

The black police officer was watching as they did this to.  me.  He
said to me: If they come back from tea now.."  if you continue to
resist, they're going to put you in a bag and put some stones in the
bag, and also a cat sometimes with you in the bag, and they throw you
right into the river.  It is not that they're only doing this to you,
this is actually their thing which they normally do to each and every
person. So I'm requesting you, when they come back, you must agree you
are-an alien."  I got frightened, because I realized their aim is to
kill me now.

When they came back they started kicking me Are you still resisting?"
And I said, I come from Mozambique' I agreed with everything they were
asking.  A black person came and removed the wire from my penis and
they took the towel and they untied me again.  I was unable to walk. 
My body was totally useless.  I did not know whether I would ever walk
again... This thing worries me a lot... the problem is, there was a
woman.  The woman said... now the woman is complaining at home that I
am no longer able to perform the .. the sexual activity.  Now this is
because of what they did to me.  [...]At the magistrate's court, we
were not actually given a fair hearing.  They brought us all, the whole
21, and took three of us and said, You are sentenced to six months,
three months suspended."  Now the interpreter that ay, fortunately I
happened to know the interpreter, it was Mr.  John Sbiya.  I said to
John, Man, tell these people I'm from Barberton... now they're grouping
me together with the people from Mozambique."  Then this Sbiya said,
Well,4 have nothing to do with you."  And this worried me a lot

Then from there they took us, they said we are sentiacti, we must go to
jail now... They put s in a truck an4 t4k us to Barberton.  And the
people of Barberton knew ne ry well even the warders and they said: Mr.
Mhl6go, where're you from, why are you a prisoner?"  And the as nothing
I could say.."  people were just pushing niel My belongings I had to
give away because I could not tarry them it was clothes for my children
which I bought for Christmas time.  Now in Barberton I was working in
jail, but it was not easy for my body... I could not work.

In jail, Mhlongo refused to work, insisting that he had done nothing
wrong.  His case was taken up with the Department of Home Affairs and
he was released in April the followifig year.

I lost everything.  My house and everything that was in those four
rooms.  Now the reason why I came before the Commission is that I now
have a problem because I'm now no longer able to perform the sexual
activity to my wife.  My body actually has turned to be useless.  Now I
don't know what to do next.  I just want to find out, what can be done?
Because during that Apartheid era I was labelled a terrorist -and I am
not a terrorist.  Something sho4l be done so that I can get a pension
that would con se me and help me support my six children, who are still
&t school.

A man has lost his manhood and he wants it back.

WY NAND MALAN: You spoke about the changes in your body but you had
five children after the shock treatment... MHLONGO: Yes, I do have
children..  . but I'll say this: I'm supporting these children and..  .
I'm getting these children, and I suspect I am not the father of the
children.  (Mahiasela Paul Mhlongo, testifying in Neispruit)

My child was retrenched from Sasol.  When he came back he was waiting
here at home.  He stayed at home for almost two weeks.  On the third
week he said to us no, he cannot remain here at home because he doesn't
work.  One night..  . he came home.  He went to his room.  He slept
there.

While he was sleeping there in the morning at half past six there came
a lot of boys and they said, We want this boy, we are going for a
meeting.  The boy woke up and said, Why such a noise here?  They said,
There is a-meeting.  And he said, I don't know what the meeting is
about.  And they said, It is a meeting for the comrades.  They took my
boy.1 They took an axe and they actually axed him on the head and he
had long hair and this..  . this hair was actually inside in the
wound.."  and from there he ran to another home and at that home there
were two boys and they recognized him and they ran to my home.  On
arrival at my home they said to me: Stand up, Frank has been burnt to
death.  I asked, What wrong has he done?  They said, No, we don't
know... (crying)

I then left, I went.  I just decided to run.  I crossed the river and
behind the other women called me and said: Please come back, where are
you going to?  I said, No, I heard that my son has been burnt.  They
said No, come here, we saw a person running from the other direction...
that was black with ashes.  Thinking that it was my son, I went back. I
took another direction and I asked him: What happened to you, who
injured you?  His whole body was burnt except the face and the nose.
And he said, I do not know.  I don't know who the perpetrators of this
act are.  And..  . he said to me, I don't know the people who burnt me.
I said to him, Not even one of the people who have done this to you?
And he said to me, I will tell you tomorrow.  He said, I will tell you
when I arrive in the hospital.  I said to him, Please, tell rlae, you
said to me you know the perpetrators.  He only opened his mouth like a
bird and closed his mouth again and his eyes were now changing their
colour and..  . I cried... These are the terrible things I saw with my
eyes."

(Anna Silinda on the death of her son in September 1986

I h'

I saw my younger boy coming, he's twelve years old.  I-Is41 to his
father there are people who are calling him.  Thy #e calling him in the
passage and they want to know whethe4he is there or not.  Well, their
father said.  I'm not going 4t [The boy said:] I want to go out and
check who are the people.  And when he went out he met the people at
the or.  While he met them one of them came closer and said to me,

Is your husband in?  and I said, Yes, he's in.

My husband came out.  And after he came out nothing much was said.  It
was a group of boys, I don't know their age, I don't know what was
their aim.  I saw a lot of people and confusion in my yard and some of
the people had sjambokj with them and some had very dangerous weapons
and my husband, when he came out, he had a slasher with him.  As they
were just chasing him around the yard, beating him with the sjamboks
and he fell down, and as he was falling down he surrendered.  And then
when they checked him, his right ear was already damaged.  After that,
my boy was also present and he was around there, his sisters ran
away.

Then one person came and said they must take out a tyre and put it on
my husband's neck... As they were taking two tyres, he said to them:
0"If you want to kill me, kill me.  And then he ok the tyre himself and
then he said to them, Do whatev4 you want to do to me.  And the other
person had a five-lit ran of petrol.  He poured petrol.  And then they
took a match and they lit it.  And I took the match from him... And
then they took the match ain... and they gave it to him.  I took it
back again.."  and I took it and I threw it away.  Then someone in the
back threw a battery he was actually aiming to hit me with this battery
and they gave it to me for the second time, the very same match.  In
the end, the same person, who was standing in front of me took away
that match and he set alight.  And they said he must be the one who
actually set it alight.  And then they dispersed.."  and he remained
there... and he was burning.  After that I took water, trying to pour
the water on top of him... I could see nothing happened... I took some
soil, and at that time he was burning seriously... I scraped some soil
and was pouring soil on top of him.."  my younger boy went to ask for
transport somewhere.."  he went for a long time.."  by that time I
covered him with a blanket We took him to the clinic, and from the
clinic we took him to the hospital.  But one could see that he was
tired .. . he actually did not reach the next day."  (Anna Mtimkulu on
her husband's death in June 1986)

My wife and I and our three children attended church on Sunday.  We
drove to church in two vehicles, because I had to be there earlier.  We
left that evening around ten past eight.  My wife and three children
drove in front of me in our car.  We came to the farm turn-off on the
gravel road.  We drove until the road splits to the house.  Here, where
my wife came to the fork, you could already see the lights in the house
burning.  All three children sat in the back seat.  My young boy sat
behind his mother, my baby of fifteen months lay on his sister's lap on
the left she was five years old.  My wife gave the keys to my son:
Jaco, here are the keys to the house, please unlock the door for us. He
stood up in the seat and leant over to take the keys.  At that moment
she hit the land mine

I who was behind them saw the whole event.  I saw how the flames boiled
out from under the car.  I saw how the car shot up into the air.  Right
out of the road, ninety degrees, into the bush next to the road, pieces
of metal, dust, earth flew through the air.  I pulled up, jumped out,
crying: God why?  I went closer, I looked at my wife.  She sat in her
seat, crushed.  Pieces of her feet were gone, her body was bloody, full
of cuts, she moaned and asked, Where are my legs?  My son ho had stood
up behind her was sitting on the back seat, head askew and unconscious.
My other two children, my baty boy and girl, were fearful and just
crying.  His sister held him.  took these children out and loaded them
into my vehicle and took them to the nearest house.  [..  .1

We bent open the driver's door of the wreck.  We lifted my wife out.  I
took off my jacket, put it on the grass and l4id1ier down.  Then we
tried lifting my son out.  The front sea sere pinning his legs.  I
asked [my neighbourj to take my Wife to hospital.  While he was
fetching his car, I knelt next to h and said: My wife, don't lose hope.
Look up to the Lord.  And I prayed for her.  One is confused... Mr. 
Pretorius tocAc her away.

Then I turned my son's feet aside and freed him from the seats and took
him to hospital.  My wife was taken out of the operating theatre around
three o'clock the next morning They amputated her right leg under the
knee.  Her left leg was crushed at the anlde.  They put in pins.  She
had several opn wounds and her throat was cut open, they stitched it up
but her whole face was singed and her arms were torn.

At daylight my father and I went back to the scene of the accident.  I
knew a piece of my wife's leg from the shin down was still in the
wreckage.  We went to look if we couldn't find the limb in order to
bury it.  However, we could not find anything.  What we did find was a
piece of my son's skull in which he had a hole.  On the top left.  Some
of his.."  brains were also on the seat.  I put it in a tissue and
buried it at home.  Do you know how it feels..  . what it does to you?
[...]How can yo be human again after such an experience?  Three days
later ixj wife died 20 August 1986.  She never talked again.  [..
Sometimes I had to go to Pretoria in the middle of the week when my son
got convulsion attacks.  His four sisters,

my father and me had to hold him down on the bed.  We learned that the
morphine prescribed to him was not enough and that morphine of other
patients had to be used to calm him down.  I had the privilege to take
him home for Christmas but he did not recognize me as his father.."  he
had to learn how to speak again.."  but he had lapses.  Jaco died on S
March 1987.

It was not an easy time for my daughter of flye... that child never
cried.  That child still does not cry.  The world can go to pieces
around her but it wouldn't matter..."  (Johannes Roos)

It is dark when I enter the foyer of the Nelspruit Hotel.  I cannot put
things together.  The cries of the night are in my ears, the jolly
faces in the bar and the air that smells of spring how do I integrate
it?

A note waits with my room key:

This life is terriing... One could whistle through life like a
starling, or eat it like your nut cake.

But both of us know it's impossible.

Osip Mandeistam

I stare at the words.

The tight knot of my heart shivers.

A fountain fails on leaves and stone in the courtyard.  It is dark
where he is sitting.  Let's go and eat somewhere."

It's going to rain," says the maitre d, I suggest you sit inside."

We want to sit outside," he says.  We order antipasto.

The two Annas back to back like that.  And the Anna whose son burnt to
death did you see her daughter next to her wore a piece of material
with fuckin' dolphins on it dolphins!  I thought I was going off my
head to see these grim faces, the description of the son's death
without the word death ever being mentioned, while there is this
carefree space there amongst them, there is a space where dolphi,is
warble."

The other Anna have you ever seen a real NG Kerk hat at a hearing? Such
a nice broad-brimmed white one made of voile ... and she sits so alone
and it's as if there's a great silence around her.  And did you see she
never cries.."  she just!  stares at the table in front of her.."  as
if these stories are io the beginning or the end of something, but part
of the long n horror of her life.  How do people ever live togethe same
neighbourhood after such'a thing has happened time the comrades see her
walking and she's also tall, and o dignified something must stir inside
them."

victLs The food is put down.

And then there's the difference between the black and Johannes Roos.
Full medical treatment was available immediately and the story was
covered fully in all the newspapers with photographs and interviews.
And still this doesn't make it any less terrible.  Maybe you don't
understand the Afrikaans, but he sounded really pious..."

Yes, I picked it up in the translations.  But why would he do such a
barbarous thing like burying his son's brains at his house?"

Just as barbarous as you, eating a whole plate of antipasto with your
fingers.  Why did they want to bury the leg.."  do you think they were
afraid that it would be eaten by animals?"

It starts raining.  The maitre d comes out.  There is a table for us
inside.  No, we would like to sit here.  We like the rain.

A Lowveld thunderstorm bursts over us a spectacle of lightning and
sound.  It tears open neighbour hoods purple with jacaranda and
wisteria.  We sit without a word and watch.  H puts the side plates on
our wineglasses.  When thunder i%iiplashes over the wet streets we look
at it without blinking.  The food we eat with rain and olive oil
between our fingers.

Oh, but Mr.  Mhlongo.  And he says it so directly: that the Apartheid
regime robbed him of his manhood and he wants to know what the Truth
Commission can do about it.  And trust the Truth Commission man ne to
understand that perfectly.  And then they turn it around for him, so
that he is actually looking for money for the children that are not
his."  The waiter comes running out with an umbrella.  Do we need
anything?  We order more wine.

The water streams over us.  My glasses lie next to my plate.  The cool
water dams up in my sockets.  I become clear sighted

Why is it so nice to eat with your fingers?"

Psychologists say that the action of eating, of taking in food is
simply enchanting because it's the way we can take up the world inside
ourselves, how what is around us becomes part of us.  We eat the
world."

Might that be why so many victims complain about the bad food they got
in prisons and ANC camps?  Everybody expects to hear about the terrible
torture they had to endure and then they complain about the food.  Or
that it had worms in, or was too watery, or that it was too little or
nothing at all."

Well, it must feel as if the world is rejecting you, refusing to become
part of yourself, and so you will die deprived of the world."

Two of the black journalists were sitting chatting and laughing while
Roos was talking.  How should one read it?  I tried to work out in the
beginning if I only cry when whites are testifying, but to my relief
this was not so.  But I have never seen a black journalist cry over any
of the victims."

So why don't you ask?"  Slowly we walk back.  His hand reassuringly on
the back of my neck.  Soaking wet we walk back into the oppressive
night.

LETTERS ON THE ACOUSTICS

OF SCARS

4iI A letter from Tim j 4

This last week has, for me, been a sort of microcosn% o the whole TRG
experience.  On Tuesday I went out to dinAer ith a friend of mine at
Cavendish Square.  While we were having dinner, we sat next to two
Afrikaner men.  One was in his thirties and the other in his fifties
the topic o their conversation was the TRC.  We overheard names like
Georg Meiring being bandied about and, during a gap in our own
conversation, I distinctly heard the younger man mention his amnesty
application.  I felt weird... On Friday evening I was invited to a
party.  Some time during the evening I got talking to a tall,
good-looking aid well-built young Afrikaner man.  After he learnt that
I had been in the Defence Force, he called me into another room.  He
took off his shirt and showed me his chest and back a mass of scars
from a mortar bomb which narrowly missed killing him while he was on
some mission.  He was deeply upset.  He started crying and I ended up
holding him like a small child.  And on Saturday morning I read your
article in the Mail & Guardian.  In one week the generals, the foot
soldiers, the victims and the world outside.  Briefly my story is' that
in 1980 after matriculation I was called p to do my two years' national
service. During my secon44year, I felt that I could no longer reconcile
all that I believ*l in with the actions of the SADF in Namibia.  (I had
the fortune to attend very good schools during my teenage years,
schools that tried to teach the old Mr.  Chips' values of being brave,
and strong, and true, and to fill the world with love your whole life
through..

I deserted from the SADF and made my way to the Botswana border.  I
planned to go to Gaborones... My longterm aim was to join MK and do
something against what I perceived then as an intrinsically evil
system.

Being young, foolish, unprepared and on my own, I was caught as I was
about to climb over the border fence at Ramatihabama.  It was then that
the nightmare began.  I was handed over to the Zeerust branch of the
security police, who interrogated me for about a week.  I was beaten,
given electric shocks, suffocated, kept naked and repeatedly raped with
a police baton.  I remember very few details, except the screaming.  I
was nineteen years old at the time.

I was then handed over to the Waffish Bay security branch where
everything connued... It was a relief to be handed over into military
custody after about two months the military treated me far better than
the police did... This brings me to the point of my story.

The TRC has deeply affected my life in the short space of time that has
elapsed since I first went to their offices here in Cape Town and told
my story to one of the investigators.

In my own life, I think that my parents found it most difficult of all
to accept what I had done and what had happened to me.  They have only
this year begun to talk about it before that, it was never mentioned. I
think the problem that they had was that the regime criminalized the
actions I took as law-abiding bourgeoisie, they felt torn between their
loyalty to me, as their son, and the fact that I had committed a
crime.

Now, with me having gone to the TRC with my story, it seems almost as
if it's all right to talk about it.  Slowly, things are changing.  It's
as if I have been freed from a prison that I've been in for eighteen
years.  At the same time, it's as if my family have also been freed my
brother is all of a sudden much softer, more human, more able to talk
to me.  The last time I saw him he told me that he should have done
more, that he should have tried harder.  After watching the television
documentary on Eugene de Kock, my mother came up to me, horrified: We
didn't know," she said to me.  We just didn't know."

Perhaps this is the most important role of the TRC.  Not to extract
confessions from F.W. and Magnus.  No.  They must live with their own
conscience.  Fuck the perpetrators.  The point of the TRC is to enable
healing to happen.  And let it be said that here in me there is at
least one person they have helped to reconcile: myself to myself.  r j
And the silence is ending.  It's as if we are waking up from4 7 a long,
bad nightmare.  Even the reaction in the Afrikaan press is encouraging:
although I have never read a lte?i supporting the TRC in the Afrikaans
press, there is a14 n questioning of the stories or the evidence.  Not
being ate 5 attack the evidence, they attack the next best thing .1
tJle Commission itself.  But the fact remains that we are no longer
living under the tyranny of silence.  I

Yours sincer$y,

Tim

A letter from Helena translated from the Afrikaans by Angie
Kapelianis

My story begins in my late teenage years as a farm girl in thS
Bethlehem district of the Eastern Free State.  As an eighteen-year-old,
I met a young man in his twenties.  He was working in a top security
structure.  It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship.  We even
spoke about marriage.  A bubbly, vivacious man who beamed out wild
energy.  Sharply intelligent.  Even if he was an Englishman, he was
popular with all the Boere Afrilcaners.  And all my girlfriends envied
me.  Then one day he said he was going on a trip'.  We won't see each
oth again.."  maybe never again.  I was torn to pieces.  So was 1$
Three rears later I moved to the old Eastern Transvaal where my circle
of friends basically consisted of those in the security forces.  I
could never forget my first love.  An extremely short marriage to
someone else failed, all because I married to forget.

More than a year ago, I met my first love through a good friend.  I was
to learn for the first time that he had been operating overseas and
that he was going to ask for amnesty.

I can't explain the pain and bitterness in me when I saw what was left
of that beautiful, big strong person.  Years had dug deep spoors in his
face, robbed of all dignity, no one and nothing to live for.  He had
only one desire that the truth must come out.  Amnesty didn't matter.
It was only a means to the truth.  A need to clean up.

He was gruesomely plucked out of our lives at the beginning of the
year.  Is that the price he had to pay for what he believed in?  The
highest price for the truth?

After my unsuccessful marriage, I met another policeman.  Not quite my
first love, but an exceptional person.  Very special.  Someone with
whom you feel safe.  A well-balanced person who cares about others.."
with friends who you can count on.

Then he tells me that he and three of our friends had been promoted.
We're moving to a special unit.  Now, now my darling.  We are real
policemen now."  We were ecstatic.  We even celebrated.

He and his friends would visit regularly.  They even stayed over for
long periods.  Suddenly, at strange times, they would become restless.
Then abruptly mutter the feared word trip', and drive off.  As a loved
one, I knew no other life than that of worry, sleeplessness, anxiety
about his safety and where they could be.  We simply had to be
satisfied with what you don't know, can't hurt you'.  And all that we
as loved ones knew was what we saw with our own eyes.

After about three years with the Special Forces, our hell began.  He
became very quiet.  Withdrawn.  Sometimes he would just press his face
into his hands and shake uncontrollably.  I realized he was drinking
too much.  Instead of resting at night, he would wander from window to
window.  He tried to hide his wild, consuming fear, but I saw it.  In
the early hours of the morning, between two and half past two, I jolt
awake from his rushed breathing.  Rolls this way, that side of the bed.
He's pale.  Ice-cold in a sweltering night sopping wet with sweat. Eyes
bewildered, but dull like the dead.  And the shakes.  The terrible
convulsions ad blood-curdling shrieks of fear and pain from the bottom
of his soul.  Sometimes he sits motionless, just staring in frorft of
him.

I never understood.  I never knew.  Never realized what wasj being
shoved down his throat during the trips'.  I just well through hell.
Praying, pleading.  God, what is happenjjig What's wrong with him?
Could he have changed so muc?  I he going mad?  I can't handle the man
any more!"

Today I know the answers to all my questions 4d heartache.  I know
where everything began.  The backgrow%d.  The role of those at the
top', the cliques' and our vulti4s' who simply had to carry out their
bloody orders.  The churches and the community leaders.

Yes, I want to answer Antjie Samuel's question on the radio, I stand by
my murderer who let me and the old White South Africa sleep peacefully,
warmly, while those at the top' were again targeting the next permanent
removal from society' for the vultures.

Yes, I have forgiven the freedom fighters for their bombs, mines and
AK-47s that they used so liberally.  There were no angels.  I finally
understood what the struggle was really about the day the Truth
Commission had its first hearing.  I would have done the same had I
been denied everything.  If my life, that of my children and my parents
was strangled with legislation.  If I had to watch how white people
became dissatisfied with the best and still wanted better.  And got it.
I know they also have loved ones who have to suffer and struggle with
their deeds Quatro camp and the MKs.

I envy nd respect the people of the struggle at least their leaders
hAve the guts to stand by their vultures, to recognize their sacjfices.
What do we have?  Our leaders are too holy and innoent.  And faceless.
Long as our vultures were useful,

tributes were dished out.  Today, when the same vultures are wasted and
ask only for recognition and support are those White Afrikaners at the
top' too high and mighty, too righteously Christian and better than the
rest to acknowledge those they used?

I can understand if Mr.  De Klerk says he didn't know, but dammit,
there must be a clique, there must be someone out there who is still
alive and who can give a face to the orders from above' for all the
operations!

What else can this abnormal life be other than a cruel human rights
violation?  Spiritual murder is a more inhuman violation than a messy,
physical murder.  At least a murder victim rests.  The only operative
is the faceless leader who plays God and decides who should be
physically murdered and who should be spiritually murdered after he has
done his dirty work.

I wish I had the power to make these poor wasted people whole again.  I
wish I could wipe the old South Africa out of everyone's past.

I end with a few lines that my wasted vulture said to me one night when
I came upon him turning his gun over and over in his lap: They can give
me amnesty a thousand times.  Even if God and everyone else forgives me
a thousand times I have to live with this hell.  The problem is in my
head, my conscience.  There is only one way to be free of it.  Blow my
own brains out.  Because that's where my hell is."  Call me:

HELENA

Testimony of Mananki Seipei, mother of Store pie Seipei

I AM MANANKI SEIPEI.  I live in Orange Free State, Tumahole.  I am
Stompie Seipei's mother.  Stompie was my first-born, and we lived in
avery poor family.  Until Standard 21 have been struggling to raise
him.  He met his fate in Standard 2. In 1985 the police took him.  They
took him to Parys police station.  It was suspected that they robbed
the bottle store

Until in 1986 I saw the police coming to him in large numbers.  On
entering they said, Where is Stompie?"  I said to them, He is not
here."  They said, Take him out.  He is here.  We don't know is he a
child or is he a person?  Why do you let him go into politics?"  k On 9
July in 1986, it was very early in the morning.  Stompie was from the
shop to buy bread.  They met him4t was the Special Branch police.  They
said to me Stompie must get warm clothing, and they left with him.
Stompie was detained in many prisons.  He had been to Sasol, to
Leeuhof, Heilbron, he went to Koppies, and he was in Potchefstroom.  On
26 May in 1987 Sompie came bck from Potchefstroom.  On 25 June, that
was the first tire saw Stompie.  He left Tumahole.  He was being chase
the police and he decided to run away.  He well' Johannesburg because
he was running away from k e police.  He was in Johannesburg and he
came back.  Th' e was a comrade, Master Nakede, who passed away. 
Stormie had to come for his funeral.

And in 1988 he was arrested and he was sent to Koppies.  When he went
back to Koppies he went back to Johannesburg.  In 1988, on 1 December,
Stompie appeared in court in connection with the burning of municipal
cars.  We used to call them the green beans' at that time.  Stompie
went to Johannesburg.  I was searching for him.  I wanted to see him on
1 December.  I was asking his friends, Have you seen Stompie?"  I was
so afraid to go to the police because he didn't like the police at all.
On 12 January 1989 there was supposed to be the next hearing for
Stompie, but he never pitched up.  There was another lawyer at Parys
who asked me, Are you Stompie's mother?"  I said, Yes, I am."  While
listening to him, the lawyer told me that Stompie was dead.  I was
puzzled.  Contrary to that, Stompie's friends did not tell me that he
as dead, they said he was alive.  As time went on, I met p4pIe and they
said to me, Are you freely moving here?  Efn't you know your son is
dead?"  I wasn't sure whether Stompie was dead or not.  I was a woman
fighting for the human rights.  I couldn't feel anything that Stompie
might be dead.

One woman told me that I should go to one of Stompie's friends and ask
him, Where is Stompie?"  I went to see him and I only got his father.
His father said to me, They are all lying.  Stompie is still alive."
Stompie used to ride a BMX bicycle.  He said to me, He only has a small
bruise on his leg."  I stayed in 1989, expecting something to happen.
Sometimes I would go to town, and that is where I received the news
that Stompie is dead.  I fell into the water, and that gave me an
indication that he is dead.  But nobody from the organization came to
tell me the truth.

In 1989, on 30 January, two ministers from Johannesburg Methodist
Church arrived.  It was Bishop Peter Storey with Paul Verryn.  They
told me that they are seeing me in connection with Stompie.  They said
it was on 29 December in 1988 when Stompie was taken from the Methodist
Church together with his friends.  They were taken to Mrs.  Winnie
Mandela's house.  They said to me they don't know, they are still
searching for Stompie, they don't know whether he is alive or is he
dead.  And they told me that his friends told them that his brain was
leaking.: I stayed at home, expecting something to happen, but they
said to me,.

If the police arrive and they want to give you help about Stompie, you
have to agree with them, because they are the only people who can help
you."

On 13 February the police came to me.  On their arrival they asked me
they said, Is he Moeketse?"  I said, No, he is Moeketse."  They said to
me, We will come tomorrow and fetch you so that we can go to
Johannesburg."

On 14 February 1989 they took me and we went to Brixton.  We went to
Diepkloof Mortuary.  That's where I identified Stompie.  His body was
decomposed, but your son is your son.  I was fighting for my rights.
There were signs that really indicated to me that it was Stompie After
having been killed he was thrown into the river between New Canada and
Soweto.  You couldn't even identify him.  I looked at Stompie because I
am his mother.  I had a deep look at him.  I saw the first sign.  I
said, I know my son.  He doesn't have hair at the back."  His eyes were
gouged, and I said, This is Stompie."  The time Khotso House was bombed
Stompie was involved during those times.  He had a scar on his eye.  I
looked at his nose, and he had#a birthmark.  I looked at his chest and
I could see a scar, because he fought with another boy in Tumahole And
I looked at his left hand.  It was identical to mine.  I looked at his
thighs.  Stompie was very fit, just like his mother.  I 4 looked at his
private parts, and iy sister just winked her 7 eye.  His left leg is
similar to mine.  Underneath the left)e, there was a birthmark as well.
And they asked me, How much does Stompie weig1?"  said, No, the police
would know that."  They asked 1m

Was he short or was he tall?"  I said, He was very short."  But because
he was thrown into the water like a dog, ths why he's stretched.  They
brought his clothes.  I said, see these clothes."  There are two things
that I realize as well that indicated to me, that proved to me that it
was Stompie.  His white hat was there.  I looked at his shoes, a new
pair of running shoes.  I said, Yes, they are Stompie's."  I said, He
used to wear size four."

We went back to Parys together with S.B. van der Merwe, with Richard
Malambo.  We went back tol Tumahole.  On the way they were telling me
that they don't believe it is Stompie.  The next day they fetched me,
they said Dr.  Koornhof and Joubert indicated that it is not Stompie. I
had to go back to Johannesburg.  I was supposed to fight for the rights
of my son.  I went back to Johannesburg.

They asked me many questions.  Was Stompie suffering from anything?"  I
said, Yes, he had tonsils.  He had epilepsy, but when he was five years
he was healed."  They said, Did he have any problems with his eyes?"  I
said, No, when h was released from Koppies Prison he already had this
prjilem with his eyes.  He had the eye problem because he got from the
prison in Koppies."  They said to me, We don't believe it is Stompie."
He was very young, he didn't have an identity document.  He was
fourteen years.  They said to me, Do you think we should believe you
that it is Stompie?"  I said to them, Yes, you have to."  They came
back and they gave me hands.  They said, He is your son.  We could
identify him throtgh his fingerprints."

They said they will help me to bury Stompie.  I said to them, No, I
will first speak to my family.  I won't take the law into my hands,
because Stompie was falling under a certain organization."  We went to
Parys.  I told them that my family doesn't agree with their help,
because you wouldn't say anything in those days because of Apartheid.
Even the mother of the child, you wouldn't speak anything in front of
the police because you'd think that they would harass you.  There was a
mortuary called Bosman Mortuary.  I went to that mortuary together with
Sergeant Nel.  I told the owner, Mr.  Msipidi, that they should go and
fetch Stompie from Johannesburg.  They said no, they can't help me in
any way because my family will help me.

On the last day, it was a Friday, the reporters came to me.  They said
to me, Stompie is alive, he is in Botswana."  They said Mrs.  Mandela
told them that Stompie is alive, he is in Botswana.  I said to them, I
am not burying a zombie, I am burying my son.  I know his birthmarks. I
raised him from childhood.  Nobody will ever tell me anything about my
child."  We went to the mortuary to see him for the last time.  He was
decomposed, he had a bad smell.  We couldn't bring him to the house. 
Together with my family and my father we went to see him and he was the
real Stompie.  But Mr.  Msipidi said to us, This is not Stompie."  He
said he appointed one member of his staff to take a very good look at
Stompie, and he said that day there were many people from Stompie's
organization.  They were spreading the rumour that Stompie was an
informer.  I spent so many years raising Stompie.  I have spent so many
times talking to Stompie, and after that I was told that he was an
informer.

On Saturday the very same night people from overseas came.  They asked
me, Do you remember in 1987

when Stompie was released from prison we came to see you at 241?"  I
said to them, Yes, I remember."  They said,

Remember the police were just after us.  They didn't want us to speak
to Stompie?"  I said, Yes."  They showed me a picture, a photo of
Stompie, together with his friend Gili Nyatela, and they said to me,
The owner of the mortuary says the person who died is not Stompie."  I
said, Those are news to me.  The person that I am going to bury
tomorrow is my son."  We went to the church.

Something happened that really hurt me.  The same person, the owner of
the mortuary, said, I took a booka this child and I discovered it was
not Stompie.  I called A member of my staff and he also said it is not
Stomp4' Reverend Mabuza stood up and' he said, I am here to buy Stompie
Seipei.  I don't care whether he is Stompie orn6t, but I am here to
bury a fourteen-year-old child, StompieP One reverend stood up and he
said, I don't know Stompq as much as he has been portrayed here.  I
know him.  He was a very friendly person."  Reverend Paul Verryn said,
I lost a very deep friend.  I lost a real friend."

Saturday night I never slept.  The same organization we know that Jesus
Christ was betrayed by one of his disciples.  There was a rumour
Saturday night that I should be happy that Stompie is alive.  They
toyi-toyied outside my house.  Isabella Seipei stopped me from going
out.  Sunday morning it hey arrived again.  They were crying.  They
said, Mrs.  Seipei, that is not Stompie.  We were told that that person
didn't have teeth."  I just kept quiet.  My grandmother tried to chase
them, because she said to them, Listen, if you keep on insisting that
the person we buried is not Stompie, we will call the police," and they
kept quiet.  Monday morning another woman came and she said to me, You
buried a very wrong person."  And she said, You will receive a call on
Tuesday from Botswana.  Stompie will tell you that he is going to d you
money."  I was so desperate, and I left the woman, I event home.
GoMMIssIoyER: Mrs.  Seipei, this story is very painful for you, and we
understand that.  But did you receive a death certificate of any kind
for Stompie?  MRS SEIPEI: Yes, I received a death certificate.
COMMISSIONER: Are you satisfied that you buried your own son?  MRS
SEIPEI: I am satisfied.  I buried Stompie.  I buried no one but
Stompie.  IT GETS TO ALL OF Us FROM I

TUTU TO MAMASELA

I'M SITTING OPPOSITE my child's tutor to discuss his a maths marks,
when the bleeper in my jacL:et pocket goe o

Archbishop Tutu in hospital for cancer tests."  Everything falls
away.

In my head only a flame-thin sound.

direlior It cannot be.  It dare not be.  I phone John Allen, the Truth
Commission's media and for years Tutu's right-hand man.  They have
decided not to keep it a secret, he says, as that would just lead to
all sorts of rumours which would be hard to dispel later.  Tutu will
have a photo session in the hospital at twelve, so that the press do
not continually mill around the place.

The tutor shows me how, page after page, my child escape from his maths
homework into the margins with little sketches and doodles.  In my
thoughts I want to press his brush-cut head against me this tall,
ungainly child of mine.  But already the day reeks of mortality.  The
mountain, magnificently wrapped in blue earlier in the morning, now
shimmers toothlessly in shock and sorrow.

What are we shuffling into?

The process is unthinkable without Tutu.  Impossible.  Whatever role
others might play, it is Tutu who is the compass.  He guides us in
several ways, the most important of which is an guage  It is he who
finds language for what is happeniij.  And it is not the language of
statements, news reports ad submissions.  It is language that shoots up
like fire wrougift from a vision of where we must go and from a grip on
where we are now.  And it is this language that drags people along with
the process.

It takes me for ever to choose the right flowers.  I cannot find a card
that seems special enough.

And I am angry.  Why wasn't Tutu taken care of better?  At the end of
last year I asked him in an interview: Most of us have given up all
attempts to maintain our health, our spiritual lives, and even family
routines.  How are you coping?"

My training as a priest taught me to put supports and structures in
place.  And if your day starts off wrong it stays skewed.  What I've
found is that getting up a little earlier and trying to have an hour of
quiet in the presence of God, mulling over some scripture, supports me.
I try to have two, three hours of quiet per day and even when I
exercise, when I go on the treadmill for thirty minutes, I use that
time for intercession.  I try to have a map in my mind of the world,
and I go round the world, continent by continent only Africa I try to
do in a little more detail and offer all of that to God."  A Dutch
television director once asked me who Tutu's friends on the Commission
are.  I couldn't think of anyone.  There is cooperation and respect,
but there is also some irritation: that Tutu from the beginning
unambiguously mantled the Commission in Christian language, that he
finds it difficult to move from the strong hierarchy of the Church to
the democracy of the Commission, that he is so popular with whites,
that he so often mentions black people's wonderful ability to forgive.
Those wrestling out their own agendas in the Commission call Tutu the
fool, the court jester, the ultimate cover-up artist.

He admitted how difficult he found it to function within the
Commission: I found this year in a sense more taxing.  Because I'm
working in a setting with people with whom I have not always jelled.
People with very different perspectives they come from different
backgrounds.  Whereas in the church, say, I had a clear position and
relationships with all the people with whom I worked.  We formed a team
more easily and naturally.  Here there were those of us who thought it
was important to become prima donnas difficult for the sake of being
difficult.  But in general, we have gone over many hurdles, and despite
what I've said, every Commissioner's dedication has seen us through a
rough ride."

At the hospital a horde of journalists, cameramen aid photographers
wait outside his room.  With flowers in hand, I know I have already
broken the code of objective journalim.  We wait among trolleys and
intercom noises and my I thoughts wander to the funeral of SACP leader
Chris Hani.  How furiously bitter the speeches, how angry and volatile
the'V crowd.  But Tutu got up, spoke into that crowd of thousai,ds,"
and got them all of them to wave their hands in the {hirk saying: We
are all God's children black and white' , if'

Did you plan to say that?"  I once asked him.

You see, I do believe very fervently that I'm being priyJd for.  Maybe
it's presumptuous, I don't know, but I think sometimes God says I
should say something now this is something people may find it difficult
to understand, ut there are times when I actually don't know what I am
going to say until I've said it.  This seems like a very bad way of
putting it, because it seems I'm not in control.  When I got up at
Chris Hani's eral... I think I have been helped to have a rapport, to
invoke from the people what is already in there."

But I disagreed.  What you said was definitely not there.1 You were
taking an enormous risk there were thousands of peopk who could have
publicly rejected you because you brought the kind of message nobody,
not even I as a white, wanted to hear!  When you said that word white ,
I froze.  I thought you were absolutely era... That word could have
been the spark to racial dynamite."

Tutu says: But I mean, people pray.."  or if you want to be scientific,
there is the credibility thing, that he stood up for us

He was at Duduza when the first neck lacing happened and he stood
4There, he was at funerals, he was at places when we were crying and he
was crying with us... and maybe he is one of us' nd maybe he cares.  So
when he says this, maybe he is saying omething we ought to listen to?
There are many factors at play here, but for me the most important of
all is I'm not alone I am not alone.  A solitary nun in California once
told me that she prayed for me at two o'clock in the morning.  In a
scientific, materialistic, secular society this would be described as
nonsense.  For me, it brings a kind of confidence that things will be
all right."  The whole media contingent enters his private hospital
room.

I cannot see him.  I climb on to a visitor's chair.  There he lies. 
And I catch my breath.  This wonderful man in whose presence I always
experience humanity at its fullest humanity as it was meant to be. This
man who has made sense for us of the torturous process of dealing with
the truth by illuminating it with insight, humour and hope.  And here
he lies, smaller than I remember.  And without his purple robe and
wooden cross but in ordinary, rough, hospital pajamas.

He looks so worn.  And grey.  My whole face suddenly awash with tears.
We cannot finish what we have started without this man.  The cameras
click away.  Everyone is ushered out.  I turn back and hold his hands.
He smiles at me:

Don't look so concerned... I will be okay.."  besides, we are fighting
mos on the side of the angels."

My cellphone rings in the dark.  It's the news desk.  There is a
front-page story in the Star about racial tension in the Truth
Commission.  Could I get a story for the six o'clock news?  The voice
carries the accusing undertone of: why have you missed it?  I switch on
the light.  It's half past five.

Who can I phone at this hour who won t kill me?

More problematic: who can I phone who will take neither the black nor
the white side?

John Allen says: I'll speak to you about the racial thing but only for
background, it's actually nothing serious.  Dumisa Ntsebeza laughs from
his belly: We represent South African society and we have all kinds of
tensions in the Commission, we have gender tension, age tension, racial
tension, tension between staff and Commissioners, political tension but
this story, off the record, is just the women fighting among
themselves."

Despite all these denials, the story makes headlines for days.  It is
the story everyone wants to hear, because it reflects the problems
every other integrated firm, group or bpdy is battling with.  Racism
among equals.  As the Truth Commission has gone along, it's become
clearer that eyeryoie wants to find all the answers here.  The
Commission mist point out spies in the Government, the ANC asks.  The
Commission must dig up bodies.  The Commission ist investigate what Big
Business has done in the past.  In'a jay, the Commission has become the
voice of the people ienly place where people still have a voice, some
say.  And io' the Commission must give leadership on racial tension.
And let it be said, the men stand together.  Tutu Isses an angry
statement: Newspaper reports on the al leg4 marginalization of black
members of the TRC have forced me into doing something which I would
rather not bel doing which is issuing a statement from my sickbed.

Firstly, all major decisions are taken by the full Commission.  Most
Commissioners are black.  Most members of each of the three constituent
Committees are black.  The Chairpersons of each of the Committees and
the Chief Executive Officer are black.

Secondly, the suggestion from anonymous sources in the Commission that
it is run by a clique of white liberals is insulting to me and I take
very strong umbrage.  The implication is that I am almost a token
Chairperson who is not in control."  Reverend Khoza Mgojo of the
KwaZulu-Natal office also denies any knowledge of racism.

News reports note that the Truth Commission concluded its hearings the
previous year on a high note, with amnesty applications flooding in and
the amnesty cut-off and deadline dates generously extended by the'
Government.  But that the new ar has been ushered in by news that the
Chairperson has cancj and that there is racial tensiQn among
Commissioners.

The Commissioners fly in for the first meeting of the year at the
offices in Adderley Street.  In a city lashed by a virulent
Southeaster, without even a bit of cricket to distract him, Archbishop
Tutu lies at home.  He has had a CAT scan, a bone scan and a chest
X-ray.  No decision has been taken on the kind of treatment he needs,
which may be further surgery, radiotherapy, hormone treatment, or some
combination of these.

Everyone is waiting for the Truth Commission's truth on race, in the
expectation that it will help ordinary mortals to resolve their own
racial problems.  The meeting will be a severe test for the
Commissioners.  Can they hold it together without the verbal force of
Tutu behind them?  Indeed they can.  During the media conference
afterwards the whole racial issue is put down to blocked channels of
communication'.  Certain departments have now been restructured to
facilitate communication between Commissioners and offices.  And that
is that.  Even as window dressing the statement is disappointing the
moral overlay that Tutu could have provided is missing.  The Commission
will surely have to confront racism at some stage.  Perhaps a frank
confession that the Commissioners don't want to lose their substantial
salaries and have therefore decided to stick together, come what may,
would have been more relevant to South African racism than a bland
statement about faulty communication?

Tutu is back in his office.  Waiting outside for an interview, I
remember the very first interview I had with him at Bishop's Court.  My
news editor Pippa Green, who once worked for Tutu, convinced him of the
importance of radio for the Truth Commission: if you really care about
the masses of people who only have access to radio, who only understand
their indigenous mother tongues, then you take radio seriously.  So
Manelisi and I had this interview one Saturday morning.  When we came
in, Tutu was standing at the window, dressed in khaki shorts down to
his knees, socks, tackies and a T-shirt saying I love reading'.  We sat
down and began to fire away enthusiastically.  He held up his hand. Let
us pray.  And to our utter astonishment he mumbled a kind of prayer,
clearly not intended for our ears.  What kind of intimidation was
this?

I also remember how he had to choose a bodyguard from a list.  I want
an Anglican," he apparently said, and so a yong bodyguard was chosen
who never suspected that he wduld have to take Communion daily with the
Archbishop o* his church.  At the farewell service the Anglican Church
gave for Tutu when he retired, my eyes popped out of my head when the V
long, impressive procession of bishops passed me, incense and chanting
and bobbing mitres, and lo and bejlola, a pace behind the Arch,
solemnly in step, walks the boguard in a priest's cassock his gun
bulging conspici4i4ly under his arm.

The bodyguard sat through the whole four-hour seen, yawning shamelessly
until tears were streaming dowpf his cheeks.  Even Tutu's sermon did
not make a difference: God has a tremendous sense of humour.  How else
could you think of a God who would choose jemand soos hierdie ene met
die yslike groot neus [someone like this with the huge nose], with a
funny name that you could make graffiti with: I was an Anglican until I
put tu and tu together.  Or make a song out of: Don't mess with my
tutu.  And God is smart, you can'J beat God's timing.  In the past we
were against .  Against oppression, against Apartheid.  Our essence was
against.  And we were so single-minded.  But the time has come to
change from the against mode to the for mode.  Isn't God then smart to
say: Bye-bye Tutu ?"

So many stories about this man.

A man interceding.  The Mayor of Johannesburg tells of how the police
broke up a protest march one day.  They grabbed one of the ministers,
Tom Manthata later a committee member of the Truth Commission and
brutally kicked ad beat him.  I could not bear it, I ran away, it was
too terrible for mortal flesh.  But Tutu, and I will never forget this,
grabed a policeman by the arm and angrily told him: It is a him ian
being that you are treating like this.  '

A man praying.  The war between the squatters and the witdoeke on the
Cape Flats.  Tutu organizes a meeting between the factions.  When the
one faction does not arrive, he refuses to get out of the car and
spends hours praying there until the other group appears.  Yes, on the
way to a march or a struggle funeral, in the back of the car, he
usually sits bowed and praying all the way," Pippa Green tells me. Just
a mumbling human bundle.  But when the door opens and he gets out among
the masses of people, he is at once extraordinary and exceptional
larger, stronger than all of us.  The energy, the power that beams from
him, his voice, his charisma make thousands upon thousands of people
obey him blindly.  And when he speaks he speaks for all yet he utters
the most secret sorrow of your heart."

That is why the SABC of old found it so effective to show Tutu's
energetic gestures on TV, but to replace his words with sombre music
and sinister text.

The illness has confirmed that one is mortal, that one is not superman,
that you are not the saviour of the world and that you don't have
superhuman powers."

I ask him about the things that happened in his absence of six weeks.

I am thrilled by the new information that has come out in amnesty
applications about the Pebco Three and Cradock Four and especially
Steve Biko.  We've never got this information before and the country
deserves to have it.  This uncovering more or less justifies the
existence of the Commission.

I am less than thrilled with the tiff that happened among the
Commissioners.  People rightly must say to us For goodness' sake,
physician, heal thyself!  What do you know about reconciliation?  So I
am sad about that because I believe the Commission had begun to do
enough to have a credibility that was becoming acceptable to a very
large part of our society.

I am very deeply distressed.  But what pleased me about it is that it
backfired.  People thought by using those old-style stereotypes they
were going to attract support.  And in the past they may have been able
to do that, but today most people just say: For goodness' sake, why do
they want to be victims?  Why don't they confront those people who are
sidelining them?

But what saddens me is that we have been chosen by the nation through
the President.  We've been given an incredible privilege, chosen as
people representative of South African society.  We were, chosen so
that we could be an icor demonstrating the longing that we can
transcend the conflicts of the past.  And say yes, that is where we
come from, but it is , possible for people coming from all the
different backgrounds 4 to cohere.

If we can't, how in the name of everythiAg that is good a' we expect
people who have experienced worse traumas and we have to be healed and
to reconcile?  We have to look at ourselves very carefully, even at
this stage, and decide wheth we are willing to take on this mandate,
this vocation Je nation has given us."  I

Pain and suffering are remarkable things our universe is very odd. Pain
gives a quality to what is happening that nothing else seems able to
give.  I have a time bomb inside me and I know that... Most times I
think of my mother.."  you know..  . always I think of my mother... I
think of her.  I mean I will never forget, I was going to high school
and there was no money at home.  My mother was a washerwoman and I went
with her to her white madam.  And she was going to do the washing and
cleaning and she was going to get at the end of the day two shillings.
And my mother collected her two shillings in the morning and gave it to
me and then I walked to the station for a ticket to go to school in
Westbury..  . And I always thought at the end of the day, my mother had
done all that work... d she would get nothing .. . Ja... she died the
year I got the Nobel Peace Prize... I look like her short, with a hire
nose."  *

The National Party sends an ultimatum to the Truth Commission.  Tutu
must apologize unconditionally for dismissing the Party's second
political submission, Boraine must resign because he is biased, and the
Executive of the Investigative Unit must refrain from having contact
with any of their members in future.  If these demands are not met, the
Party will go to court.  The NP believes they have proof that the
Commission is not abiding by its own legislation.  It is supposed to
make findings after gathering all the evidence.  Yet, the NP says, both
Boraine and Tutu have prejudged its submission.

We are about reconciliation in this country says Tutu.  A stand-off is
of no use to anybody and that is why I say: what is a court case going
to prove?  If we won, who would be better off?  If they won, who would
benefit?"

The fact is, the National Party would benefit if it won such a case.  A
question mark would be left hanging over the Truth Commission's summary
of the National Party's role, contained in its final report to the
President.  Even though it was Tutu, weeping after the Party's
submission, who declared: How can De Klerk say he did not know?  I
personally met with him so many times to tell him that simple people,
people with no reason to lie, are talking about how white people were
involved in the massacre at Boipatong."

You can't give up," I plead with Tutu in my head.  If you give up, then
all is lost."  And I ask: Are you saying you need the National
Party?"

It hurts me," says Tutu, when I think of the quiet strength and
resilience and magnanimity of the victims, that there is just no
response from their side.  And for reconciliation we need everybody.
This is a national project and everybody is important.  They are
important because they are from an important constituency in our
country."

Does the National Party need you?"  I ask.

There is a long pause.  I don't know.  We've been given a job to do and
we are trying to do it to the best of our ability.  I think if they
want a country that is not alienated, not traumatized, not broken, not
divided, then yes... if we are regarded as an important instrument of
reconciliation then they need us, yes."  It is not surprising that the
National Party has displayed the most resistance to the Truth
Commission, Tutu says.  Anyone would react this way to the exposure of
things from the past that make them uncomfortable.  However, the Truth
Commission cannot bow to the Nationalists' demands.  Basically they
have unreasonable demands.  I think this is the point.  I myself have
no problem with apologizing..  . it's no skin off my nose to say I'm
sorry.  But I don't know what I have to apologize for.  It seems such
an extraordinary red herring.

I'm deeply committed to reconciliation and I

enormously for all the people in this count... and do everything within
reason.  And I have done extraordii things, I mean things that make
people think I'm crazy, just say: we want you, we want you, we really
want you and we will not just go that extra mile, but many, many
miles.

You see, we can't go to heaven alone.  If I arrive there," will ask me:
Where is De Klerk?  His path crossed yours.  And he also God will ask
him: Where is Tutu?  So I cried for him, I cried for De Klerk because
he spurned the opportunity to become human."

Any V.I.P itinerary in South Africa includes the inevitable visit to an
impoverished community.  This week Queen Margarethe of Denmark visited
the Trauma Centre for Victims of Violence and Torture in the lower part
of Woodstock.  It has run for years on Danish money.

But it also seems inevitable that a royal visit should look like a
spearhead of affluence and privilege thrust at the heart of poverty.
First a line of brand-new red and white comb is pulls up.  The
assembled schoolchildren wave their flags and the choirmaster lifts his
hand.  A lot of whiteys get out simultaneouy.  Who is who?  But they'
are only the door openers  Thsliding doors of the vans empty a media
flood into the scene.  With flashing cameras and wobbling microphoneL
the Danish press swoop down enthusiastically on the rows of neglected
children and the unemployed of Woodstock who are lining the street to
observe the occasion.  While everybody is trying to regain their
concentration, a formal cavalcade of eight black Mercedes Benzes
delivers the Queen and the young Crown Prince.  Again, leaping from the
cars simultaneously: exceptionally pale, plump men in even paler khaki
caps, vigorously opening doors for the palest looking delicately
smiling dignitaries from the northernmost north of the globe .. . On
cue, the Masahile Choir of Khayelitsha launches into you guessed it our
national anthem of fake unity left over from the Rugby World Cup:

Shosholoza."

The Queen wears ad ark-blue hat upon which a white-linen butterfly has
settled.  She approves everything smilingly.  She says not a word. Tutu
speaks, Tutu tells jokes, Tutu says we are standing on hallowed ground.
Father Michael Lapsley thanks the people who came to plant the trees
yesterday, who rolled down the lawn this morning, who delivered the
plants keeling over in their wet sockets, who installed the lights, who
painted the place out.  Choirs sing.  Victims tell their gruesome
stories while they stumble in pain.  She approves everything smilingly.
Queen Margarethe says not a word.

Along with Mandela, Robben Island and Khayelitsha, a Truth Commission
hearing is a must-see.  But since the hearings are held in such obscure
places, a visit to Tutu is the next-best thing.  Either the whole of
Milnerton is paralyzed as Al Gore's security personnel cordon off the
routes to Tutu's rented house in the suburb, or a ring of steel is
thrown around the Adderley Street offices for a visit by 1-lillary
Clinton.

We are in a hail full of media people waiting for a press conference.
We gaze with astonishment at the journalists, who look as if they have
just walked out of The X-Files, reporting live on Hillary Clinton's day
thus far.  Everywhere you turn there is a one hundred per cent made-up
woman, microphone in hand, rattling off a paragraph about your country.
And you recognize neither Canstantia' nor Speew

Whinestate'.  And if you were just a little absent-minded, someone
would simply grab you like a piece of seaweed and toss you in a corner.
There are celebrities among them too.

Oh look!  there's the son of the guy who broke the Watergate story...
and there's Annie Leibovitz the photographer in

America."  We can come in now.

Stampede is an understatement.  That selfsame photographer shoots her
sharp elbows out like an umbrella and r J bugger your ribs this is her
space.  I crawl in among the legs V up to the front and stretch out my
arm to hold the microphone up in between Tutu and Hillary ClintoS.

I,

Remove that microphone!"  somebody yelts.  My God, I'm  also just doing
my job.  With the kwering of the microphoe f my eye falls on the shoes,
ankles and shiny, shapeless legs of Hillary Clinton here right in front
of me.  And at once overcome by a deep depression.  7

I do not want to hear what she is saying.  Even if she is First Lady of
the Mightiest Nation.  Even if her visit destroys all distinction
between symbolism and reality.  Even if she gives thousands to the
Truth Commission.  I don't want to know.

Pumps, I think they're called.  Golden pumps with little golden buckles
on the heels.  From the shoes bulge her feet, up into the hosiery that
disappears in the straight pink skirt.  Armoured.  And she has to be,
because questions are raining down, the spotlight bright on her face.
She daren't show an inch of human being.  My leg goes to sleep.  I
shift my balance and my eyes fall on Leah, the wife of Tutu.  Leah
stands on the far right of the row, turned against the crowding
journalists, because she isn't looking at Hillary but straight at Tutu,
standing next to her.  And then I know.  The press releases on his
illness do not tell the full story.

Overseas v4itors attending the Truth Commission hearings often exprs
their surprise at the absence of anger in the black audi dice  Although
the venues have been packed week after week, there hasn't been a single
outburst or aggressive incident.

Where is the anger?  Is there anger?

Have decades of oppression eroded black people's sense that they have a
right to show anger?  Or has the fact that the majority now rules
defused all the rage?  I try to get some answers from clinical
psychologist Nomfundo Walaza.

People make a grave mistake if they assume there is not an immense
feeling of outrage among blacks.  A crying person and an angry person
are two sides of the same coin," she says.

But the whole structure of the Truth Commission specifically contains
all anger.  The catchword is reconciliation , and on top of that the
Chairperson is an Archbishop of a religion in which forgiveness is the
central theme.

So at the witness table of the Commission it seems better to cry than
to be angry and smash things up.  They know that the basic premise is
reconciliation and forgiveness .. . In Xhosa the word they have chosen
for reconciliation as in

Truth and Reconciliation is uxolelwano , which is " much closer in
meaning to forgiveness

At times, says Walaza, anger is crucial for progress.

I think black people's anger has been self-contained.  And I don't say
that all black people are criminals, but when people are saying crime
has increased in the townships, I say it could be expected, because I'm
sure it's all due to a lot of pent-up anger that has been there for a
long, long time."

In the Free State I'm usually confronted with the heart of things.  I
tell Walaza: A white woman said to me, I don't even watch the Truth
Commission on television because all you see there is a sea of hatred.
I told her I attend most of the hearings, and that is not true.  There
is really no hatred."

That is pure projection," says Walaza.  Firstly, she knows
instinctively that if Apartheid had been done to her, she would have
hated.  And secondly, whites prefer to think that they are being hated,
then they don't need to change.  It goes to the whole notion of saying
blacks are so angry with me there is no way I can go and live with them
because they are going to kill me.  And we shouldn't bring black people
here because they essentially hate us."

During that same Free State conversation a farmer said vehemently: If
these things were done to me, I would hate deeply and passionately,
like the Russians.  I would have destroyed everything around me: the
fact that they didn't, just shows you that blacks are not even able to
hate sufficiently'

There is a long silence..

In essence we are dealing here with a definition of humanity," says
Walaza.  And this remark is the clearest proof that whites with their
self-centred, selfish, capi tall character have never been able to
fathom the essence humanity.

Besides that, I'm not sure that black people's anger be measured by
what white people say.  If white people to say black people caunot hate
sufficiently, then that is business.  I think the Soweto uprisings were
proof e what blacks can do when they are being pushed too far.  what
we're probably dealing with here is people who are coming from a
culture with a capitalist notion of existence in the world, where you
have things for yourself and your group, the people that look like you.
And the other notion that people can actually share things is totally
incomprehensible to them.  When whites came to the country and I know I
wasn't there but it seemed that black people initially were happy to
share things and give over.."  but that kind of sharing went wrong.
This whole concept of ubuntu that is being bandied about all over the
place, that went horribly wrong.

What makes me angry is that whites are privatizing their feelings.  If
you as a black person cry, you cry alone at the hearings.  If you are
angry, there is no perpetrator to direct that anger against verbally
they hide in their suburbs, they hide behind their court interdicts and
legal representatives.  The pain of blacks is being dumped into the
country more or less like a cmmodity article easy to access and even
easier to discard."5

But isn' he attitude of whites at least a sign of guilt?"

Guilt is such a useless thing," she says impatiently.  Guilt
immobilizes you.  I am guilty so what can I do?  Feelings of guilt are
also open to abuse by those who suffered: You are guilty so give me a
thousand rand. I prefer shame.  Because when you feel shame about
something you really want to change it, because it's not comfortable to
sit with shame."

But just as whites suddenly pretend that no one supported Apartheid," I
say, so it seems to me that suddenly all blacks were part of the
struggle and made huge sacrifices for liberation.  Shouldn't one say
that every black person who is alive today also didn't do quite enough?
Did all black people pay a price?"  I shudder after having said this.

All black people did pay a price," Walaza says.  What happened to your
next-door neighbour and in your area affected you you lived in a
constant vibration of fear and insecurity, of being utterly deprived in
all kinds of ways, of knowing you could never develop your full
potential.  So some paid more, others paid less, others paid
differently but every black person in this country did pay a price.  On
the other hand, I have problems when this price becomes a mere tool for
self-aggrandizement.  At the end of the day we all have to stand up and
say, this is what we did not do..."

The response of whites to the Truth Commission is regularly articulated
in letter columns, editorials, cartoons, in the opinions of the
National Party, the Democratic Party and the Freedom Front, and in hate
mail to journalists.  One of the letters in my postbox reads:

Die vernaamste eksponent [van Boerehaat] is daardie onvergenoegde
veldprediker van die Ween-en-Verdrietkommissie Radio sonder Mense se
persoonlike Gesant en buitengewone, spesiale afgevaardigde by die WVK,
Antlie Samuel."

The most important exponent of Boer-hatred is that dissatisfied bush
preacher of the Crying and Lying Commission

Radio without People's personal Envoy and extraordinary,

plenipotentiary delegate at the Truth Commission, Antjie Samuel.  Her
dramatized versions on Monitor in the mornings and Spectrum in the
afternoons (with the appropriate drum beating or the slow tones of the
funeral march or the triumphant heights of Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika )
have the whole country in tears (or in a state of rage) about the'
untested evidence and accusations put before the TRC.  (Personally I
never know whether to laugh or cry.)

In a voice that sounds as if she's in a crypt.

Shame, the poor confused child.  And she comes from such a good
home."

Foeitog, die anne verwarde kindg En sy kom uitso n buis'

The reactions of white South Africans to the revelations of thj Truth
Commission can be divided into two main groups, says psychiatrist Dr.
Sean Kaliski.  There are those who refuse point-blank to take any
responsibility and are always advancing reasons why the Commission
should be rejected and regarded as a costly waste of money.  And then
there are those who feel deeply involved and moved, but also powerless
to deal with the enormity of the situation.

People in the group refusing to have anything to do with the Commission
see themselves as pedestrians, as mere passers-by," says Kaliski.  They
didn't know what was happening, and even if they did, they had no power
to change it.  Research shows that on the emotional graph this is the
group that has changed least since the first democratic elections.  It
includes those white English-speakers who feel that the atrocities of
the past are solely the baggage of the Afrikaner.  But the vast
majority of this detached group are, of course, Afrikners themselves."
They call the Commission the Lieg en BiegCommissie, they feel unfairly
treated and they deny everytl$ig.  Untested evidence' is their
buzzword.

As an guider, Kaliski sees it as the task of Afrikaner leaders to guide
their communities in dealing with the Commission and redefining
Afrikanerhood.

But what happens when the leaders are also still in the denial phase?

Then you're in big trouble.  You have to find other leaders you have to
find people who stand up and say: Look, that is not how we are, this is
how we are.  Because personally I think the Afrikaners are great
survivors and they will find people who can interpret these revelations
for them."  But there is the other group, also made up of Afrikaners
and white English-speakers, who have followed and supported the Truth
Commission from the beginning.  They do not switch off when the Truth
Commission is mentioned, they follow the hearings on Radio 2000, they
turn up as solitary white figures at the hearings, they send letters
with prayers and support for the Commission study groups, women's
groups, individuals.  They are going though something totally
different: emotional and mental fatigue; a depression that flares into
irrational outbursts.

It's my impression that inadequate preparation was made before the TRC
started its work," says Kaliski, to investigate ways in which people
could integrate all the information that would be revealed..  . and
that is why we're unable to cope with what is coming out.  And worst of
all, I think, is that we are not using the truths we are confronted
with to effect any reconciliation.

One will have to come to terms with the past in one's own personal
way," he says.  If you live in this country, if you want your children
to have a future, you will have to devise a method for yourself."

Another silent voice is that of the Afrikaans churches.  Although some
NG Kerk elements visibly take place in the process now and then, few
people know whether or how the church and its members once described as
the National Party at prayer' are participating in the search for truth
and reconciliation.

Professor Piet Meiring, a committee member of the Commission, was
invited to observe the annual ceremony welcoming new students to the
Stellenbosch Theological Seminary.

The ceremony started off with anecdotes about the Seminary back in
1937, interwoven with the names theologians Koot Vorster the man who
called the Afrikaans writers of the sixties n spul vuil spuite', a
bunch of dirty squirts Kosie Gericke, and the like.  This is usually a
red letter day for the dominees of the Western Cape.  They come from
all over, they kuier with old friends.  They packed the hall out last
year, when the theme under discussion happeie44 to be: Was Jonah in the
Whale?"  This year , with the for o the Truth Commission, the hall was
barely half-full and included a row of first-year students in compuloir
attendance.  The opening was performed by Dr.  Fritz Gai*.  His text
was: I am the Truth and the Light' ... and in' his prayer he confirmed:
We know the Truth, because we the Lord.

Then it was the turn of Meiring a Professor in Missionary Science.  I
asked a visiting Rwandan what the role of the church in their massacres
was a country where 85 per cent of the population is Christian and
where a million people lost their lives.  He didn't like my question.
The church was part of the problem.  Their hands were covered with
blood... the1 priests, the nuns their hands were red with blood."

The reaction of the white Afrikaans churches to the Truth Commission
has been subdued to put it kindly, says Piet Meiing.  He often has to
contact the ministers of amnesty applications, and the body language of
most dominees shows that they want nothing to do with the Commission.
Why?  They're afraid of a witch-hunt, the Professor says, they're
afraid the Truth Commission will increase the desire for revenge.  They
think the findings will not be objective and they say: Conssion and
forgiveness is a religious act, how can it be done id a secular way?"

No o4 can escape the process, says Meiring, and the churches fought to
be doing much more than anybody else.

The church has a prophetic responsibility.  It must admit and confess
its guilt.  Guilt?  Who then is guilty?  Meiing spells out the
categories of guilt: criminal, political, moral and metaphysical.  But
the church also has a pastoral responsibility.  It must support amnesty
applicants, it must support the victims in that area, that town; it
must assist the whole community as it wrestles with truth and
reconciliation.  Meiing says the Afrikaner in particular has been
traumatized by the process.  Like the psychiatrist Kaliski, Meiing
refers to the phases described by the psychologist Elisabeth
Kubler-Ross in her work on terminal illness and death:

The first phase is that of denial: as the truth is put on the table,
people deny it.  The second phase is that of anger with God, with the
new Government, with those who are doing this to you.  The third phase
is that of bargaining with God, and that is what some people are
already doing those bargaining for amnesty.  The fourth phase is a deep
depression and that is the most important phase because it opens up the
door of acceptance."

An aged professor emeritus by the name of Koekjan de Villiers stands
up: My time is short," he says.  And I who have lived in the paradise
time of Apartheid, I am begging you young men do something, put the
whole history of my church at the feet of the Truth Commission before
it ends its work and before the millennium is upon us."

YOu Antjie Somers,

Geniet jy nog die aanklagte en Swartsmeerdery van die Afrikaners?  Is
jy nag by jou man of bet jy noun hot not n mede wapendraer in jou stryd
teen die Nasionale Party waarvan iou pa son get roue ondersteuner
i.slwas?

K.K.K.

fOld Antjie Somers,

Are you still enjoying the accusations and besmirching of the
Afrikaner?  Are you still with your husband or have you found yourself
a Hottentot, a weapon-bearer in your struggle against the National
Party of which your father is was such a loyal supporter?

K.K.K.I

We are walking next to the ocean.  Bitching about the leaking of Truth
Commission information to specific journalists," bitching about our
bosses, our loathsome working conditions.  And that we have nothing to
show for the long hours the quality work we deliver, the endless
travelling.  Nothing except old-age yapping at our heels while we're
still hoping for a life.  We don't have lives, we have works.  We start
calling people arse holes and poe se  But at least you-can fulfill
you'4 instincts by mothering your team I see how you pampe p them, a
real mother hen."

Caught off guard, I start trembling.  Anger spews up in me.,

Don't insult an incredible group of people," and I push hint hard.  He
stumbles.  Don't hit me," he yanks my arm.  He i angry.  I fall in the
sand.  He pulls me up.  I claw at him.  voice like raw meat.  My teeth
chattering with an unnamed lust to rip open, to tear apart, to destroy,
to plunder.  He devours my face.  It is only when he cries out that I
realize I've sunk my teeth deep into his left shoulder.

A provisional document on the proposed Reparation and Rehabilitation
Policy of the Truth Commission is to be discussed at a workshop.  The
media are allowed to attend.  The Reparation and Rehabilitation
Committee could make or break the Truth Commission.  It will help
little if the transgressors walk away with amnesty, but the victims,
who bear the appalling costs of human rights abuses, experience no
restitution.  No gesture of recognition or compensation.  When the
legislation was first explained to the Commissioners, spit's been said,
some of them started crying when they rilized the perpetrators did not
have to show remorse for 5heir deeds.  One may well ask why no one
objected to the fact that the person who gets amnesty is freed
immediately, whereas the victim has to wait for the Commission to
complete its investigation, draft the report and the policy, submit the
policy to Parliament, and see whether the Government applies it.  In
the interim, victims are dying for want of the necessities of life.

Over time, a certain scepticism has built up about the vision and
ability of the Reparation and Rehabilitation Committee.  When it became
apparent that the racial conflict had actually started in this
committee, no one was surprised.  The workshop to discuss the proposed
policy is thus attended with great interest.

The Committee's first suggestion is that of urgent interim relief. This
is already being applied on a small scale, although it has not yet been
officially approved by the Government.  It means that victims can ask
for up to a thousand rand to access medical services.  The second
suggestion is that by the end of the Commission's term every victim
should have been given monetary compensation by the Government a
substantial amount, says the document, enough to make a qualitative
difference to their lives.  This would not be asking too much," says
Archbishop Tutu, who attends the opening session of the workshop. Given
what the country has gained, this is peanuts."

Apart from suggestions for a monument here and a clinic there, this is
the sum total of a year's thinking.  We look at each other.

Then a whole discussion erupts on who exactly the victims are.  There
are clear-cut guidelines for primary victims: you are a primary victim
if your rights were violated directly, if the hurt was done directly to
you.  But the category of secondary victims is fuzzy: if a man was
killed, who gets the monetary compensation?  His mother?  His wife and
his children?  And if he had other children by other women?  It also
seems that not all those who have testified are necessarily victims.
The Investigative Unit must first corroborate your story before you
will be classified as a victim.  Did this really happen to you?  But
then someone testifying about the death of a neighbour's child cannot
be a victim.  Or imagine the following situation, someone says: A is an
organizer in the struggle he leads the marches, he is hunted, he cannot
go to school.  One day B, who has never participated in the struggle,
sends her child to buy some fish.  The child gets killed.  Now B is a
victim, while A finds himself without an education or a job.  And what
about the shysters rushing to swindle victims out of their money?

While the discussion is in full swing, we file stories about the main
suggestions.  To condense this kind of policy- I planning document into
accessible hard copy is difficult.  Two j of us work on the stories we
listen to our tapes, we compare, notes, we juggle with words, we argue
about the right weigh' of every sentence.  We write it.  We check it.
We send it.  ,l J, After the lunch break a furious Commisioner comes 4p
us.  How can you say that the Truth Commission is goi4g b give only a
thousand rand to every victim?  It's not true!"f

We didn't say that.  We wrote that victims can ask for a thousand rand
to access medical services."  I

Well, that is not what I've just heard over the radio.  We are
unconcerned.  Even quite cheeky.

Later I hear a newcomer ask: How can Tutu say this compensation is
peanuts?  He is criticizing your policy before it has even been
discussed."

But he never said that..."

That's what the radio said."  Around six o'clock we go back to the SABC
offices to list our stories for the next morning.  We look into the
computerised bulletin system and see our stories.."  changed.  By God,
look here The Truth Commission is planning to give victims a thousand
rand.  And two sentences later it says to access medical services ."

Look at this one: Archbishop Desmond Tutu says the compensation for
victims is peanuts.  Full stop."

I am furious I am livid, that our copy is being treated so shabbily, so
unprofessionally as if we started doing this job yesterday I make a
print-out of the stories and go to the bulletin lit or  I put the
stories down in front of her.

Who 5ives you the right to change our copy so that it's incorrect
without the decency to at least consult us?"

She reads though them.  She reads the originals.

But it isn't incorrect.  We've just changed the angle and we are
allowed to do that."

It's not the angle I'm talking about.  I'm talking about a major
mistake.  Surely if you say Victims will get a thousand rand .. .
that's quite different from Victims will get a thousand rand to access
urgent medical services !"

But we've got that in only a bit later, so the context is exactly the
same."

I start shivering.  My tongue paralyzed in a fucking second language. I
grab her arm.

You are an intelligent woman.  Your news bulletins have told thousands
of victims they will all get a measly thousand rand.  That is wrong.
That could cause a riot.  And we look like fools not understanding
what's going on.  We don't just shake hard copy out of our sleeves, you
know.  We don't just happen to say something like this and not like
that.  We think about it, we debate about it.  What the hell is wrong
with you?"

I really don't see what you're on about..."

I feel faint; My eyes fasten on her pale-blue polka-dot blouse the
white button at her brown wrist.  I hear the sudden quiet suspense in
the news room.  I feel powerless and exploited -and unable to formulate
my grievance convincingly.

Jissis, I refuse to discuss this any further," I hiss in her face.

We have been filing good solid copy to you for more than a year, and I
demand respect from this fucking desk."  Punctuated with my fist on
wood.

I walk back to my desk, smoke two cigarettes, and then call the members
of the Reparation and Rehabilitation Committee to apologize about the
report.

The next day I find several nameless letters on my desk:

Good for you!  You told her to her face.  We never thought you had it
in you."

Someone else comes up to me: I heard you threw all your toys out of the
cot yesterday.  Nice, man.  It's time she gets some real
competition."

A note: We will testify for you if necessary' and a list of names.

Until someone tells me: the bulletin editor has asked that I be called
for a disciplinary hearing.  The charges are: insubordination and
assault.  I feel myself blushing.  Then cringing in utter
embarrassment.  What is the Afrikaans for assault ?"  I ask.

Aanranding, as in hitting her.  She says you hit her in front of her
whole staff."

I gape like an ape.  It can't be.  This is not happening.  It cah't be
true!

But I didn't hit her."  I,

She says you did and she has witnesses."

Well, I also have witnesses."  But after I've thought it through, I
realize that when it co4e ii down to it there is probably not that much
difference grabbing an arm and hitting an arm.  But I will die,
absolutely die if I have to talk about this before any comnittte.

Other people want us to describe the incident over over, because no one
has ever heard you even raising your voice, never mind shouting,
shaking, hitting and demanding."

God, what is happening to me?

I phone home.  I cry.  My husband sounds far away.  Resign and come
back we miss you."

My news editor says: Fight back."

But are these the kinds of things one fights for?

The dispute is settled after a long discussion in the Boss's office.  I
apologize.  She withdraws the charges.

I am deeply, completely embarrassed.

We lie on our backs in the autumn.  The leaves sift like coals from the
burning trees.  Your voice smells of bark.

Come with me..."  The flaming season plunges into us.  And it lies
heavily on my arms this late inopportune lust to abandon what is seen
to be my 11e.

People in?olved with the Truth Commission are breaking down', packing
up or freaking out.  There are complaints that our reporting over the
radio is becoming too opinionated.  So a workshop is organized for the
radio team.  For two days we will be discussing how to keep your anger
out of a story, and someone will come and debrief' us.  Whatever it
turns out to be, I suspect some of us really need it.

We descend on an unsuspecting guest house.  And if any doubt existed
about the abnormal effects of covering the Truth Commission, that
evening dispels it with hard evidence.  At once we become our own
little hit squad.  We talk contemptuously and drink destructively. 
Some people park themselves behind the bar counter for the evening. 
Others tell stories in front of the fireplace Truth Commission stories.
What happened to this one or that one, acting out the mannerisms of
Commissioners and Judges, mimicking victims until we roll on the floor
with laughter.  Everybody speaks as if they've been in solitary
confinement for months.  In the end, no one is listening to anyone
else, but everyone keeps on talking.  And then there is the midnight
visit to the sauna, bottles of brandy clutched possessively.  Now I'm
sweating like a real Zulu king over my belly," laughs Makhaya.  The
next morning the psychologist arrives.  We all sit nervously around the
table.  He begins.  What physical symptoms have manifested themselves
recently?  We answer: neck-ache, backache, ulcers, rashes, lack of
appetite, tiredness, insomnia.

Right.  So how do we feel?  He says we each have to answer
individually.

Mondli says: I am not affected, because I grew up with these things. My
sister's house was burnt, Bheki Mlangeni was one of my best friends.
So, I mean this is nothing new.  Usually I laugh at testimonies.  I
listen but I don't feel pain."

The same story is repeated by all the black journalists they are
actually fine.  The Commission's work doesn't affect them because they
grew up with human rights abuses all around them.

Angie and I start crying silently, and so copiously that we are out of
action for the rest of the session.  Our coloured colleague jumps up
and runs out.  Someone goes after him, but he only returns much later
with red and swollen eyes.  Our white male colleague sits motionless:
I'm not okay, but I knew what I was in for so now I take it."

The psychologist shuffles his papers together.  I am not suggesting
that you are affected I'm merely askgg a question.  Are the black
journalists in this group telling me that they have a special capacity
to handle pain?  Evelyonei always talks about how well black people are
coping in country after centuries of oppression.  Are you coping?  you
saying that God has given black people this special capacity to deal
with suffering?  What has your behaviour and it may have nothing to do
Commission but what has changed this past year?  I know."

And with these words he cracks open what has mystery the feelings of
black journalists about the Commission.

Mondli sighs.  There is something that has never before I hit my
children with a belt the other day."

Makhaya: Something very strange happened to me.  During our current
affairs programme I got Joe Mamasela on the line and I asked him: How
on earth can you expect people to forgive you?  And he said, You don't
have the right to ask this question, Mrs.  Hashe is the one to ask
that!.  Now Mrs.  Hashe was with me in the studio.  I turned to her and
said, Mrs.  Hashe, will you ask him?  And she began to cry..  . but
right from the heart, she cried.  And then something strange happened
to me.  I also started to cry.  I haven't cried since I was a child.  I
pulled the producer in to take over the, show and I went to the
bathroom and cried and cried.  Then I washed my face and thought: if my
father knew about this he would be very disappointed."

Thabo: I also grew up with the notion that if you don't cry, if you ar
it out, it will make you a better man.  I didn't even cry at 4y
father's funeral.  But the other day at the funeral of my besjfriend, I
broke down and cried.  Afterwards I said to my will: I'm getting
soft."

Sello: I'm a religious person, so I have found my inner peace of mind.
I am fine.  Because I know where to go when I am upset.  It was only
when I watched Prime Evil, I felt this spark of hatred.  It was quick,
but it was very severe.  And I was surprised at it.  But then I settled
down and became peaceful again."

Patrick: I used to be a bok for parties.  But that has totally
disappeared.  I don't belong there, yet I cannot stand being by myself.
But what upset me very much the other day my wife put a bowl of
porridge in front of me and when I took the first spoonful it burnt me,
it was too hot.  When I came to my senses I was standing with the bowl
in my hand ready to throw it on the floor or at her.  And I don't want
to become abusive."

Do you talk at home about the hearings?"

We all shake our heads, we don't talk.

On the board the psychologist draws an iceberg, with its tip sticking
out above the water.  This tip, he says, is the part of themselves
people show to the world friendship, integrity, compassion, love,
honesty and so on.  Hidden from the eye are the other things: hatred,
dishonesty, anger... But normally within the iceberg there is
continuous movement between these two spaces: as a person you can
easily access anger and show it, then you become yourself again.  The
moment you experience something traumatic, then the ice packs in
between these two spaces and you can no longer access anger, hatred,
jealousy.  Every traumatic experience packs the ice thicker.  But your
body is not stupid your body knows.  And the cooped-up emotions
manifest in physical symptoms."

Would you say that the Archbishop's cancer is a symptom of his
suppressed anger?"

My!  are we sharp in this group," says the psychologist.  He shrugs his
shoulders.  I won't comment on that, but I can tell you that most of
the Commissioners are experiencing harrowing physical illnesses."

He explains that we have to drill holes in those ice layers, and that
crying is one way of doing it.  We also have to prevent other layers
from forming by debriefing ourselves after every hearing.  And that
means you sit by yourself for five minutes and say: How do I feel about
it?"  This is especially important for journalists, who have to report
with the head and not the heart.  We should also talk to one another.

And then he draws two parallel tracks on the board.  This is the Truth
Commission track and this is your perso4l relationship track.
Instinctively, you do not want the Truth Commission one to cont ammate
the personal one you want your friends, your family, your beloved to
stay pure, to be protected from what you are experiencing.  Most
people1 become totally withdrawn from their families.  But to say sane,
you create on this Truth Commission track a substitit' for your
personal life.  You recreate you're personal relationships in the
Commission you Md a father, a mother, a site, a beloved, a son.  Which
is fine in itself, so long as yqh remember that the one track is coming
to an end in e4it months' time."

Where does Violence fit into all of this?"  I ask, tasting blood on my
lip.

I find that white journalists are carrying a lot of guilt.  Have you
asked yourself why more Afrikaner journalists are covering the Truth
Commission than any other group?  To compensate for this guilt, white
journalists tend to put more into their involvement with the
Commission.  But it takes its toll.

The more you empathize with the victim, the more you become the victim;
you display the same kinds of symptoms helplessness, wordless ness
anxiety, desperation.  But for some people it is so unbearable being a
victim that they become a perpetrator instead.  You get rid of the pain
by putting it into someone else, you become violent and make someone
else your own victim.  So be very aware of that."

Hey Antjie, but this is not quite what happened at the works ho says
Patrick.

Yes I Ejow, it's a new story that I constructed from all the other
infirmat ion I picked up over the months about people's reactions and
psychologists' advice.  I'm not reporting or keeping minutes.  I'm
telling.  If I have to say every time that so-and-so said this, and
then at another time so-and-so said that, it gets boring.  I cut and
paste the upper layer, in order to get the second layer told, which is
actually the story I want to tell.  I change some people's names when I
think they might be annoyed or might not understand the distortions."

But then you're not busy with the truth!"

I am busy with the truth .. my truth.  Of course, it's quilted together
from hundreds of stories that we've experienced or heard about in the
past two years.  Seen from my perspective, shaped by my state of mind
at the time and now also by the audience I'm telling the story to.  In
every story there is hearsay, there is a grouping together of things
that didn't necessarily happen together, there are assumptions, there
are exaggerations to bring home the enormities of situations, there is
downplaying to confirm innocence.  And all of this together makes up
the whole country's truth.  So also the lies.  And the stories that
date from earlier times."

And the affair that you describe in here.  Is that true?"

No, but I had to bring a relationship into the story so that I could
verbalize certain personal reactions to the hearings.  I had to create
a new character who could not only bring in new information but also
express the psychological underpinning of the Commission.  Surely I
can't describe how I eavesdropped and spied on others?  What gives a
story its real character is the need to entertain to make the listener
hang on your lips."

The second narrative has been heard.  For two years South Africans have
been listening to the voices of amnesty seekers.  Some sound sincere,
some insincere, some sound pathetic, some opportunistic.  Many of them
simply lie.

A voice that has not been heard yet is that of the best known black
violator of human rights, the man whose name has cropped up more often
than anyone else's at amnesty hearings Joe Mamasela.  The only image
South Africans have of this Vlakplaas ask ari comes from the video
footage shot by journalist Jacques Pauw: the heavy black face with
thick lips and thick glasses relating cold-blooded killings as if in
slow motion.  Over time, these big, clumsy lips have become the mouth
of black evil.  So it's not without trepidation that I'm waiting with
gad io Lesedi's current affairs anchor, Sophie Mokoena, in front of the
SABC building for Joe Mamasela.  Sophie preseits the Truth Commission
slot in Sesotho on Friday evenings and is built up contact with
Mamasela over the months.  He trusts her unconditionally.  But he said
that we have to wait oitide in front of the building, so that he can
see whether it' really just the two of us, and that the one with Sophie
is indedjnly a woman.  We stand around uncomfortably.  My celpLone
rings.  Yes, it has been ascertained that we are who wd we are, but
Mamasela cannot meet us at the SABC, we havo go to the Garlton Hotel
and wait in the foyer.  We taker car, struggle to find parking in the
city centre and walk i4o the fancy hotel.  Sophie sits where she can
observe the revolving door.  I fiddle to get my recorder working
perfectly this is the last moment for flat batteries or a faulty
cassette.  I wonder how I will manage to interview the man in the lobby
without passers-by hearing the words Vlakplaas , Dirk Goetzee or

Mxenge .

There he is," says Sophie.

Outside the entrance several men are walking around.

Which one?"

The one standing with his back to us, looking up the street."  Sophie
gets up.  I want to tell her to be careful, but she's already making
her graceful way over to the door.  The man turns around and I am
certain that Sophie is mistaken.  He is not wearing glasses, does not
have a heavy face or a large head he looks like a thousand others.  But
it must be him.  His face breaks into a smile when Sophie extends her
hand.  He glances over hA shoulder once more and then enters the hotel.
He come sip to me with outstretched arms: I've heard so much about
iou!"

God, what can I say... Yes, the same here?  An honour to meet you?

I would never have recognized you.  Where are your glasses?"  us He
laughs.  I never wear them in public places.  Please find a private
corner somewhere.  I can't be interviewed here."

We can go up to the third floor where there are sofas down the hall,
they tell me at the information counter.  While he is busy on his
minuscule cellphone, I get a chance to study him.  He is wearing a
dark-green silk suit, a freshly ironed shirt, unobtrusive tie, gold
jewelry, and the kind of shoes with just the toe caps made of patent
leather.  After each question I ask, he flatteringly comments on its
quality before answering in a continuous flow of words.  The pauses in
between sentences are shorter than those between words.

Where were you born?

Good.  I was born in Soweto in 1953 on 2 June, I'm the last of six
children.

What kind of person was your mother?

Thank you for asking that one.  A very Christian woman, very loving,
she was nurturing us as mothers do, but unfortunately because of the
political circumstances in the country she had to leave us at a very
tender age and go and stay in a domestic suburb.  And we will see her
maybe once every six months when she has accumulated enough money to
come back home and provide for the family.

Who looked after you?

Like all black families we had an extended family, we lived all of us
with our grandmother it was four or five families together.

How many brothers and sisters?

This is an interesting question.  In our four-roomed house we had to
share it we were about sixteen.  There was absolute chaos, no privacy,
there was nothing.  And the worst part of that was even the house
itself was turned into a shebeen to augment the income.

Mamasela says he reconciled with his God in 1992 and is now part of the
International Fellowship of Christ.  He attepds church in Hatfield and
as a cell leader in the Rhema Ch4eh he converts many people.

That is the only time I am alone is when I decide to have a quiet time
with the Lord.  When I feel that there are burdenj there are problems
that I cannot solve with my own huma intelligence, then I say to the
Lord: take full control o it

Mamasela's voice is disturbingly fmiliar.  Whilo ho's talking to us, a
few metres away a waiter stops dead n 9us tracks.  Slowly he turns
Mound and stares expression leal at Mamasela.  it Until he left school
in Standard 9, Mamasela fought his own battles: I had to rely on my
physical fitness.  I stand at Tladi location and I attended school at
Western Central Jabavu, Morris Isaacson.  I had to travel through
various townships to reach my school and during those times each and
every township had its own gangsters in Tladi it was ma Scotch in
Moletsane it was ma Hazel if you go to Molapo it was another type of
gangster and because I was harassed every day by gangsters, I joined
karate and I excelled in karaie and I defended myself, my peer groups,
my friends and my immediate relatio... I became tough.  I survived,
unlike all my brothers and sisters who died of Apartheid-related
diseases like asthma, tuberculosis my elder brother Stanley died of
polio..."

At school Mamasela was involved in student politics.  After the student
riots of 1976 he became Secretary-General of the South African Student
Movement at this school.

I became a student activist at a very young age.  There was this
brilliant young man, Donald Mashigo, from Turboop Univers4y, who gave
me the SASO books of the late Steve Biko, 4ere he used to write under
the nom de guerre of Frank lk.  And I used to like that.  One of the
quotes is still in my head, when he talked about the Hegelian theory of
dialectic materialism he said: Since the problem is white, we need a
very strong black force to counterbalance the state.  Mamasela agreed."
Just after school he got married to Nombi Dube.  We were both very
young.  As I was starting to work, she fell pregnant and I felt
duty-bound and honour-bound to marry her.  We had a son, Sizwe, and my
job took me out of my home for several months, lying in the veld and
all that.  She was very young and she had to go out and fool around.
And when I came back I heard these reports and I thought it would be
better for both of us if I grant a divorce."  In Jacques Pauw's book on
the death squads, In the Heart of the Whore, Mamasela's biography reads
as follows:

Mamasela became a police informant in 1979 while in jail awaiting trial
for housebreaking and theft.  He was released shortly after a security
policeman visited him and persuaded him to combat terrorism .  He
infiltrated the ANC in Botswana, undergoing intelligence training with
them.  In the winter of 1981 his cover was blown and he was kidnapped
and taken to an ANC base in Botswana.  A fellow police informer was
allegedly tortured and killed, but Mamasela escaped and joined the
Vlakplaas unit."  But according to Mamasela things happened
differently. He tells a story of treachery and a solitary fight on all
fronts. Mamasela claims he joined the ANC in Botswana in 1977, having
been recruited by Snuki Zikalala, now a television journalist.  He
received training in intelligence and became leader of his own cell. 
But after 1981 things turned against him.  One night he was arrested by
security police sixteen carloads of them.  He says he was assaulted
until there was blood on the walls, he was tortured, given electric
shocks and interrogated.  The information I was confronted with could
only have come from my commander Sipho Makopo.  After 48 hours I
broke.

So I had to break and I merely confirmed what the police knew.  Just
like my President Mandela.  He confirmed in court about the Rivoma
Trial but because he was a leader it is fine;

when Mamasela does the same thing under duress it's called selling out.
It's double standards!"  He was recruited by a Major Kruger to become
an ask ari

They don't recruit anyone you must have a particular knowledge and
intelligence."  Mamasela says he had no choice but to join he was a
mere child of nineteen years up again4 the brutal might of the
Apartheid state.  But the sums in my head tell me that in the early
eighties Mamasela was nearly thirty years old.  r I

You could have preferred to go to jail," I said.  Robben Island..."
Mamasela snorts: Don't think everybody on Robin Island was holy.  They
were never put before a choice, 4eyg were simply sent.  What is more,
the comrades who we t Robben Island, not all of them were genuine.." we
recru&te# some of them and they infiltrated on Robben Island, so not of
them are Jesus Christs, not all of them are Moses as thy claim."
Sometimes he wishes that he had the power of Samson to bring down the
castle of the ANG, says Mamasela.  But the only thing he hopes for now
is that his children and his people will know the truth about him.

I am happy because the majority of the black people today, even those
who were against me, are beginning to get back their senses and ask
intelligent questions and they don't get answers."

Later I ask one of the Sowetan's journalists: What is Mamasela saying
here?  long, you whites have not even begun to understand what lies
behind black politics.  You jive on Madiba Magic and you analyze ANG
politicians, but what lies behind all that you do not have a clue
about.  A single example," he says graciously.

All of us know that the main income of the ANG for the struggle inside
the country came from gun-running and drugs.  Do you thipk those
networks have disappeared?  And likewise the Third Aorce was busy with
gun-running and drugs.  Do you tkhose networks have disappeared?  Why
wouldn't they rathlr combine?  Do you think it's coincidental that

Mandela's daughter is caught with a friend's stolen car?  If a
politician wasn't in prison or in exile for a long time, you must study
him carefully.  We just smile when we hear that the Truth Commission is
satisfied with the ANG's submission, we shake our heads over you white
journalists who always think you have the big scandals out in the
open..."  Children?  Yes, says Mamasela, he has two sons and a daughter
by his second wife.  So, while the marriages of the Vlakplaas five
Cronje and Hechter and the rest have practically all been destroyed,
both Joe Mamasela and Dirk Goetzee have their beloved families intact.
Two men apparently totally in control of their pasts.  Mamasela says
his wife is involved in the top structures of the Gauteng Ministry of
Health and is currently doing her PhD in Social Welfare.  She
understands me, he says.  I informed my children in 1993 that I was
coming out with the truth about my deeds.  But it is cult... They
actually become concerned when my face appears on television like last
Sunday, you know, out of the blue my face was there and my child came
back to me and said, Daddy, there's your picture..  . and even my
eldest child, they can see that there is a concerted effort by certain
self-appointed legal gurus within the SABC who are trying to besmirch
my name... But didn't you do anything wrong?  we press him.

I had to fight for my own survival," he says.  I was a political
hostage, I was a dog of war."  Joe Mamasela says he saw how the askaris
around him turned into wrecks.  But he who doesn't smoke, doesn't drink
or have any addiction of any kind had to find some way to stay sane.  A
dossier was the answer, he decided.  He would compile a dossier about
Vlakplaas and one day he would walk out of this mess and buy his
credibility back with the information he'd gathered.  According to
Mamasela this dossier is the real truth about Vlakplaas and the
security police, and it's now in the hands of the Attorney-General.

At this very point a strange thing happens.  Mamasela's cellphone,
lying on the coffee table next to my tape recorder, starts to ring.  On
the little window the word Winnie' flashes.

He looks at me, throwing his hands in the air: What can I do?  I have
to answer... He presses a button: Hello, Mama..."  and then he gets up
and goes to finish the conversation around the corner.  Across from me
Sophie's eyes are wide.  Maybe it's not her," I whisper.

But Sophie fervently shakes her head.  Mamasela is big friends with
Winnie it is said that he will one day clear her name."  Sophie relates
how she often puts Mamasela on air in her current affairs programme and
opens the phone lines so that.  people can phone in.  And they phone
and accuse him ofial4 that is evil and then he says: Bual Speak! Insult
me, crs me, spit it out.  Then I feel better.  Then I become whole."  4
That evening when I transcribe the interview, I hear hoi my voice
changes within the first few minutes, how even most critical questions
sound like I'm sucking up.  He sys goodbye to Sophie and me on the
pavement with a great brhug.  Only the best for SABC Radio."

But how do you kill a person and live a normal life the next day?
Humour, says Mamasela to our astonishment the curative power of humour.
I used humour a lot to cure me and my fellow askaris.  You know we will
joke about the bad things, we will joke about the killings, even when
askaris were taken one by one to be killed by their own commanders like
Coetzee or De Kock, we'll say: Who's going to be the next one?

Hey!  you will say, Jeff, you are getting fatter, I think they are
going to choose you next time.  ' According to his colleagues, Mamasela
was a unique ask ari the cleanest of them all at Vlakplaas.  Paul van
Vuuren told Judge Wilson: Mamasela had a talent for killing.  If you
wanted it quick and clean, you sent Mamasela he had the talent.

Mamaspla is mo erse intelligent that's all I can tell you.  That guy
more than clever," says Paul van Vuuren.  But we cannot figure out what
his game is now it will not be out of stupidity hat he doesn't apply
for amnesty.  But to us it seems that he is overplaying his hand."

Mamasela laughs: I will tell you one thing: I managed to fool Paul van
Vuuren.  Not only Paul van Vuuren I managed to fool the upper echelons
of the South African security police, which is not an easy thing to
achieve, particularly when you are black and an ask ari  I managed to
fool them with the curative power of humour.  Because I insulted
myself, I used to call myself a kaffer and they loved it, that this
one, we have turned him so hard that he is one of us.  I used to say,
Ek is n Boer.  Wat?  Jissis!  As my Boere s,

Maak hulle dood' dan maak ek hulle dood.  [ I am a Boer.  What?  Jesus!
If my Boers say, Kill them' then I kill them.  ] Because I wanted them,
I wanted them to believe me, to love me, to make me one of them... All
to get information for the dossier, he says.

Now Sophie and I confront him: People say in the old days you betrayed
your own people for money, now you are betraying your colleagues again
for money, because the Attorney-General apparently pays you a handsome
retainer to be a state witness.

Mamasela explodes: I did not choose to kill black people for money.
When I was betrayed by the ANG and sold out on a silver platter to this
brutal regime I was never promised money, I was fighting for my life. I
was a prisoner of war who was abused against his will, against his
convictions anybody who says Mamasela killed for money .. . I would be
a multimillionaire today, better than Sol Kerzner, judging by the
forty-plus people that we killed."

He acknowledges he has a high lifestyle.  His children are at the best
schools, he takes his family on luxury holidays but that's because he
built up businesses in Swaziland over the years.  But he has lost all
of that, he adds, and that is why the Attorney-General pays him.

Why doesn't he ask for amnesty?

I will never go to the TRC to humiliate myself in front of them.  I
will not give the politicians the honour of humiliating Mamasela after
what they have done to Mamasela both black and white.

Furthermore.  It will be stupid of me, it will be a foolhardy exercise
for me to ask for amnesty, because one of the main ingredients of
amnesty is that whatever you did, you killed for political reasons.  I
had no political reason to kill black people."

The similarities between Mamasela and his peer Di4 Goetzee are evident.
Especially around the mouth which always gives away other tensions.
Dirk Coetzee's mouth is often set in a smiling grimace, while thin
threads of spittle cling to the dry teeth.  Right through the interview
Mamasela's -, upper lip had an uncontrollable quiver.  Both are deadly,
K charmingly persuasive.  Both talk incessantly.  Both are ableko f
rattle off names, details, dates, quotes and Impressive woilsj Both
claim they were usually onlookers at murder scees41 Both refer to
themselves in the third person.  Both killei'o# behalf of whites.  Both
say they were betrayed by their ov colleagues.  But despite these
similarities, one is black and the other white.  The black one has
apparently been forgiven Sy the family of Griffiths Mxenge.  The white
one not.

TRUTH IS A WOMAN

I waved and my hand felt so light

THEY ASKED ME if I knew why I was arrested, I said no.  They said it
was because I'm Poqo.  I denied any knowledge of Poqo.  They said they
would show me.  They made me stand like an aeroplane on my toes.  They
beat me all over.  I fell.  They kicked me severely.  They tortured me
for three days I was then taken to Oudtshoorn.  Pus came from my ear. 
I could not urinate.  I felt dizzy.  They kept on calling me Poqo. 
They said I should die, as I cannot live with white people.  In Gape
Town I was sentenced for a year and six months.

Let me start by giving my story.

In 1968, Wednesday 24 at 4 a.m."  I had a three-year-old child on my
lap, and I was trying to light the stove as it was a chilly day, when I
heard a knock on the window.  The police entered with heavy coats and
asked for the owner... My wife gave me some overalls and a coat.  I put
on my socks in a disorderly manner..  . I saw they were very severe
They pushed me into the van.  I saw Mr.  Menena in the van.  He didn't
know why he was there... There were many of us at the police station.
They told us to keep quiet.  They divided us into groups and drove us
to Beaufort West.  The whites were very happy.  I kept talicing to
myself wondering what was wrong.  Later Mr.  Makulani joined me.  We
shared a cell.  He told me we were accused of being Poqo.  Then they
took us, and I hoped I was going home... (cries)

TUTU: Even if this is tough, we go on... MHLATSI: My wife was pregnant
and it was her time to deliver.  But we were taken back to Oudtshoorn
and beaten.  There were 23 of us.  Then we were taken to Victoria West
others got in.  The allegations were that we would poison the dam and
disconnect the electricity of Victoria West #d we were said to be an
army and we would then take over the whole town.  It was not true.  We
were in jail in Pollsmoor.  My wife sent me a letter she told me of the
birth of a son.  She had a baby.

The Judge asked me if I was Alphius.  I said, I Alwinus."  I took out
my ID book and letter and the Ju4g said: You are Alphius."  There was
an argument.  I discharged a year later.  In May 1969 I came bat
Victoria West.  At home I found the house disorderly: ?4y children were
thin, my wife was working for Mryn Drieten, a farm owner.  She had
never worked before.  she earned four rand a month.  I saw my baby boy
and I looking at my baby he ran away from me crying.  But he got used
to me.  They are now grown men.

Willie Menena was a Methodist and he and his two brothers accused me.
One could make a story out of this.  I hated Willie Menena for five
years.  I wanted to stab him to death because he had hurt me and
implicated me in that

Poqo meeting.

In 1972 I was with the children in King William's Town and there was
Willie Menena in a showroom for cars.  My child saw him.  I asked the
child for a knife I opened it and put it in my pocket.  Then I went up
close to him.

This is God's work.  Here he is: Willie Menena."  Then a white man
asked me if I wanted a car.  I said no.  Willie Menena saw me a person
who is guilty will always spot you.  I greeted him: How are you?"  I
asked him to go out with me.  He had difficulty in talking.  I was
surprised.  I could se that he had been through a lot of suffering it
showedn his face.  I asked him: Do your people know you are like4 his I
asked about his other brothers.

He sId he was suffering from high blood pressure and pains in the hip,
and that his son was beating him.  I called my wife and my son that was
born while I was in detention.  I said: Willie, here are your children'
because we have the same clan name.  There are your children.  You can
see you are old."

He said: Are you still going on?"

I asked my wife to give him one pound so that this man could eat.  He
never went home.  He went to the hospital.  It was the end of his
life.

I drove the car.  He was standing there.  This man who tried to drown
me.  He waved.  I waved back, I kept on waving.  That was the last time
I saw him.  The hatred faded away.

We cannot do bad things to others.  We have children to bring up.
(Aiwinus Mhlatsi, Beaufort West)

I remember Dubbeloog he always said: Don't tell lies, I will know,
because I have four eyes."  (Kimberley)

I remember Man-alleen he was always walking by himself, he needed no
one to arrest a person I'll do it man-alleen."  (Kimberley)

Does truth have a gender?

Rats would come into my cell at night to eat the soiled pads.  They
would try to get between my legs when I sleep."

As women speak, they speak for us who are too 4owardly to speak.

They speak for us who are too owned by pain to speak.

Because always, always in anger and frustration men use women's bodies
as a terrain of struggle as a battleground," says Thenjiwe Mthintso,
chairperson of the Gender Commission, in her opening speech at the
special women's hearings held by the Truth Commission in Gauteng.
Behind every woman's encounter with the Security Branch and the police
lurked the possibility of sexual abuse and rape."  Some activists say
they sometimes didn't know which was worse the actual assault or
dealing with the constant fear in the confined and isolated space of a
cell.  When they interrogate4, they usually started by reducing your
role as an activist.  They weighed you according to their own concepts
of womanhood.

And they said you are in custody because you are not the right kind of
woman you are irresponsible, you are a whore, you are fat and ugly, or
single and thirty and you are lookiig for a man.

And when whatever you stood for was reduced jto4i prostitution, unpaid
prostitution, the licence for sexual abis& was created.  Then things
happened that could not happeij t a man.  Your sexuality was used to
strip away your dignity, and undermine your sense of self."  You had to
ask for toiletries like deodorant, soap and sanitary towels.  You had
to strip fn front of a whole range of policemen making remarks about
your body.  Women had to do star-jumps naked, breasts flying, Fallopian
tubes were flooded with water until they burst, rats were pushed into
vaas... Women have been made to stand the whole day with blood flowing
down and drying on their legs.  Did they gain strength from looking at
their blood?  From asking you to drink your own blood?"  asks Mthintso.
It is only when men in prisons are forced by sodomy to behave like
women that they realize how it is to live with a constant awareness of
your body and how it can be abused and ridiculed.  Mthintso says a man
who didn't break under torture was respected by the police.  There was
a sense of respect, where the torturers would even say He is a man. But
a woman's refusal to bow down would unleash the wrath of the torturers.
Because in their own discourse a woman, a black meid, a kaffprmeid at
that, had no right to have the strength to with stan4 them."

Banning murders for women were also handled differently.

Women re constantly peeped at and preyed on.  They wanted to prove that
you were a whore.  Someone whose inclusion in the liberation struggle
was simply to service the men.  To tell you, You are not a
revolutionary, you are a black bitch on heat."  She concludes: While
writing this speech I realized how unready I am to talk about my
experience in South African jails and ANC camps abroad.  Even now,
despite the general terms in which I have chosen to speak, I feel
exposed and distraught."

WE WERE RUNNING through the shacks, only to find out the boers were
also going through these shacks after us.  I turned back alone, I was
trying to find other comrades.  I couldn't see them.  I could feel the
tear gas coming though my eyes and I I went to the toilet to hide.  And
I thought that here I am going to get injured, because I can't see the
others.  When I got out of this toilet, I saw one boer, only to find
that he also saw me.  He shot at me.  ADV NTSEBEZA: Where did he shoot
you?  Ms TsoBILEYo: He shot me on my left arm leg then I fell, then he
shot me... the underpart of my body.  They took me into a house where I
was bleeding so heavily that the basin they used to collect my blood
was full.  The doctor who phoned for the ambulance had problems,
because the ambulance was not allowed to come in to come to Crossroads.
ADv NTSEBEZA: Let's go back to the scene of where you were shot.  Did
you two see each other at the same time, you and this white policeman?
Ms TsoBILEYo: Yes, we saw each other at the same time, he was wearing a
blue uniform.  And he shot at me.  ADV NTSEBEZA: Could you please show
the Archbishop and the Commission your scar on your leg.  That isn't
the only place where you got injured, is it?  Ms TSOBILEYO: No.  ADV
NTSEBEZA: Some of the bullets are still in your body.  Ms TsoBILEYo:
Yes, I have several bullets in my body, some are still in my leg, some
are somewhere in my body, some under underneath.  Some of the bullets
are in my vagina.  ADV NTSEBEZA: Obviously those bullets didn't just
fly on their own to where they are now.  Ms TSOBILEYO: These bullets
were these were the first bullets that were shot at me.  He shot
directly there.  (Nomatise Evelyn Thobileyo)

When I got into one of the offices, I found that there huge crowd of
the police and soldiers and a cc taken into one of the offices that was
full of was informed that one of them was A karate man.

What is going on?  And one of them said: Ja, you!  I took a seat and I
was shivering.  I've never si big crowd of white persons.  One of them
asked me: were you last night?  I said I was at home.  Then lit
shouting at me that I was a liar.  I insisted that I was at While I was
still responding to one of the questions, the other one said I am
spoggerig.

They kept on interrogating me for hours.  Who burnt the municipality's
bar?  They were so rude towards me and I was getting tired of answering
all these questions, so I kept quiet.

One young boy, he was a student, slapped me slightly von the cheek.  He
said: Speak you bitch!  I just kept on staring at him.  He grabbed me
by the throat and then slapped me hard on the face.  And then we
fought.  It was an exchange of blows and I was very angry because he
was just as old as my children.  The others were ridiculing me: they
said I was John Tate and Gerrie Coetzee the boxers.  At the end I could
see they were also embarrassed, because some of the black detectives
came in and my shirt was in tatters, and then all of them said: Are you
fighting back you kaffer?

Late that night I was alone in a cell.  I heard two men comminicating
outside.  One of them called my name.  They took me outside and I was
ordered to board this Hippo.  They st artel driving the Hippo away,
over the bridge to Rawsonville.  I was alone in the back of the Hippo. 
It was pitch-dark outside.  They alighted from the Hippo and took me
out. One of them said to me, Can you see what you have put yourself in?
And then they asked me, When did you last sleep with man?  I was so
embarrassed by this question.  And I felt so humiliated.  I informed
them that I have nobody, I don't have a partner.  And they asked, Who
do you stay with?  I said with my family.  The other thing they asked
is how do I feel when I am having intercourse with a man.  This was too
much for me because they were repeating it time and again, asking me
the same question.  Asking me what do I like with the size of a penis
or what do I enjoy most.  So the other one was putting his hand inside
me though the vagina.  I was crying because I was afraid, because the
soldiers are very notorious with rape.  This one continued putting his
finger right through me he kept on penetrating and I was asking for
forgiveness and I was asking them, What have I done?  I'm old enough to
be your mother.  Why are you treating me like this?  This was very,
very embarrassing.  Then one of them I think God just came inside him
and the other one said: Let her go, and they took me back to the police
station and locked me up... I was detained for a long time.

When I was released, my house was burnt down one of my children died in
the fire.  The community ridiculed and ostracized me because they said
I was giving information to the police."  (Yvonne Khutwane,
Worcester)

There has been concern that so few women activists have come forward to
testify before the Truth Commission.  But they have their reasons.  The
day I became involved in the struggle, that day I made a choice and I
fully understood the consequences of it.  To run to the Commission now
just doesn't seem right."  In an effort to draw in the experiences of
women activists and get a fuller picture of the past, the Truth
Commission creates special forums.  At a hearing on prisons, Greta
Appelgren, who drove the getaway car for Robert McBride when he planted
the Magoo's Bar bomb, testifies.

She is now known as Zakrah Nakardien:

What bothered me were the rats.  They were the size of cats and they
were in the passage all the time.  While I was eating, three of them
would watch me.  I took my clothes to block their access, but they
ripped all that and came in, crawling up, until one night they reached
my neck..  . I screamed the pi ace down and they found me in a corner
eating my T-shirt."  This is how berserk I was.

Isolation for seven months taught me something N human being can live
alone.  I felt I was going deeper an deeper into the ground.  It felt
as if all the cells were like coffins full of dead people.  d h

I had to accept that I was damaged.  That part of mj sqjil was eaten
away by maggots axjd I will never be whole

A group of six guys and myself in Sebokeng decided to ffrm an
organization to keep the senior comrades busy all the!  lime.  We rape
women who need to be disciplined.  Those who behave like snobs.  They
think they know better than most of us.  And when we struggle, they
simply don't want to join us."

A seemingly simple question like What is rape?"  can derail a whole
discussion.  South African law defines rape as occurring only between a
man and a woman and involving tWe penetration of the penis into the
vagina.  Acts of forced oral or anal sex and penetration by foreign
objects are not considered rape.  But the Truth Commission has to
establish whether one can rape with a political motive and whether the
raping of non-political women to keep the comrades busy is indeed a
political act.  The Geneva Convention regards rape as a crime of war
and prosecutions for rape in Bosnia have begun only because of its link
to ethnic cleansing.  One of the recommel)dations the Truth Commission
might make is at rapists should not be granted amnesty.  But why would
a papist testify if he knows that he won't get amnesty?  Then again,
few women have testified about rape, and fewer, if any, live named the
rapists.  So why would a rapist apply for amnesty at all?  There seems
to be a bizarre collusion between the rapist and the raped.  Although
rumours abound about rape, all these mutterings are trapped behind
closed doors.  Apparently high-profile women, among them Cabinet
ministers, parliamentarians and businesswomen, were raped and sexually
abused under the previous dispensation and not only by the regime, but
by their own comrades in the townships and liberation camps.  But no
one will utter an audible word about it.  The silence is locked into
loss and cultural differences, says clinical psychologist Nomfundo
Walaza.  Women who have been raped know that if they talk about it now
in public they will lose something again privacy, maybe respect.  If
you knew that a particular Minister had been raped what would go
through your mind when you saw her on television?  Another deterrent is
that some of the rapists hold high political positions today so if you
spoke out you would not only undermine the new Government you fought
for, but destroy your own possibilities of a future.  There is also a
culture of not discussing these things with your own family."

When they raped me, I was already torn and injured by electric shocks,"
testifies Thandi Shezi.  I hurt deep inside.  I could tell nobody.  My
mother is sitting here she is hearing it for the first time.  I'm
suffering from a womb that feels as if it's jumping.  I'm frigid.  I'm
cold.  When I get involved with a man I get scared.  I didn't tell a
single soul about it.  I don't want them to pity me.  I don't want them
to call me names."  Men don't use the word rape' when they testify.
They talk about being sodomized, or about iron rods being inserted into
them.  In so doing they make rape a women's issue.  By denying their
own sexual subjugation to male brutality, they form a brotherhood with
rapists which conspires against their own wives, mothers and daughters,
say some of those who testify.  There is a lot of ambiguity surrounding
sexual torture, says Sheila Meintjes.  It is not difficult to
understand why.  There is a hypothesis that the sexual torture of men
is to induce sexual passivity and to abolish political power and
potency, while the torture of women is the activation of sexuality.
There is a lot of anger about women because women do not have the
authority, but often they have a lot of power."

The picture of Rita Mazibuko in her brown dress, beige cardigan and
neatly knotted kopdoek is in stark contrast wj4h her story of endless
rape, torture and rejection.  And neither she nor the Truth Commission
is prepared for the storm that follows her testimony.  Mazibuko
underwent military training in Angola and i?  Mozambique, and was then
placed in Swaziland to work ut' routes for cadres moving in and out of
the country.  W.e4 nine of these cadres were shot, suspicion fell on
her.  The a that she had R35 000 in her bank account was proof en for
the ANC that she worked for the Apartheid regim.1 reality, Mazibuko
says, she earned the money by sewing i4d selling track suits  Accused
of being a spy, she was taken o Tanzania and Zambia, and kept in a hole
for six monthk sleeping on pieces of cardboard.

On the day I was taken out of that hole they said I should go and wash.
The clothes I was wearing at the time was the same dress for about six
months when I tried to take off the clothes, they were in tatters. When
I washed my hair it fell out, my skin was greasy because I didn't wash
for three months."

Two comrades, Jacob and Mtungwa, ordered her to pick one of them.  She
needed a man to take up her case, they said.  Some comrades said she
was guilty, others disagreed.  They kept on torturing her.

I refused to have sex with them.  Then they tortured me between two
chairs.  I fell on the ground.  They were kicking me across my face,
they treated me like a doey... They pushed a pipe with a condom in and
out of my vagina.  While they did it they asked hw it felt.  When I did
not respond it was put dper and deeper to satisfy me, they said...
After being ass4ilted I was bleeding from my mouth and nose, but still
I wasanged, left dangling from a tree they wanted to kill me t1it day.
I was made to wear overalls so that if I

messed myself up, they wouldn't catch sight of my mess.  When they
brought me down they said: This dog is dead.  '

Afterwards, Mazibuko wrote to comrade Mathews Phosa, because she had
once shared a house with him and cooked for him.  He spoke to a senator
about her case, but the assaults continued: At Sun City prison someone
called Desmond raped me nine times.  Nine times.  He is quite a young
man he was 29 at the time.  And I saw myself as his mother.  Comrade
Mashego was staying at Swaziland when I met him he raped me until I
approached the authorities.  And then Tebogo, who was also very young,
he raped me and cut my genitals he cut me through from number one to
number two.  And then he put me in a certain room, he tied my legs
apart.  He tied my neck and then poured Dettol over my genitals."

ANC members sold her house and furniture in Swaziland for R20 000. It's
now Comrade Mike who sleeps in my bed and uses my dressing table," she
says.  When she finally.  returned from exile she bumped into Jacob
Zuma at Piet Relief.  He lent her money to report her case to Shell
House.  But one of her former rapists took her from Shell House to
Boksburg, where he again raped her for the whole night in a house with
a For Sale' sign in front of it.  He warned me that I would not get
away.  That he would kill me if I talk."

Mazibuko tells the Commission that she doesn't have a cent to her name.
She borrowed the clothes she has on.  To crown it all, two weeks after
she gave a written statement to the Truth Commission she received a
phone call from Mpumalanga Premier Mathews Phosa, warning her not to
testify because then he will be obliged to defend ANC members against
her claims.

I fell in love with the late Chris Ham and gave birth to his son
Simphiwe.  Hani showed this boy to his family but not to his wife.  I
gave the son to my sister-in-law to avoid a divorce from my husband."
On Mazibuko's confidential written statement the name of Simphiwe is
underlined a plea for extra reparation?  I wonder.

It is strange testimony.  Is this woman with the goodnatured face, who
speaks of rape as if it is water, who emphasizes the youth of her
rapists, nothing more than an ordinary prostitute?  And is her sexual
history perhaps the reason why Phosa says afterwards that he has never
heard of Rita Mazibuko or Mumsy Khuswayo' her code name in the

ANC.

When she leaves the witness table she pulls her cardiga4i closed and
folds her arms protectively over her body.  As if he already knows that
a mighty provincial Premier is going' to discredit her evidence
repeatedly in public and threaten to J take her to court.  As if she
knows no one will stand up for her.  The Truth Commission does not
utter a single word in .  Mazibuko's defence.  Not one of the
Commissioners, not e of the feminists agitating for women's rights,
stands up says: We respect the right of Rita Mazibuko to tell the t4it!
as she sees it, just as we respect the right of Mathews Phost tell the
truth as he sees it.  But we expect him to do the same' (Rita Mazib#)

And the next thing he came back and he beat me right across the room
into the wall and he kept on beating me right into the wall and I felt
myself going down... And I just found myself lying there on the floor
and being completely, completely terrified.  At that stage a man came
in, and he said to the man, Just rape her, just rape her, and this man
came up to me and he he didn't actually rape me, but he... the threat
of it was I felt I was going to die at that point.

I hadn't slept for days.  And they gave me some food... And he said he
was going away, but he was coming back again.  And I started seeing...
I started seeing all my veins in my hands dilating.  And my arms, my
veins in my hand and my arms, and I... I felt pains across my chest and
suddenly I started feeling like ... all my insides were going to come
outAndlsaidtothem, lamgoingtogetsick... Andthe one guy ra to the toilet
to take me, the other guy ran to the phone ane said, It's starting. Now
at that point I didn't think anyijing of it [that she was being
poisoned], I was just seeing all &iy veins dilating, it looked like
worms it looked like worms coming out of my hands.  It was all standing
up.  I thought my blood vessels were going to burst and I just felt
these pains across my chest... Then Captain Du Plessis came back and he
said: Zubeida, you know, you are never going to make it, you're going
to have a heart attack, you're going to die.

They said, Zubeida, if you don't cooperate with us and tell us... then
we are going to detain your father.  And I thought they were just
trying to trick me again.  But then in the course of the morning they
made a phone call and they called me to the phone.."  and it was my
father on the phone... I was shattered at that point.  I just felt that
it's fine if they involve me, but why involve my family?  And so after
they put the phone down, I signed the statement..  . And the effect of
it all was that it completely humiliated me, it completely made me feel
like I was worthless, that I had gone against everything that I stood
for, that I believed in, and that I had been too weak to withstand the
pressure.  After her first arrest and torture, Jaffer decided to become
a full-time ANC activist.  Because of the trauma of it all, I think
there wasn't a day that went by that I didn't think we had to do
something about bringing the system to an end.  It totally consumed me,
I couldn't think of anything else .  After that experience in
detention, I think that I saw it's almost like you were in the belly of
the beast."  She was arrested a second time and held in custody with
her husband.  Lieutenant Frans Mostert then threatened the pregnant
Jaffer with a chemical he had prepared for her: We are going to burn
the baby from your body, if you don't give us information."

Now this was a real threat to me because of the drug experience during
my first detention.  I knew that they could do it... and so I sat there
in the cell not knowing what to do.  Eventually I decided not to give
them any information because I felt that I didn't want my child to grow
up with that burden on her, because I felt that..  . if she is brought
into this world thinking that her mother gave information so that she
could live, that is a heavy burden for a child to carry.  So I

think that that unborn baby inside of me made it possible for me to be
strong enough not to give in to their threats."  (Zubeida Jaffer)

When I look around, I marvel at how we battle to be norxAal and no one
knows how shattered we are inside... I shared my first detention spell
in the Old Fort with Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Fatima Meer and Joyce
Seroke.  This was a powerful group.  The war dresses called Winnie by
her name and she had such amazing strength.  She taught u tj stand up
for our rights and dictate our terms.  We discovr4j that black female
prisoners were not allo'.red to wear pa4tiq.  We changed that.  We also
heard children screaming at and demanded that these children be
released."  Human relationships can be forged even under the 4st
deprived circumstances.  People can cherish one another, survive and
foster the kind of humanity that overc*les divisions.  Hardened
criminals murderers in the next cell taught me how to use the toilet as
a telephone to chat with them, how to smuggle in pen and paper.  I
never saw their faces.  I don't know where to find Chillies and Nandi
today, but they only gave me warmth.

When I was rearrested at Vrede in the Free State, I was detained at
Phoenix.  After a week I demanded to see the security police.  The
wardress asked me: How dare you call the security police?  Don't you
know they will kill you?  You're much better off here... But that
Saturday afternoon they came.  Two of them.  They were drunk.  The one
said: Yes Deborah!  so you say you are ready.

They handcuffed me to a big iron ball.  I stood there the whole night
while they were having a bra ai outside.  By Sunday they asked me to
write a history of myself.  They kept on tearing the paper.  My legs
were swelling, and I began to get deliripus.  On Tuesday they started
beating me up, they strangle4 me with a towel I collapsed.  When I came
to, I was lying on' he floor and I was all wet they must have poured
water or me.  This Roy Otto threw a pack of sanitary pads at me.  When
I went to the bathroom I realized that I was menstruating and I
wondered how he knew that.

The cell was swarming with lice.  The blankets were caked and smelt of
urine.  I didn't know where I was, I was screaming and shouting and had
severe asthma attacks.  But I was lucky along the line.  Because an
Afrikaner came, Taljaard, I'll never forget his name.  He said he
thought I was mad.  I told him I was a political prisoner.  He listened
carefully and smuggled an asthma spray and some tablets in and helped
me to hide it behind the toilet.  Every day Roy Otto came in and said,
We don't have to kill you, you are going to die naturally of asthma.

I used to envy the common-law prisoners for their easy interaction. The
war dresses were scared of us they were told we were terrorists.  So
they just opened the door and kicked our food in.  The food was clogged
with ants.  But then one silly day, this wardress, Botha, when she
walked past I grabbed her through the bars.  I would have liked to
strike up a relationship with her, I would have loved to talk to a
woman about any women's thing.  But she refused to treat me like a
human being.  So I grabbed her hair and I bashed her head against the
bars.  I let her have it.  She was by herself and she screamed and
screamed.  I bashed her because I wanted to be charged, just to talk to
somebody.  But the funny thing was the magistrate came to ask whether I
needed anything and he brought me a Bible the next day from his home.

For some strange reason I've overcome my asthma, to this day.  I don't
know why.  Eventually my family was allowed to visit me.  My sister and
my dad came.  I cried that day.  The only reason was that I hugged
somebody, I saw some real people... Joyce Seroke sent me pyjamas and
slippers, Judy made an egg mixture for my scalp because all my hair
fell out, Ellen Kuzwayo sent me oil to nourish my s... In the
Middleburg prison another thing happened.  There were two war dresses
Kara Botha and Maryna Harmse they were meant to be the meanest of the
mean.  But they jumped back every time they opened my cell so I walked
around with impunity.  One day I was exercising in the yard and I saw
one of them, Maryna, talking to her boyfriend at the gate.  And she was
crying.  When she opened my cell that afternoon her eyes were red.  I
asked her, Why are you crying?  She said: Dis me iou besigheid me. Los
my uit.  [ It's none of your business.  Leave me alone.  ] I told her I
was not going to leave the cell until she tells me.  I said to her, I
heard you boyfriend saying that he is going to Katima Mulio and you
will not see him for a long time.  Who is he going to fight there? You
see, you are in the same position as me.  He is going to die at the
border and it's my brothers and sisters who will kill him.  Maryna, why
do you allow that?  And she cried and 4 she opened up and we talked."
if

The Truth Commission venue is silent.  No one wantsIvto interrupt this
story of the power of women to care, endlesly, The moment surpasses all
horror and abuse.  (Deborah Matsho ii

I don't seem to have an identity that belongs to me.  I'm either Zeph
Mothopeng's daughter or Mike Masote's wife.  But I feel I am me.  That
is why I am here.  I am Sheila Masote.  And I have here a summary of
what I was stripped of.

I was born into a happy family my father and mother both teachers. They
stayed in the best place Orlando West where you'd find the elite, the
Mandelas, the Sisulus, the Matthews, the Masekelas... bear with me... I
cry a lot... sometimes it's anger... This was a beautiful place.  My
father was a cultural man he was the first chairperson of the
Johannesburg Bantu Music Festival that brought forth the Eisteddfods,
Dorkay House.  All of this happened.  My mother is a singer with a
wonderful coloratura voice where do I get these terms from?  I'm highly
cultured... I make no apologies, I am... I married a highly cultured
man the only man, the only black in Africa who holds a licentiate in
violin teaching.  He establied the first black orchestra. I know what
I'm talking abit but all of this has crumbled... I had a family that
was some and togetherness.  That was destroyed.  I couldn't realize any
dream.  As a young girl I lost role models because at the time, in the
sixties, that was when everybody left the Mphahieles, the Malebos, the
Mjis.  The frequent imprisonment of my father destroyed us, the
imprisonment of my mother and later of myself and my husband. This
communal living we could play next door, my mother could go to work and
she knew her children would be safe.  We left our key at the third
house from us no one came to steal anything.  All this crumbled because
of the system and the Security Branch.  My father and mother were
dismissed as teachers because of their political involvement.  My
brother went into exile.  There was loneliness.  My father in and out,
in and out of prison.  My other brother turned into an alcoholic.  He
became violent.  I saw my mother crying.  She lost her energy.  It was
PAC policy that women should stay at home and should not participate.
And the husbands did not share much.  I used to go for ballet with
ribbons in my hair I was a pretty little thing in a tutu the only
daughter in a well-off family.  We read, we talked politics.  I'm not
saying all of this to brag, but to tell you what cultured, educated,
intellectual society existed in Orlando West.  Then people were
arrested, others went into exile this whole world crumbled.  Our home
became cold and needy.  I and my mother for me there was a real war
against my mother.  We were so clumsy with each other.  Main Mothopeng
the wife of the PAC President.  I wanted to go to a ballroom party.  I
didn't wear a bra because I had beautiful breasts.  And she was angry.
I felt so unloved by her.  I was abused by stick, by mouth, by neglect.
I now understand why she was like that.  She was always alone.  She had
to take decisions every day and she didn't know whether they were right
or wrong.  Can you imagine that?  How vulnerable she must have, felt?
But she was breaking the very family she was trying to protect.

And I took that with me into my own family.  I bashed my son.  I almost
killed my son.  Today he is in Switzerland he is a fine cellist at the
Yehudi Menuhin school.  But his sister at the age of eight saw him go
up, he was about six, trying to hang himself in a tree because I used
to bash him so much.  I sent him to the shop.  I spit on the floor. You
must be back before the spit dries!  My son would run.  My boy would
run I'm sorry I cry, bear with me... And then I worry.  He is too
short, they wouldn't see him at the counter.  Maybe someone kidnaps
him.  Maybe he dies.  And when he comes back, I take the sjambok I
would beat him, I would bent him, I would beat him until the neighbours
jump over die fence and stop me.  And this son of mine, this one so
close' to my heart, I hear him say to his friends: I don't know
suffering.  ' (Sheila Masote) I

In the mid-eighties, at the height of the strugle for liberat nj youths
toyi-toyied in the streets, singing: 7

Informers, we will kill you.  Hayi!  Hayi!  Witches, we will burn you.
Hayi!  Hayil ,

Those who do abortions, we will kill you.  Hayif Hayil (

Mrs.  Botha is sterile she gives birth to rats.  Hayi!  Hayit Mrs.
Mandela is fertile she gives birth to comrades.  Hayi!  Hayil

We even flew a little'

It's raining.  It's raining in Mdantsane, like it hasn't rained in
years.  Outside the Sports Centre, storm water washes sewage down deep
grooves in the ground.  It's raining hard on the zinc roof.  Water
slashes down the windows.  But right from the start it's very clear:
the women of Mdantsane, who have packed the hall, have come to tell
their stories.

The Truth Commission has come full circle in East London.  It started
here: the first hearings on human rights violations were held in the
City Hall of East London.  Now, fifteen months later, it is ending
here: the last day of the last hearing in the Eastern C is held in the
township just outside East London.  Mdantsa4 the second biggest
township in the country, is selected fe a hearing dedicated to women's
testimonies.

They said they were putting me with other women in an ablution block
without a roof.  They said I will be abused by the other women and I
will have to live among excreta.  They threw me among these women, who
stared at me because I was well dressed.  I had a fur coat on.  The
lice will eat the fur from your body, the police said, because you are
a terrorist witch.  But the women sustained me.  They talked to me.  We
sang.  After a week they took me again for interrogation.  They tripped
me.  They jumped on my body.  They took me by my belt, they lifted me
and then banged me on the floor and I was not so ugly then.  I had
beautiful hair.  They grabbed the hair and lifted me by my hair.  They
put a bag over my head and poured water over it so I couldn't
breathe.

Nosipho Marxewu.  They strangled me, they pulled down my headscarf they
pulled it down my neck and one pulled from the left and the other from
the right.  I lost all strength.  I urinated on myself.  I was pregnant
at the time.  They said I must tell the truth."

In the first row of chairs sit the victims, looking anxious and
uncomfortable at the prospect of testifying in front of so many people.
Some of them have babies on their laps.

After six months I had infection.  I couldn't urinate because of the
electric shocks.  I lost my appetite.  I threw the food in the toilet.
When I flushed it, no water came out.  I smelt something.  When I
opened the taps, I smelt gas.  I felt dizzy.  My throat was very dry. 
I tried to drink water from the loo.  When I came to my child on the
bed I saw he didn't wake up.  I started screaming.  I took the child to
the bars and tried to push it through the bars.  It was all foggy. 
Just my screams.  I knew they wanted to kill me and my child."

And then the power shuts down for the umpteenth time this week in
Mdantsane.  Nothing works not the lights, not the microphones, not the
equipment in the interpreters' booths.  The hearings adjourn.  It's
half past eleven in the morning, yet it is dusky in the hall.  No one
can go anywhere.  It pours and pours.  Everyone waits.  The women sing:
Mali Bongwe."  They sing: No one can destroy us we are made from a
dangerous metal."

In another corner, the men attending the hearings come together and
tell stories and jokes.  The Truth Commissioners stand or sit around
with their cellphones.  Almost as if they're hoping the women will
leave.  No one organizes food.  No one can say when the power will be
sorted out.  Whether the hearing will go ahead.  People are getting
tired.  A Woman stands up and takes a bowl of peppermints off the
victims' table and shares them out.  Another woman takes jug of water
off the same table.  She also shares it.  Someone takes the box of
Kleenex to the lavatory where the toilet paper has lg since run out.
The only light in the gloom is the big ,cafrlle which remains lit for
the victims.  No one leaves the Cetr By half past two the singing
stops.  The joking stops.  cone sits down.  The women of Mdantsane sit
their arms flded resolutely across their chests.  Frantic calls are m
from Commission cellphones.  4 t

At about four o'clock, a light-green Golf Chico roars up to the Centre
leaving a spectacular spray of mud behind In the boot is a knee-high
generator.  Its best years are clearly far behind it.  The technical
staff climb in it is fuses, torches, sockets.  Under his breath one
technician asks the other:

When does a married man stop masturbating?"

I don't know, when?"

When he is divorced."  With this he pushes a button and there we have
it!  The solid pumping of an engine.

They forced us out of the bus.  They let us lie down on our stomachs.
They trampled on us.  They trampled mostly on me, because I was
pregnant.  They said women are breeding the enemy."

I heard these men speaking in Zulu: Let's kill these dogs of Mandela.
She jumped over the fence of our backyard.  She was wearing pink cloth.
They disembowelled her she was eight months pregnant."

This burning bali on the dining-room floor, I see it was my
dauger..."

Mommy they shot me... I saw the biceps hanging from her arm."

N#mkephu Ntsatha.  They took a wet sack and put it over my face.  They
suffocated me.  While they were doing that my child was crawling on the
floor.  They gave her a toilet bag to play with.  They slapped me. They
sat on my stomach.  They took my baby's blanket and stifled my face." 
It is dark when the last woman finishes testifying.  Some of the
Commissioners have already left to catch their planes.  The cold of the
wet night is seeping up through the cement floor.  The women of
Mdantsane slowly get up.  They fold their blankets, they smile, they
congratulate one another.."  no rain, no power failure, no men could
silence their stories today.

I'm visiting a friend in town, someone I have known since Sub A. In
their backyard.  lives a maid.  Doesn't she miss her children?"  I ask,
thinking of the large families on the farm.

Maids don't feel like other people about their children.  They like to
be rid of them.  Anyway, Alma likes me now."

On a previous visit.  Why doesn't she have a heater?"

Maids don't get cold like white people."

The reason she stinks I already know from the farm, where water is
rolled along to the house in big drums they don't like washing.

A myth is a unit of imagination which makes it possible for a human
being to accommodate two worlds.  It reconciles the contradictions of
these two worlds in a workable fashion and holds open the way between
them.  The two worlds are the inner and the outer world.

Myth makes it possible to live with what you cannot endure.

And if the myth has been learnt well it becomes a word a single word
that switches on the whole system of comforting delusions.

Like the word meid.

I cannot take the crying in front of the Commission any longer," says a
farmer from the Northern Province.  If I see a black woman crying, then
I remember two Afrikaans expressions from my youth: to cry like a meid
and to be as scared as a meid.  What do I do with this?  The most
despicable behaviour, cowardice and loss of control, we have equated
with the actions of a black woman.  Now the Commission just reinforces
the stereotype."

In the big Afrikaans Dictionary, you will find words like kafferbees,
kafferwaatlemoen, kafferkombers and each time!  the word is used
derogatorily: kafferbees low quality cattle; kafferwaatl-emoen
tasteless melon; kafferkombers cheap type of blanket.  There are also
words like kaffersieg and kafferlui, indicating the intensive form.
Very useless is kaffersieg.  Very lazy is kafferlui.

Like the word kaffermeid.  h The function of a myth is to provide a
logical mod#l L capable of overcoming a contradicjaon.  The myth proves
the?  things have always been like this, that things will never change.
ii

THEN BURST THE MIGHTY HEART

Testimony of three Guguletu mothers before the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission Day 2, 23 April 1996

I am Cynthia Ngewn.  I stay at NYS4 No.  8. Where I come from is Alice,
but I got married in Transkei in Khombo location.  I have four
children; the fourth one is the one who was shot by the boers.  I have
six grandchildren.  I now live with my husband here in Guguletu.

In 1986, on 3 March it was a Monday if I am not mistaken the comrades
were asking about Christopher Piet, who is my son.  They told me that
some children had been shot at Marais.  So I went to the police
station, and I asked the police about the shot people.  I just want to
find out about my child, I want to find out if my child is one of the
shot children.

So they said, We don't know, we'll check the books, we don't have a
list of the shot children.  You must go to the mortuary at Salt
River.

I immediately went to Salt River mortuary.  There they asked me, Will
you be able to identify him?  I told them,

Yes, I will.  They said, Go on then.

I saw the trolley which was next to the door.  The trolley had him in
it.  So I identified him.  They asked, Are you sure?  I said, Yes.  I
saw that he had a wound, a wound shot on his head, and there was blood
coming from his ears.  I told everybody, Yes, I identified my son, he
is also one of the

Guguletu Seven the seven of us, myself and these women next to me.

I told everybody else.  I said to my kids, Let's watch all this on TV,
because we don't really know what happened, maybe they will have it in
the story on TV.  While we were still watching the seven o'clock or six
o'clock news, I saw my child.  I actually saw them dragging him, there
was a rope around his waist, they were dragging him with the van.  I
said,

Switch off the TV, I've seen what I wanted to see.  Just switch it
off.

During that time, when all this happened, I was too weakj What I what I
knew was that I didn't want to see any whit man in front of me, because
I was I was full of hatred at the time, because of the way my son was
killed.  4I

He had many bullet wounds in his body.  After the pot mortem the
doctors told me that he had 25 bullet wounds

I remember the funeral on 15 March.  There were nany people.  I
remember the boers didn't want all this to happ4n.  I even remember
that some of the people didn't manage to come over, they were told to
turn back.  The stadium that we were holding this whole funeral in was
surrounded by boers that was in NY49.

Everything went well, because nobody was taking any notice of these
boers.  We decided to ignore them, the onlr thing that we were
concentrating on was the funeral .. . think.."  even when I am just
alone, I am thinking to myself was there any survivor out of all these
killings?  And why did the boers kill everyone?  Couldn't they just
warn them, or even shoot them in their legs just to save their lives?

Didn't these boers have any feelings at all?  Why did they just kill
everyone, absolutely everyone?  Not leaving even one to give witness.
Now nobody knows the real-real story."  (Cynthia Ngewu)

I am Ece Thembiso Miya.  I have five children; the fifth one is
Jabul4i, he is the one who passed away on 3 March 1986.  I am from
Bloemfontein.

On this day, 3 March 1986, I was working in the offices in town.  I had
to leave my house at half past four in the morning rushing for a
quarter-to-five train, rushing for six o'clock at work.

It was usual for my son to go through the back kitchen from where he
slept.  But on that morning, just before I left, he knocked and I
opened for him.  Now it was quarter past or twenty past four.  When he
came in, he ate bread and cold water.  He said, Mama, please give me
two rand.

I said to him, I only have five rand, I'll be short if I give you two,
because I want to buy a weekly ticket.  But because I wanted him to get
a job, I gave him the two rand.

He said thank you.  Then he said, Mommy, I want to come with you to the
station.

I said, No, you are not to do that.  I've been going to work at this
time of the morning every year, but you've never accompanied me.  It's
all right, you don't have to come with me.

But he insisted... Now, by that time I was becoming suspicious.  Don't
do this don't shock me like this, I said to him.  Look, turn back, I
don't want you to come with me.

But he insisted, and he accompanied me up to NYS9.  He wanted to still
go on with me but I told him, No, turn back.

That was actually the last time I saw him.

I got into the train at quarter to five, got to work.  I was working
two shifts: two hours in the offices, then from there I would go to
char, just to have more pocket money, because the money I was getting
from the offices was too little.

I worked as usual, I continued working, but around half past ten my
boss, Ms Van Horvet I can't remember the actual station of the radio
where we listened to all this she came to me and she said, Eunice.

I looked at her and said, Madam?

She said: I just heard from the news that there are Russians in
Guguletu who have been killed.  They are from Russia.  And then she
said, Is your son involved in politics?  I said, No, I don't have any
son involved in politics.

So, well, I just continued working.  Around two o'clock in the
afternoon it was time for me to go home.  I did my usual shopping. Then
I went home with the train.  We switched on the TV for the news, it's
my daughter who did that her name is Thombisodwa who switched on the
TV... The music started for the news.  Then in the news I was told that
these seven children were killed by the guerrillas from Russia. And one
of the children was shown on TV who had a gun on his chest.  He was
facing upwards.  And now we could see another one, the second one, only
to find that it's my son Jabulani.

We were arguing, myself and my daughter.  She said, i's f' him.  I
said, No, it can't be him, I just sahim this morn4ig4 it can't be him.
I can I can still remember what he wore that morning.  He had navy
pants and a green jacket and a warm$2 and a warm woollen hat.  I
prayed, I said, Oh Lord..y 41 wish I wish this news could just rewind..
. Why is it him?  ... Why were the others not shown, why is it just
him?

I was told it was just a hand grenade that did this to him, that was
next to him.  That's the time I collapsed... I don't know what happened
after that... What makes me cry now is that these policemen, they were
treating people like animals, that's what makes me cry right now.  But
even a dog, you don't kill it like that.  You even think that the owner
of this dog loves it.  Even an ant, a small ant, you think you have
feelings even for an ant.  But now our own children, they were not even
taken as ants.  If I say they were treated like dogs, that's not how it
happened, I am actually honouring them.  They were treated like ants."
(Eunice Miya)

Now these men at the mortuary, one of them said he would accompany me.
When we got there, when they opened the door I felt this cold breeze,
that's when I lost consciousness.  Then theyook me to some place that I
didn't know, they gave me some 5ills and they asked me, Do you still
want to go back there?

I said, Yes, I do.  So I went and I saw Zabonke.

When I looked at him, his body, I couldn't see his body.  I didn't want
to look at his body.  One of his eyes was out, there was just blood all
over.  He was swollen, his whole head was swollen.  I could only
identify his legs, because they were just thrown all over the place.
One of his eyes was out.  His whole head was swollen.

What I can only remember now are his feet, I could only identify his
feet, that's how I could see it was my son.  They asked, Are you
satisfied?  I said, Yes, I am.

And in the morning, in the morning we were told: These children should
be buried now because, after all, these seven dogs have been dead for a
long time.

After his funeral I was so miserable.  I had nowhere to go.  I live in
a shack, it was very difficult.  Something told me to go and pick up
coals, it was on a Thursday.  I was knocked down by a rock, this big
rock hit me on my waist.  I tried to move so that I could get some air.
It was eleven in the morning at that time, but they could only get me
out of that rock around five in the afternoon.

When I woke up, I felt like I was just getting out of bed.  And there
was a continuous cry that I could hear.  It felt like I was going down
down down.  When I looked, I was wet wet wet I was wet all over the
place.  I asked for water.  They said, No, we don't have water.  I said
I was talking to one of the women who was with me I said, Please please
urinate on a plate so that I can drink.  She did and I then regained
consciousness, I woke up.

When I was awake they put me into a van and I was taken to hospital.
The doctors said to me I must just go away, I must go back under those
rocks where I was before, I am no one I am nothing, what is ANG, what
is ANG..."  (Ms Konile)

i8

THE SHEPHERD AND THE LANDSCAPL

OF MY BONES

THE HEARINGS IN the Northern Province take place in, the prefab halls
of the show grounds at Louis lrichardt, Me4in and Tzaneen.  At some of
these venues the media sit out sid the stoep, the thick vine of cables
from the audio-visuaPa translating equipment drawn through an open
window.  The testimonies reek of witch-burning, zombies and bantus tn
brutalities.  I

In Louis Trichardt, a fleet of vehicles from the provincial traffic
police escort the Truth Commissioners the two kilometres from their
hotel to the venue.  They roll through the empty streets of the town
even the main intersection with the national road is no more than a
four-way stop.  At the show grounds there is a massive contingent of
122 policemen and soldiers.  We overestimated the turnout," says the
captain.t For most of the day between ten and twenty police vehicles,
among them two Casspirs and two Nyalas, sit parked under the trees.  A
helicopter also pays a visit to see how things are developing'.

It is the same captain who listens with horror and increasing anger to
a journalist busy on his cellphone, dictating a scathing report on the
amiable abuse of resources.  The intelligent utilization of police
resources has not yet reached the gramadoelas.  By late orning a
cricket match commences on the field next to thu hall.  And it is clear
that the more things change on this side f the Soutpansberg, the more
they stay the same.  While the Commission listens to testimony of human
rights violations, cheerful white families with their Tupperware, their
sunhats and their small-town familiarity spend the day picnicking on
the grass outside.  Their children chase each other around the bakkies.
Caught between the field and the hall, we in the media sit listening to
bitter crying and choked words, interspersed with cheering and applause
from an enthusiastic cricket crowd.  The division carries though to the
policemen patrolling the show grounds  The white policemen loll about,
watching cricket, while their black colleagues stand solemnly in the
doorways of the hall listening to the testimony. My hands on the laptop
keyboard are numb with contradiction.

Perhaps the oldest person ever to testify before the Commission is
William Matidza, born in 1895.  Bolt upright, with a trimmed white
goatee, he walks on to the stage without assistance.  He is here, he
says, not because the police arrested him from time to time for
political reasons and threw him in jail.  Not because he was already
eighty the last time he was detained.  But because all his things have
been confiscated.  He doesn't care about the house and the furniture
and the livestock, these losses he can deal with but it's his trees,
you see.  He wants his trees back... He wants reparation for that.  The
Commissioners explain somewhat uncomfortably that they don't really
have the power, that they can only submit suggestions to the President,
that it will all take time.  Doesn't matter," says Matidza.  I know
waiting."

Oudtshoorn.

You could say that Oudtshoorn is a town like most other rural towns,
where a high unemployment rate causes the tensions between coloured and
black, between white, coloured and black, to simmer just below the
surface.  A deeply divided town like most others.  Or you could say
that Oudtshoorn is a special town.  Despite all the divisions and
separations, it has a history of people who were doers, who raised
themselves up from financial depression, who made something out of
nothing, who built mountain passes,

organized festivals and, in their day, took on the Apartheid regime.
That is why, during the visit of the Reparation and Rehabilitation
Committee, the proceedings suddenly come to life when suggestions have
to be made on how the town should address its past.

The black and coloured groups look each other in the ey and speak
franldy: The coloured women are full of talk, but they never do
anything for the community."

Ja, but we got tired of arriving at meetings Sunday after Sunday and
finding no one there," someone answers.  P

Division is part of Oudtshoo... like ostriches... so lets rather look
ahead."  4 h

A very old lady says: Those without forgiveness in tlir4' hearts were
born yesterday: me, Lforgive everybody."

We will make gardening tools out of old spears," Domihe Gerald de Klerk
says.  I went personally to all the othet ministers and asked them to
join us, but during all those yeaih of struggle only one of them came
to a meeting.  And whene heard we were talking about justice, he said
No, unfortunately I did not come here for justice, but for the gospel.
'

The undertow of each contribution at the Oudtshoorn hearings is the
obvious longing for the one group of people who aren't there.  The
white group.  The only group in this town as in all the others who hope
the Commission will pass them by.  How will a town become whole when
one group is so apathetic?  The man selling medicinal herbs in the
street laughs cheerfully: A town that was first called Hartebeesrivier,
then Velskoendorp, then Polkadorp, then Knikspoordorp and then
Kannaland will surely not struggle long with change."

A big fire burns in the fireplace.  My husband sits in a steamy bath. I
soak my hands and start washing him limb by limb slowly, gery, cares
singly from his beard to his toes.

I will never forgive you you have destroyed everything," his voice
beaks into the towel that I hold out for him.

What do I say?  Do I quote definitions: Narrative understanding is our
most primitive form of explanation.  We make sense of things by fitting
them into stories.  When events fall into a pattern which we can
describe in a way that is satisfying as narrative then we think that we
have some gasp of why they occurred.  Nations tell stories of their
past in terms of which they try to shape their futures."

Stop talking crap," he says.  I stop.

I have no framework in which to address him.  I have no words for why
something so right is so wrong.  Definitions leak like sieves.  The act
of forgiveness involves a refusal to blame .. . Though an essential
element of all personal relationships, the importance of forgiveness is
not much reflected in contemporary ethical theory."

I need to know everything," his sharp, sloping ankles hostile on the
bathroom tiles.  I need detail.  I need to churn it over and over in my
mind until it stops hurting and humiliating me.  I need to have
language for it in order to pack it neatly away.  I want the truth.
Who, where, when and how."

The word truth' is explained by different theories: the correspondence
theory of truth, the coherence theory of truth, the deflationary theory
of truth, the pragmatic theory of truth, the redundancy theory of
truth, the semantic theory of truth, double truth, logical truth and
the subjective theory of subjective truth.  Pragmatic truth theorists
say that truth has no cognitive value that we literally should not care
whether our beliefs or stories are true or false, but rather whether
they enable us to achieve happiness and well-being.  There is a
connection between what is true and what is useful.  Some people say
that this con flation of truth with utility is pernicious, because the
ethics of belief require us to pursue the truth with honesty even if
its consequences should prove detrimental to our material well-being.

It is precisely this ideological mumble-jumble that makes cruel deeds
like this possible.  And you want amnesty from me, I must not hold it
against you, I must forgive you, we must leave the past behind... Well,
two can play that game.  So let's have a hearing.  You can confess and
I will call that man and he can say whether you are telling the truth.
And I want to sit in the front row like Limpho Hani and whisper to my
children: The motherfucker!  '

That's been my point all along.  It is useless to talk about truth.  My
whole telling of what happened will be 4iven forward, determined,
trimmed, slanted by my desire nbt to hurt you, to entice you back, to
protect your honour nd to convince you to exonerate me."

Rubbish.  There is always a basic truth: you cheated on n. Why?  Where?
How?  From when to when all of that1 is negotiable with the things I
already know.  So the morI know, the more you will confess.  What truth
I don't, cnigw,

you will never tell me."

The Maximum Security Prison in Pretoria was the head office for
hangings it was a place designed for death.  A pris with pretty little
gardens, little bucks and rabbits playing fn the grass, a pond with
ducks a place processing people towards the execution chamber.  Its
sole purpose was to imprison persons condemned to death, to clothe
them, feed them and keep them whole until they were killed.

Elaborate mechanisms were put in place to ensure that he or she would
not kill themselves.  Lights were kept on 24 hours a day, prisoners
wore no belts and after the suicide' of Frikkie Muller, who gouged his
wrists with a shoe nail on the day before his execution, all the
condemned wore soft shoes.

Those without hope for appeal or clemency turned to religion and myth
the strongest myth being that no one on Death Row was hanged you were
dropped beneath the floorboards into a great cavern that was the South
African Mint.  There, for the rest of your life you made money.  You
would never be allowed out because then you would be able to tell
everyone the secret of money-making.  This myth was sustained by the
fact that no one ever met anybody who officiar made money or saw the
bodies of those people who were l5nged.

Onthe night before the execution was to take place, the

Prison service would give each of the condemned prisoners a bang-up
meal with the whole de boned chicken to eat, as was the tradition
inherited from Britain where you were given the last supper, and four
rand to buy something from the prison tuck shop.  The whole night
before the hanging there was singing.  People would sing other people
to their death.

The following morning they were visited by the prison chaplain at about
6 a.m. and they prayed with him for about half an hour.  Seven were
hanged at a time.  During the period looked into by the Truth
Commission, 2 500 people were hanged in the country a hundred people
each year.  Ninetyfive per cent of those hanged were black 100 per cent
of those who sentenced them were white.  By 1989 there were 80 people
on Death Row in Pretoria for politically related of fences  In that
year, in what came to be known as the Christmas Rush , 21 people were
executed during the third week of December seven on Tuesday, seven on
Wednesday and seven on Thursday.

The heart surgeon Professor Chris Barnard describes the hanging as
follows: Put a rope round a man's neck, tie the knot next to his ear,
fasten his wrists behind his back and drop him a distance of just less
than two metres.  If you haven't botched it by miscalculating, you'll
achieve several things at once: The man's spinal cord will rupture at
the point where it enters the skull, electro-chemical discharges will
send his limbs flailing in a grotesque dance, eyes and tongue will
start from the facial apertures under the assault of the rope and his
bowel and bladder may simultaneously void themselves to soil the legs
and drip on to the floor unless you are an efficient hangman who has
thoughtfully fitted your subject with a nappy or rubber pants.  '
(Paula McBride)

Later on we stopped making use of young guys.  You become so familiar
with your work.."  it basically became addictive.  You always wanted to
be present.  When they were hanged that day, you wanted to be there.
Later you became aggressive about small things, you started abusing
alcohol.  It's not the kind of job you could discuss with anybody.  You
could not tell your family that you hung people, you kept it to
yourself."  (Prison Warder J.S. Steinberg)

They put me in a trench.  They instructed some prisoners cover me up,
to bury me alive with only my face open.  Then Kleynhans urinated in my
mouth.  There were four Kleynhanse on the Island.  They told me: Nee,
my Poqo ons gaan jou me doodmaak me, die kruiwa gaan jou doodmaak.  U [
No, my Poqo we won't kill you, the wheelbarrow will kill you.  ] You
want to govern the country but you can't even govern a spade."  Al

(Johnson M1ano)

The first blow that landed, landed right in the middle of 4 buttock. It
cut my buttock down the middle.  I felt the pais, but I just held my
mouth and I held on.  Their attitude was that this is Robben Island,
and no prisoners leave this island alive.  Unfortunately, we were the
first three coolies to be on the Island and the warders would say:
Waar's daai koelies?  [ Where are those coolies?  J And they'd pull us
and give us a bad time .. they'd call us koelies, kaffers, boesmans,
terrorists, you name it... And I heard the warder shouting:

Kak horn uit!  Kak horn uitP' ( Shit him out!  J ... All of a sudden, I
found someone pushing a finger right up my rectum.  And this was one of
the most humiliating things that ever happened to me.  And I heard the
warder saying: Oh, he's still a virgin... ' (Indres Naidoo)

The ANC kept us in freight containers.  No ventilation.  When it's
cold, it's cold.  When it's hot, it's hot.  No food, no water.

Quatro means number four.  A hell of a place.  A place where if they
give you bread, you think it's cake.  The whole cell have tjshare a cup
of water."

(Diliza Mtembu)

On Robben Island they lined us up, the political prisoners.  Then they
called the criminal prisoners and invited them:

Take your pick.  This sodomizing happened to us."  (Johnson Miambo)

I come here on behalf of my family.  I come here to express the feeling
of betrayal by compatriots and comrades.  I come here to express our
disappointment and the way we feel cheated of a dear little biot her a
brilliant young man.  I come here to talk about the hypocrisy that's
taking place in our country.

There is one thing that is messing up our country the lack of
sincerity.  It is the lack of recognizing 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.

We have achieved very little.

I have said, I have walked, I have contributed, I have met people
inside, outside the country.  I have risked my neck, my life, and yet I
am the one to sit here who does not know what happened to his brother.
And it pains me when I hear the rhetoric of shallow honour and
integrity of disclosure.  Yet underneath, it is vilification, 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 Quatra camp.  I
want somebody to come and tell me what my younger brother actually did
that he deserved to be shot like an animal to be put down after being
so brutally disfigured that his best friends could not recognize him. I
want that comrade of mine to come up and be honest and tell a little
lie at least to the family a little white lie.  Say We shot him
accidentally when we were practising and we will be satisfied.

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 Convention and you couldn't even 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 is not what we want.

I looked for my brother very quietly and silently.  I kne'k what was
happening in the country.  I was on Robben Island and I saw what was
happening where people were just destroyed out of sheer rumour, sheer
suspicion, that you [ could be labelled anything and you could die the
next day.  j That made me quiet.  It took me more than ten years to
find anhing... the young chap pie resembles me, we look aliMe, h but
suddenly no one remembers this Sere Mane  Suddenly4no one has a record
to show what kind of trial he facec ii Quatro.  Was he defended?

Where is the accountability?

The system in a way resembled accountability.  Becae when they were
finished with me they threw me on the lai 1bf my people and said, There
is your rubbish.  And my people can't even come and dump my brother's
bones and say, We are through with those bones.  I can ask for my court
records [from the stat el and find them.  But my movement can't offer
me even a piece of paper on how they conducted the trial [of my
brotheri.

Questions have to be answered, because without the questions the weaker
ones are going to go back and do it again.

And my family are saying: Hey, Boer Joe, you are going to pay a price
again.  You are going to disturb even this Government.  Tiogela batu
bane they'll victimize you.  And I saw I had to make the same decision
again that I made when I faced the system if it is for the truth that I
must die, so let it be."  (Joe Seremane)

Brain Fis4Aer

Gommunirt and Afrikaner.  Reason enough to be singled out for extra
humiliation in prison.  Then add the fact that this son of a prominent,
staunch Afrikaner family had successfully defendedANG members,
including Nelson Mandela, in the Rivonia Trial.  It was thanks to Brain
Fischer that the death penalty was not imposed, people said at the
time.  Such things were not forgotten by his jailers.

There seemed to be a very determined effort to humiliate and undermine
Brain.  The man in charge of the section, called Du Preez, seemed to
take particular delight in humiliating him.  He cut Brain's hair short.
He made Brain wear clothes that were far too big for him.  He made
Brain wash toilets on his knees with a rag... endlessly."

The two calm-voiced daughters of Brain Fischer testify before the Truth
Commission.

The day after the Rivonia Trial ended, Fischer and his wife Mollie
drove down to Cape Town to be with their daughter on her twenty-first
birthday.  Not far from Kroonstad, at Koolspruit, a cow wandered into
the road, just as a motorcycle was approaching from the other side.
Fischer swerved and lost control of the vehicle.  By an extraordinary
chance in the middle of the Free State normally no water at all in the
middle of the winter, there was a river that had a huge, deep pool and
the car sank into the pool."  Mollie was drowned.

The Goverument wanted Fischer's blood, and soon after the accident he
was arrested but he had already been granted a visa for a Privy Council
case in London.  Everyone expected that he would skip bail and stay in
England.  But he came back.  It was important for Brain to say that as
an Afrikaner, he would never leave the country of his birth," says his
daughter Ruth.  This land is ours just as it's everyone's who were born
here, he used to say."

The case of Fischer and twelve others charged under the Suppression of
Communism Act continued through December of 1964, until it was
adjourned for ten days on 15 January 1965.  It became clear that he was
going to be convicted.  Before the end of January he disappeared and
went underground.  He left a letter to his daughter Ruth and another to
his legal counsel.  In the latter he stated:

I have not taken this step lightly.  As you will no doubt understand, I
have experienced great conffict between my desire to stay with my
fellow accused and, on the other hand, to try and continue the
political work I believe to be essential.  My decision was made only
because I believe that it is the duty of every true opponent of this
Government to remain in thi country and to oppose its monstrous policy
of Apartheid with every means in its power.  That is what I shall do as
long as I can."

After months of living underground as Mr.  Black, Brain was caught on
11 November 1965.  One of the many stories about his arrest is that a
security policeman, who had worked h 1* Brain for years, was wailcing
in the street one day when he recognized a familiar gait.  His heart
skipped a beat.  Only the man walked that way.  He fell in next to the
man with h' disguised face and said: Good day, Abraham Fischer."

Fischer was charged under the Sabotage and t1 Suppression of Communism
Acts.  In a speech from the do lasting four and a half hours, he
concluded his case with the words of Paul Kruger: With confidence we
lay our case before the whole world.  Whether we win or whether we die,
freedom will rise in Africa, like the sun from the morning clouds."
Found guilty on fifteen charges, he was sentenced to life imprisonment.
When the verdict was read, his counsel seemed more distressed than he.
He smiled at his three children, Ruth, ilse and Paul, in the gallery
and raised his fist in a salute.  Then he was led away to prison.  It
was 1966.

In 1971, Fischer's only son Paul died of an hereditary disease.  My
brother was born with cystic fibrosis secretions tend to be very sticky
so he had a lot of lung infections.  He was 23 and just finishing his
Honours in Economics at the University of Cape Town.  He fell ill and
died within six weeks."

Fischer's brother broke the news to him.  His fellow prisoner, High
Lewin, describes the scene in his book Bandiet:

They wildn't give permission for a contact visit.  They wouldn't let
brother meet brother, at a time like that, in one of the offices.  That
would threaten the security of the State.  They stood, two on one side
of the partition with Brain and at least two on the other side with
Brain's brother.  Paul died this morning.

They couldn't touch each other.

Brain came out of the box-room just as we were being locked up for the
night.  There was no chance to talk to any of us.  He was locked up as
usual alone, in his cell for the next fourteen hours, alone.  Fourteen
hours, though the usual prison night, alone with the news of his son's
death.  They refused him permission to attend the funeral.

Fischer had a prostatectomy in July 1974.  The surgeon suspected cancer
and asked for more tests to be done.

A quarter of a century later, the daughters of Brain Fischer read the
litany of their father's last days into the record of the Truth
Commission.  The facts were written down at the time by another fellow
prisoner, Denis Goldberg, and smuggled out of prison in the spine of a
book.

September 1974: Brain saw doctor because of acute pain in hip.  Brain
not examined, but given analgesics and physiotherapy.  After two weeks
therapist referred Brain back to doctor suggested X-rays and orthopedic
opinion.  Nothing however was done.  The pain was so severe that Brain
needed crutches to walk.  Still not sent for X-rays.  October: Dr.
Groenewald did send Brain for X-rays.  Late October: Brain saw an
orthopedic surgeon who warned that the neck of the femur was very
fragile and that a fall could be dangerous.  6 November: Brain fell
while struggling into the shower with crutches.  7 November: Bram asked
to see a doctor who did not come.  8 November: Brain asked to see a
doctor, but the medical orderly said it was impossible to get a doctor
and he did not do so.  9 November: Brain in great pain.  Medical
orderly provided analgesics.

12 November: Dr.  Brand says there is no fracture.  Brain in great
pain.  15 November: 9 days after the fall.  Brain again saw Dr.  Brand.
An X-ray was at last done and radiographer identified fracture of neck
femur.  16 November: Brain seen by specialist who con firme.1 fracture
and advised hospitalization.  19 November: 13 days after the fall and 4
days after fracture diagnosed Brain eventually admitted to HF Verwoerd
hospital.  4 December: Brain returned to prison.  His fellow prisoners
, found him alone in wheelchair, confused and unable to spek.I For 48
hours I, on my own request, nursed Brain in his lL He was feverish, and
unable to speak or to do the simples things.  Had to pick him up to put
him on toilet.  Throughoi this time he was in great pain, but not seen
by a doctor.  6 December: Brain readmitted to hospital where cerebrl
secondaries were diagnosed."  4

Now, for the first time, the prison authorities notified the family
that he was ill.  Ruth flew to Gape Town to plead her father's cause to
the Minister of Justice, Jimmy Kruger.  But she was informed by General
Hendrik van den Bergh that even though it was clear Brain was dying, he
was too great a danger to the state to be released.

After four months in hospital in Pretoria, the authorities, although
they still refused to release him from imprisonment, agreed to transfer
him to the home of his brother Paul in Bloemfontein.  Brain Fischer
died there on 8 May 1975 at 7 a.m. The prison authorities were informed
and arrived within thirty minutes with a list of conditions concerning
funeral arrangements.  They stipulated that the family could keep the
body for a funeral, provided it was held in Bloemfontein within a week,
and that in the event of a cremation his ashes would ha to be returned
to the Department of Prisons.  Twenty years later, in response to a
question in the new democraO' Parliament, we were told that his ashes
had been scattered By prison officials, in a place of their choice,
about a year after his death.

After their testimony before the Truth Commission I see people
embracing Ruth and Ilse as if they are delicate, special creatures.  I
ask for an interview.  These two, who are of Afrikaner blood, have
reawakened the pain always flapping somewhere inside me whenever the
name of Brain Fischer is mentioned.  He was so much braver than the
rest of us, he paid so much more, he did so much more, his life seems
to have touched the lives of so many people even after his death.  And
yet so little is known about him.  His daughters speak English.

How did your father connect his Afrikanerskap with his politics?

Brain's earliest memories were of how he and his mother were taking
food to General Christiaan de Wet in jail and how his father defended
them as rebels.  And he saw his commitment to change as a natural
progression from Afrikaner nationalism, which is where he started. That
was the family history the Boer War and the Rebellion and Oupa drove an
ambulance in support of the rebels it was a whole anti-imperial
struggle.  And Brain saw it as a continuation of the struggle, just
extending it beyond the Afrikaner to include all people.  In fact, when
Brain was arrested the first time in 1946 and phoned his mother in his
gentlemanly way, she said:

Never mind my dear, we've been here before.  And that was the kind of
history of struggle that he came from.  I once asked Ouma how she felt
about the fact that her son was so different from her and she just
said: Family is more important than anything else.  '

Unlike many children of activists who try to keep the memory of their
parents alive, or react with anger to the hurt their parents' politics
have caused them, the Fischer sisters have always remained in the
background.  But last year they were invited to the Communist Party's
75th Anniversary celebrations a memorial lecture about Brain Fischer,
presented at the Bloemfontein school where he matriculated.

It was held at Grey College and it was absolutely wonderful.  We were
shown to our seats by boys in those very distinctive Grey College
blazers swart and wit boys!  Ruth and I were ushered on to the platform
and Ruth was sitting on a chair which was labelled P.U. Fischer who was
our grandfather.  And on the rolls of honour there was Brain's name;
and Oupa Abraham who was our oupa-grootije his name was also there.  It
was a bitterly cold night, but all the sd people had come.  The head of
Grey made a wonderful speech about the Class of 1923 and what happened
to them all.  And Terror Lekota made a wonderful speech and Ruth made a
speech and Brain would so much have enjoyed it the fact that the
Communist Party and Grey College a Afrikanerdoin were at last coming
together in this kind celebration."

But how do you live with so many deaths?  No sooner the question left
my lips than I regret the prying of it.  To surprise both of them
laugh.

Switch off the machine."  Which I do.

You drink!  At times you drink."  And they both again.  We're not
bitter," says Ilse.

You know, right up until today Albertina Sisulu says to us, You are my
daughters.  And she means it.  Our lives have been unbelievably
enriched through the involvement of our parents in the struggle."

During the second part of the Truth Commission's lifespan, its work has
unexpectedly taken a new and chilling direction.  And now this image
keeps hanging in the mind: the discoloured bones being packed out, one
by one, next to the fresh mound of earth.  At last the Commission has
enough evidence that missing activists were interrogated, tortured,
killed and buried on farms all over the country, says the head of the
Investigative Unit Dumisa Ntsebeza.

In the beginning the only farm we knew about was Vlakplaas.  en it came
to light that similar farms existed in the old Nail, the Transvaal, the
Orange Free State and the Eastern C,e.  Ntsebeza identifies three kinds
of farms.

Firstly, thEre were farms used solely as bases for askaris.

Secondly, there were farms where people were interrogated, tortured and
killed.  And thirdly, there were farms that were not rented but simply
used as dumping grounds for bodies.

What emerges is a clear pattern with its roots in the theatres of war
in our neighbouring countries.  Well-known Rhodesian activists
disappeared in the areas where the Selous Scouts were active.  The
first disappearances on a regular basis in South Africa happened
shortly after the independence of Zimbabwe.  And the Commission has
evidence that not only the police, but also the South African Defence
Force was involved in these farms.  People were picked up around the
borders, then killed and buried, because no hostages were to be taken.
No bodies were to be made available for defiant funerals."

But Dirk Coetzee has described how bodies were burnt or blown to pieces
with explosives.  Why would the Security Branch bury a body in a grave
on a remote farm?

Because they never thought the day of the Truth Commission would come,"
says Ntsebeza, or maybe the burning of bodies was revolting even to
them.  But I suspect the real reason was a practical one.  It takes up
to eight hours to burn a body and often they probably just didn't have
the time."

Ntsebeza believes there must have been a policy on these killings.  He
says it's hard to accept that farms spread across the country were run
and used in exactly the same way without there being some clear and
accepted policy about it.

The revelations present a huge problem, according to Ntsebeza.  The
Commission never imagined that it would be responsible for exhuming
bodies.  I think our wildest guess was that we would have to look for a
few bodies thrown down mine shafts, but I for one never thought we
would be disinterring bones.  There is no budget for it.  We're
battling with the Financial Director to figure out what sort of line
item the grisly fact of exhumations should be."

When Eugene Terre' Blanche said, This country is drenched with blood'
he didn't know how right he was.  *

Pietersburg.

In the middle of the town, in the middle of the garden, beside the
lake, you will find the world's only bronze boereorkes.  The band,
which looks more like a symposium of under-achieving academics than a
group of jolly musiqians, stands embedded in Afrikaner codes.  A
sculpture garden!.  Our garden.  Let us go walking there.

God rules.  And God does not perish, he is made of bronze.  He rules
over the earth and over the land.  He paves our pa4s in concentric
circles, he plants indigenous trees Afrikaans names.  He scoops out a
lake, He 4. a fountain.  spurts;

God is a God of animals from the herd of bronze giraffes with their
swinging necks at the entrance over there tj the bronze pelicans and
bronze blue cranes.  Or is it blue!  bihnze cranes'?  A fish-eagle
unfurls its claws next to this!  netaphysical thought on a plaque: And
then he caught the fish."  God is not a snob.  He lets his sun shine on
the humble nkey too, ruttishly cocking its bronze hind hoof.  The
plaque: For the donkey carrier of gold into this area from
1871-1892."

God is also the God of the spaces above the earth: a Sabre 358 in
camouflage livery soars over the granite monolith erected in memory of
the members of Regiment Christiaan Beyers who lost their lives on the
Angolan border in 1976

Rest in Peace.  Pro Patria.

Behold!  The garden is filled with God's prophets.  They appear in
flights of bronze please ignore the black couples making out on the
grass head-and-shoulders for the lesser lights, full-length for those
with whom the yolk was on first name terms.  And for the chosen few: a
grassy slope, some stone steps and a ladder of animals.

Past a full-length Tom Naude Patriarch of Parliament' past the bronze
mugs of Willem Bok and D.A.P. Naude to a distant corner.  With her back
against the hedge, glowering, the on bronze woman in the garden: Lien
Grimm.  This bust of heas not donated by an organization or a prominent
local ouple: it was donated by her two daughters.  The inscrition on
the plaque First and Only Female Mayor of

Pietersburg confirms our worst suspicions: God rules over women too.

Staggering backwards in the saddle, gun clenched under his arm, full
beard waving, sits the man after whom Pietersburg was named: General
Piet Joubert.  Hero of Majuba.  Next to the voluptuous horse with its
shock of mane, its veined, bulging neck, stormy hooves and flaring
nostrils, stands a woman with her arm raised as if flagging down a
taxi.  According to the plaque this is Hendrina Joubert, wife of the
General, who on the morning of the battle first spotted the Redcoats
and pointed them out to him'.  That the honour for the victory at
Majuba should fall to her is not a possibility Hendrina has already
departed the flesh.  With a flat bun of hair, a long hawkish nose,
skeletal limbs, a prophetic cloak over her shoulders and high lace
collar at her throat, Hendrina has little to do with earthly matters.
She accompanies the General on his campaigns for one reason only: her
eyes are better than his.

This statue was unveiled by our own Star Wars Hero: General Magnus
Malan.

Now all paths wind downwards.

All paths lead to the Bronze Band beside the lake.  Five musicians in a
pyramidal group wait soundlessly with their instruments.  They are
performing on the town square of the

Bastion of the North'.  Make no mistake, they may be playing
boeremusiek, but they are intellectuals fighting for our European
heritage.

On a low wall sits the banjo player in a loose shirt and flowing curls,
and a moustache filched from the inimitable Johann Strauss of Vienna.
He keeps time with the toe of a polished bronze velskoen.  Opposite him
stands a boy with his guitar across his thigh, in leg-of-mutton sleeves
from the time of Henry the Eighth.

Europe Africa.  There, here.  The band represents: the triumph of
civilization.

As for this one, he may be only a concertina player, but he is deep. He
transforms the innermost heavings of his nation s soul into polka and
va strap  His concertina is held head high,

his ear is turned towards the instrument, finely tuned to it.  There
can be no doubt it is a young Pik Botha in a neckerchief.

Towering over Pik... the bass player (the plaque says it's a cello).
Dignified, staring at the ground, his body sole mp beside the big
instrument which might just as well have bedn a cannon or a horse
stands General Koos de la Rey.  The bald head, the long beard
unmistakably those of the Prophet of the Waterberge.

The most important instrument the violin completes the pyramid.  The
violin player's body is sexless, his buttocks are clenched, his bowing
arm raised.  Verwoerd with a fl4lleJ under his chin.  But no sound
swells from the bronze sot4 id box the bow has long since been broken
off by vandals4 H( smiles impassively, empty-handed.

Cover your eyes!  It cannot be.  It simply cannot be that so mvch
unbri4l*d symbolism could lind expression in bronze!  But it is.
According to the plaque it's: Kwena donated by Dame de Jager.  Slightly
behind the band, in bronze of a garish red, a massive crocodile rears
up on three legs.  It twists its head around to snap viciously at its
own tail.

Just lately, the King of Kwela, Lemmy Special Mabaso, has' been
honoured with a bronze statue in the Garden of Pietersburg.  The famous
penny whistler is the first black man to be honoured in this way by the
town.  His statue stands beside the boere-orkes, as if they just might
invite him to join in on the next number.

I am sure this Boereorkes does not mind sharing the garden with me.  My
wildest dreams have been exceeded we are all brothers and sisters and
at last we all stand together!"  (Die Burger, 1997)

This b4s us to the end.  Not only of the public hearing in Ladybra ,
but also of the last hearing for victims that will ever be held in this
country.  It brings to an end a unique experiment in South Africa's
history.  And it brings to a close one of the most far-reaching steps
that this new Government has taken to acknowledge the loss, the pain
and suffering of thousands of victims of this country's political
past."  The words of Commissioner Richard Lyster, in his closing
address at Ladybrand.

Undxeamably the Eastern Free State town lies among the sweepings of
grass and stone and windswept sky.  Bare trees stand like tuning forks
next to the vleie in a vapour of muggies and steam and birds.

How could anything resembling brutality possibly have happened in this
town with the golden sandstone glow?  With the late afternoon sun
pleasant as an amber coat against the stone cliffs?  Over the plains of
grass frosted to blonde and brown and rust?

Over these past fifteen months we've been taken by victims like
yourselves into the very heart of darkness into the most cruel and
lonely corners of the human temperament.  We remember the testimony of
a man who worked as a cook on a ship, who came back from sea to find
that his wife and two children had been murdered, had been hacked to
death and their bodies thrown into a pit toilet."

The last hearing on human rights abuses takes place in the sandstone
town hall in the middle of Ladybrand.  Right across from the Farmers'
Co-op.  While the farmers park their bakkies, load up implements, seed
and fertilizer, the venue is packed from wall to wall with Basothos.
This is a very pure Sotho that you can hear in this area," says
interpreter Lebohang Matibela, That means I cannot just use slang, but
I have to produce my best Sotho."

What happens when the Truth Commission descends on such a small town?
Obviously, enquiries are made beforehand to see whether the Commission
would be welcome.  Whether people of all races would be welcome.  And
somebody from the town is usually contracted to do the catering tea,
sandwiches and lunch for the victims.  This is the first time that I
cater in a white establishment," says a black man in a suit.  He
delivers the food in large porcelain plates, packed into the back of
his combi.  In another town a rosy woman with a large floral apron
says: Our politics are right-wing, but money is money and we have to
live."

In Ladybrand, the Commission's persounel are staying t a guest house
run by English-speakers.  When I ask advice abbut accommodation in
Heila se Modes, the owner says: Rather go and sleep on a farm my dear.
This town is infested withk Tutu's arse-kissers it's the Black Circuit
against the all over again.  Boers

But around Ladybrand there are mountains.  When I yal' out and see the
cliffs like well-risen loaves, neatly square'o, and the Malutis in the
distance, I suddenly remember a by one of my students who came from
Ladybrand:

in die winter word die maluti wit I sy trek aan baar bo-lyf n .kombers
waarvan sy he4 aan die spits is daar rot se inn op tog SOOS n ruggraat
n op tog van engele die berge voer my oe ek is Lethola die een wat
gesoog is deur spelende lee us die een wie se kombers ruik na reen vol
onrus ver lang ek ek ontbou ver daar waar ek self me weet me as jy
gesien bet bet jy vir altyd gesien

fin the winter the Malutis are white she puts on a blanket that she
likes athe top there are cliffs iia procession like a spine ai arch of
angels the mountains feed my eyes

I am Lethola the one suckled by gambolling lions the one whose blanket
smells of rain full of restlessness I long

I remember far there where I don't know myself

If you have seen you have seen for even

Because of the atmosphere of hostility in smaller towns, real or
imagined, the entire Truth Commission fraternity usually ends up at the
same restaurant or bar.  In the event of a brawl or an eviction, there
will at least be eyewitnesses and support and they've been needed more
than once.  At the bar, a brotherly hand on your shoulder and a
friendly face leaning over to say: Haven't seen you in here before what
are you doing in this town?"  An answer including the Truth K
Commission' has often been a spark into gunpowder.  Some have been
insulted, others have had drinks thrown in their faces.  Black members
of the contingent have been refused service or chased out into the
street.  In small towns we usually send in a white spy' first, to check
how many overweight men are sitting at the counter, how many are
drinking brandy and Coke and talking about rugby.

The first night in Ladybrand we all sit together in the town's
over-crowded Italian restaurant.  And we talk about the testimony of
Mrs.  Makhutu of Bothaville.  The town of Bothaville in the Northern
Free State was once called the richest place in South Africa or rather,
it had more wealth per square metre than anywhere else.  The rich
English mealie farmers who earned the town this distinction were also
the first to build special houses for their workers and supply them
with electricity.  Just wait," farmers in other parts of the country
said.  These Bothaville types will get what's coming to them.  They are
creating aspirations that will never be fuffilled.  So no one was
surprised when the first school riots in the Free State broke out in
Bothaville.  These are the children who grew up with water and
electricity," the argument went, and now that they're in high school
they can see their lives are going nowhere."  One of the children
involved in the school riots was Eliot Makhutu.  His mo the came all
the way from Bothaville to testify.  Her pin crocheted skullcap, and
her face and hands shiny with years and years of manual labour, remind
me how in South Africa's first democratic elections a number of women
were found to have no fingerprints their hands had been worked into
smooth blanks.  In a deep bass voice, she tells us that cannot
understand what happened to her last-born.

I said, Who are you?  And they said, e are the Open up.  And I opened
the door.  They came in and said, Where is Marumo?  That is Eliot.  I
said to them, is present but he is asleep.  They said, Where?  I sho
them the room where he was sleeping.  When they got that bedroom where
he was sleeping, they switched on light.  He was sleeping just like
this... (she draws her arms up next to one shoulder) There were many in
number.  They were in their uniforms.  They had batons, they had
sjamboks, black in colour, and they had their firearms.  They pulled
off the blanket.  They threw it away.  They said, Stand up, get
dressed.  Eliot just... laughed.  He stood up and he dressed.  I said
to them, Can he please put on his shoes?  And he did put on his shoes.
They didn't allow him even to take his jacket.  They went away with
him.

On the day of the trial the lawyers came late.  Eliot was together with
the rest of the detainees.  The lawyers were speaking on their behalf.
They were discharged.  When Eliot was released he was not the Eliot I
knew.  He was mentally disturbed.  He was insane.  He was laughing all
by himself.  He would sit wherever he liked.  That is my problem.  I've
taken him to many doctors.  I even took him to Hillbrow Hospital.  He
brough a letter back.  He is just a human being.  I do not have anytbig
left."

This lei jr says a Commissioner, states that Eliot is a schizophreiic.
And that complicates the case.  The Coin mission must corroborate each
and every statement made at the hearings.  It must establish that a
violation did indeed take place, where it took place, and how.  Then
the Commission can classify persons or groups as victims.  A classified
victim will be able to claim reparation.  In Eliot's case, it might be
argued that his schizophrenia was under control, but that the shock of
his arrest caused it to erupt.  Or it might be argued that he was
schizophrenic anyway and so does not deserve compensation.  In other
words, the violation of a schizophrenic's human rights is not really a
violation.  Then again, one could argue that as a schizophrenic he
already gets a disability grant and that is enough... None of which
allows you to blot the face of Mama Makhutu, in her pink cap, from your
mind's eye."

As if a suction pump has been switched on, all the other people in the
restaurant get up and leave.  Only we remain.  A biting frosty air
streams into the room.  Rugby quarter past six on M-Net," says the
waiter.

The next morning on my way to town I take a detour through the
countryside.  As far as the eye can reach there is rooigras.  I stop. 
I once wrote: I adore Themeda Triandra the way other people adore
God."

I want to lie down.  I want to embrace.  I want to sing the shiny silk
stems upwards.  I want to ride the rust-brown seeds, the rustling
frost-white growth around ankles.  Grass, red grass bareback against
the flanks.

This is my landscape.  The marrow of my bones.  The plains.  The
sweeping veld.  The honey-blonde sandstone stone.  This I love.  This
is what I'm made of.

And so I remain in the unexplainable wondrous ambuscade of grass and
light, cloud and warm stone.

As I stand half-immersed in the grass crackling with grasshoppers and
sand, the voices from the town hall come drifting on the first winds
blowing from the Malutis the voices, all the voices of the land.

The land belongs to the voices of those who live in it.  My own bleak
voice among them.

The Free State landscape lies at the feet at last of the stories of
saffron and amber, angel hair and barbs, dew and hay and hurt.  The
Shepherd's Tale

LEKOTSE: My family was affected since that day.  The woman who has
testified before me

If is a picture of my wife.

She cannot walk.  She goes for treatment.

I also go for treatment at Botshabelo Hopital.

I I'

I took my last tablet this morning.

Now my life was affected since that day.  (

It was at night... hAN LAX: I want to know about your children first.

LEKOTSE: I have ten children, two have passed away.."  now on the day
of this assault I was with three children at home and the grandchildren
five in number and they go to school some of my grandchildren belong to
my son who is mentally disturbed.

The last-born has a pair of twins.

Their father is also mentally disturbed.

LAX: Just try not to speak directly into the microphone... they are
very sensitive and will pick up your voice very nicely.  Which of these
children are still living with you and your wife?

LEKOTSE: Jam staying with Thomas Lekotse, my son, he is now the
breadwinner and he is also taking care of the one that I Just said is
mentally disturbed.  LAX: Can you tell us about the incident that
happened.  Was it in May 1993?

LEKOTSE: Maybe you're right you know my problem is, I was a shepherd. 
I cannot write and I forget all these days, but I still... Can I repeat
what I said earlier on about the harassment?

Now listen very carefully, because I'm telling you the story now.

On that day it was at night, a person arrived and he knocked.  When I
answered, the door just opened and I said, Who's knocking so terribly?"
He answered, he said: Police."

And I said,

What police are knocking on my door this way?"

He forced his way through with many policemen.  The door was already
down.  Three policemen were black and the rest were white and they
referred to us as kaffers.  Many of them were white.  They were
together with big dogs two in number.

They said every door of the house should be opened.  They pulled
clothes from the wardrobes.  I said, When a jackal gets into the sheep
it does not do this please unpack neatly and pack them back neatly."

They did not provide an answer.  They pushed us outside.  I fell on my
shoulder: kaboem!

I asked them, What do you want?"

but they never provided an answer.

They pushed us outside.  It was terribly cold on that day.  The
children were woken up.  I said to them, Will you provide me with to
take these children to the doctor?"  They did not answer.

I said to them,

Please, the policemen are not supposed to this way."  I said, When a
policeman goes to a farm he stops first at the farmer's house.  If the
farmer doesn't allow them entry, they leave.  Now where do you get the
permission from to come into my house and break the doors is this the
way you conduct your affairs?"

When I looked thoroughly the door was not just kicked, it was even
broken down with their gun butts.

Even to this day the doors are still broken.

My children took pity on me this year, they bought a new door and a new
frame apd we had to get another person to come and fix the door.

sunrise life began to be easier.  they wanted to cut open the wardrobes
that were locked.

And I said to them,

How dare you cut open these doors?"

I said to my children,

Prepare tea, prepare coffee for these people, they are hungry."

I asked them,

Can I offer you beer, can I offer you drink, can I offer you boerewors?
Are you hungry?"  I said, These people are hungry.  I have to provide
them with food."

I said to them,

You are not policemen, you are just boers."  One of them pushed me
outside that is where I fell on my shoulder and hurt myself.

I was not supposed to speak that way, I admit, but because I was hurt
and disturbed that day I spoke wrong words.  I said, I know you
policemen are thieves.  You want to take us all outside so that you can
implicate us.  I know.  You're going to leave behind diamonds and dagga
and you're going to drop them behind and implicate us."

I said, You bloody policemen."  That's what I said on that day, because
I was hurt.

(audience laughs)

LAx: Please... LEKOTSE: I ended up saying to them: Look here, my whole
family is standing outside.

It's cold.

I want you to kill all of us now.  I'll be very glad if you kill us
all."

They were.."  you know, it's a pity I don't have a stepladder.

I will take you to my home to investigate... 4

I asked the policemen, What do you want?"  "I j

They did not provide an answer.  t A

I told them:

I don't have diamonds.

I don't have dagga.  What do you want?"  No answer was given.

I said to them, You want to leave after breaking my doors?

When are you going to come back and fix them?"  They said, APLA will
fix them up."

I asked them: What is APLA?"  No answer was given.

I don't even know what APLA is,

I am expecting APLA even today to come and fix my door.

Now it was just about sunrise.  My son Thomas said, No, go and search
in my garage."  They said, Where is the garage?"  He said, Wait, I have
to get a key."  d he said, You must be very careful on't scratch my
carey went into the garage with their dogs these were fierce-looking
dogs.

After searching the garage, he said,

You are not yet finished.  I've got another place where you can search.
I have a four-roomed house.  Go and search.  I also have a supermarket.
Go and search it too because you don't seem to get what you want."  And
they left with him.

Now at sunrise they were still at home.  They arrested him for the
whole month... There were three kaffers just like myself the rest were
white. They had many vans.

The vans were lining the whole road... LAx: Was your son Thomas
connected to APLA or the PAC?

LEKOTSE: Yes sir.

LAx: Was he charged with anything?

LEKOTSE: I do not know whether they attended a court case.  You know an
uneducated person is just' down.  You cannot follow anything.  Just
like the whites referred to us as dull donkeys.

I do not know many things.

LAx: He would have told you if he went to court, wouldn't he?

LEKOTSE: Can I give you an answer on that?

(long pause)

I taught these children, but because I provided them with education,
the whites used to say we have short hair and our brains and minds are
just as short.  Now these children do not tell us anything.  They just
go on their own,

iv you just see things happening they don't provide you with any
information.  (audience laughs)

LAx: You indicate that you injured your shoulder.  Di4 y'u sustain any
other injuries?

LEKOTSE: I was not injured anywhere else since that day that the
jackals came into my house to bite us, I cannot even carry a spade to
do gardening.  Otherwise I'm not sick, it's just the usual sickness of
old age.

LAX: In your statement you mentioned you were injured in your ribs? I'm
just helping you to remember.

LEKOTSE: Are you not aware that the shoulder is related to the ribs
sir?

LAX: Did you or your son ever make a case against the police?

LEKOTS We never took any initiative to report this matter to the pee,
because how en you report policemen to policemen?  They were going to
attack us.

That is why I said to them,

Kill us all so that there is no trouble thereafter.

It is much better to die all of us."

It was even going to be easy for the Government to bury us they were
going to bury us in just one grave.  It could have been much better.

If one of these policemen is around here, I'll be happy if one of them
comes to the stage and kills me immediately... During the lunch break I
walk over to the Co-op with my tape recorder and approach a farmer
getting out of his four-wheel drive.  Sir, how do you feel about the
Truth Commission's visit to Ladybrand?"

He stops in his tracks.  He looks me up and down, while his lip curls
in disgust.  The SABC and the Truth Commission.  F6k6f!"  he explodes
with such venom that passers-by look in our direction.

F6k6f!  F6k6f.  he screams as he storms into the Co-op.

I find myself on the pavement, my blood thick with humiliation.  God,
has nothing nothing!  changed?

Again and again," says Richard Lyster, we've heard evidence of people
who have suffered the most shocking experiences, standing up
confidently and powerfully relating those stories of their-past.  And
we've heard them ask the Commission not just to recognize them, but
also to recognize the thousands of other people who have also suffered.
We've seen these people also caring and nurturing other people and
helping them.  We have been moved by that."

The proceedings are concluded with the anthem.  I stand, caught
unawares by the Sesotho version and the knowledge that I am white, that
I have to reacquaint myself with this land, that my language carries
violence as a voice, that I can do nothing about it, that after so many
years I still feel uneasy with what is mine, with what is me.  The
woman next to me looks surprised when I sing the Free State version of
Nkosi'.  She smiles, holds her head close to mine and shifts to the
alto; part.  The song leader opens the melody to us.  The sopranos 4
envelop, the bass voices support.  And I wonder: God.  DoT He hear us?
Does He know what our hearts are yearning for That we all just want to
be human sone with more cqoi#, some with less, but all with air and
sun.  And I wade intsoig in a langauge that is not mine, in a tongue I
do not knfxvi It is fragrant inside the song, and among the keynotes of
sorw and suffering there are soft silences where we who be loti to this
landscape, all of us, can come to rest.

Sometimes the times we live in overflow with light.

The shepherd's narrative, given above in the exact words in which he
spoke it, describes the experience of one night at the hands of the
security police.  My family was affected since that day," the first
line of his testimony reads.  Although l# starts off describing the
poor health of his wife and himself, this is not why he remembers the
incident.  He remembers it, as the subsequent story makes clear,
because that was the day when his entire life's philosophy, his
perception of the world and his own place in it, was destroyed. Without
this perception, his life is not possible; n a sense, he is already
dead.  He repeats: Now my life was affected since that day."

At the beginning, Ilan Lax of the Truth Commission interrupts the story
repeatedly.  The leader of testimony has two tasks: to steer the
testimony in a direction that will yield enough jacts of use to the
Commission; and to let the testimony fold as spontaneously as possible,
so that there can be healig and renewed self-respect.  The leader of
testimony therefore always encourages the witness to begin on a highly
personal note usually with the family.

This technique makes the shepherd impatient.  When he is asked how many
children he has, he answers: I have ten children.."  now on the day of
this assault..."  But he still tries to accommodate Lax's needs by
weaving details about his children into the story marked by the word
two': two of his children are dead, two of them are mentally disturbed,
there are twins among his grandchildren.

The tension of the moment and Lax's interventions cause the shepherd to
speak too close to the microphone, and he is asked to speak more
softly.  Lax uses three longish sentences, with a pause in between, to
break the tense rhythm of the narrator, to create an interval of calm,
before he formally asks him to relate the incident.  But then Lax
indicates where he should start: at the date.

This throws the narrator off course again.  Surely the precise date on
which your life was destroyed is irrelevant?  It could have been any
day, the important thing is that it happened.  But he's not quite sure.
Maybe you're right... he muses.  And, of course, being a shepherd and
therefore unable to write, he cannot remember dates.  But he is a
hardened survivor, and he rightly gets firm with Lax: Now listen very
carefully, I because I'm telling you the story now."

He starts with a contradiction: On that day it was at night."  And this
introduces the ambiguity, the tension between two poles, the difficult
equilibrium that is maintained throughout the story, not only in the
facts of the testimony but in the symbols used: day and night, white
and black, life and death, educated and illiterate.

Lekotse describes how his family's personal, private space is brutally
invaded by the police.  They knock so terribly', they literally break
the door out of the frame, they storm into the house with dogs, they
insult the occupants, they wrench open the closets and throw their
belongings on the floor.  Lekotse, as head of the family, tries to take
an honourable stand against these assaults, but every honourable action
on his part is negated.  He asks who is knocking so terribly and the
door is broken down.  He asks them to replace the contents of the
wardrobes neatly and they are chased out into the cold night.  Even a
jackal, says Lekotse, when it gets in among the sheep, does not behave
like this.

To appreciate the power of the image, we must bear in mind the kind of
predator the jackal is.  He's a quiet, ne4, gourmet hunter.  He
calculatedly corners a few sheep, singles one out, and then sinks his
teeth into the artery high in he neck.  When the sheep has bled to
death, the jackal will first eat the spleen and the liver and then the
hind legs.  If there are lambs, he'll kill one or two and devour
nothing but they V melk pens.  And the jackal can do all this almost
silently hejj doesn't even have to chase the sheep to turn them out.
UnIjk the dog.  A dog in amongst the sheep, biting to left and rihtjY
causes a tremendous cacophony of barking and bleating.  if a dog kills,
it won't eat.

They were worse than jackals, says Lekotse.  And since4e jackal is the
shepherd's greatest enemy, a threat to the 64k night and day, he means
that the security police exceeded his worst expectations of evil.  As a
shepherd he often had to measure up against the sly jackal but against
this opponent he was at a loss.  Notice that at the end of the
narrative Lekotse returns to the comparison the jackals came into my
house' as if he cannot find another image.

With the entry of the police into the shepherd's space al second
leitmotif is introduced: They did not provide an answer."  Lekotse asks
several times: What do you want?"  When they refuse to answer, he
plagues them with further questions.  Will you give me money to take my
children to the doctor if they become ill from this cold?  Who gave you
permission to visit my home?  Is this the way you conduct your affairs?
How dare you cut open my wardrobes?  Do you want beer, drink,
boerewors?  Are you hungry?  Do you want to implicate us by planting
dagga and diamonds?  When are you going to fix my doors?  Who is APLA?
ki4d of questioning is the foundation of all philosophy.  How do
Iinderstand the world around me?  What is right and just in tlfs world?
The fact that none of his questions are answered explains why the day
affects him so deeply: his ability to understand the world around him
is taken away.  He is plunged into a mythological darkness, where no
explanation suffices, where no answer is given.  The withholding of
information goes further later on, when his own children keep things
from him because they are educated and he is not, he says.  In a
desperate attempt to understand the behaviour of others, Lekotse
imaginatively transplants himself into several other positions.  The
farmer.  How could a farmer give permission for this kind of action?
The police.  They must be hungry if they are carrying on like this and
he offers them food and drink.  A little later he imagines that they
are going to plant diamonds and dagga in his house.  What makes his
story all the more poignant is the fact that he can imagine himself in
the other characters' positions, but no one seems able to empathize
with his own.

His empathy, his ability to think himself into other positions, goes
beyond the night he is describing.  It even includes the people from
the Truth Commission.  Perhaps, he is thinking, they are struggling to
understand fully the destruction that was sown in his house.  It's a
pity I don't have a stepladder.  I I will take you to my home to
investigate..."  These two sentences form a poetic and imaginative
climax in the story.  Lekotse knows he cannot insist that the
Commission visit his house: but if only he had a ladder that he could
set up, perhaps they could see his hut from the top of it, with its
newly-mended door.  It is a yearning to be understood; to give the
people in front of him a perspective on the impossible.  A ladder would
give the Truth Commission insight, it would raise his story from one
plane to another, from the unreal to the real, from incomprehension to
full understanding.

Since Jacob's dream, the ladder has been a symbol of communication
between earth and heaven, darkness and light, death and immortality.
But here the image of the ladder also sustains the submissive
inferiority that Lekotse displays.  He refers to himself at the end of
the story as a kaffer and a dull donkey.  And he names those who have
reduced him to this unworthy role: the whites, the police, the farmer,
his children.

Without his self-respect, he cannot live, and he cannot make life grow.
Since that day!  that the jackals came into my house to bite us, I
cannot even carry a spade to do the gardening."  The destruction of his
whole sense of coherency is thrown into relief by the behaviour of his
own children, who manage to rui circles around the police, and even
taunt them.

Lekotse's interaction with the Truth Commission strengthens his
frustration about the lack of communication.  At the end Lax asks him
two questions.  He answers both with counter-questions in which his
dejection about the incomprehension of the Truth Commission comes to
the surface."  K

In your statement you mentioned that you were injure44n I your ribs,
Lax says.  Now you say it's your shoulder?  4' k

Lekotse, who has slaughtered many a sheep in his lifetime.  responds by
asking: Are you not aware that the should i related to the ribs, sir?"
Porte4o

Then Lax asks whether the incident was ever re the police.

Again Lekotse responds by asking: How can you report policemen to
policemen?"

And then comes his request: That is why I said to them,

Kill us all!  so that there is no trouble thereafter.  It would have
been cheaper, he says, to bury them all in one grave.  And he ends his
narrative by recalling the day night that changed his life for ever,
with this repeated request: If one of these policemen is around here,
I'll be happy if one of them comes to the stage I and kills me
immediately..."

The full tragedy of his final request becomes apparent in the light of
some remarks on the African narrative made by the Zulu poet, Mazisi
Kunene, m an unpublished interview with Colleen Scott, an American
academic: When the first white men came..  . the elders went to those
men and said: tell us about your world.  There isn't one world, there
are many worlds... in the African system there is diversity.  The ideal
is diversi not symmetry."

This union of diversity echoes in Lekotse's urgent need to understand
to have access, to be informed about the world of the intrudrrs and
their thinking.  He does not naturally ignore or resist the police. His
instincts are to give them access to the fulness of his world, and he
expects to gain access to their world in return.

Lekotse constantly makes use of archetypes that support the theme of
access to diversity.  As a shepherd he is the leader and protector of
his flock and family.  He leads them to nourishment and safety: he is
therefore the pathfinder to worlds that may enrich his group.

A door closes off a space, but it also opens into it.  Both these
meanings are present in Lekotse's story.  The policemen's intention is
not just to invade his private space, but to damage the access to it in
such a way that it will never be a private space again.  Although the
police penetrate his world, they refuse him access to theirs, and even
to their intentions, which would help him to redefine his own space.
They will not even tell him what they are looking for.  (Note that the
police, the jackals, burst into the house with dogs.  Jackals are
creatures on the move between night and day, life and death; dogs are
bound to one place, the faithful guardians of unbreachable borders.)

From the safe shelter' which the shepherd has created for his family,
they are driven out to where it is so cold and inhospitable that the
best place for his flock becomes the grave.

Kunene says: You can't kill once, it is said you must kill twice.  In
other words, after you've killed you must recognize that the one you've
killed is also yourself.  He is also a son, a father, a brother."

Lekotse is left standing outside his shattered house, bewildered, never
again able to judge the world around him or enjoy it, to discover other
worlds or share in them.  His worth as a father, a brother, a son has
been negated, he has been treated as a kaffer and a donkey, and so he
is already nothing.  Now he asks for the deed begun that night to be
fulfilled.  His physical death must be added to his spiritual death. He
must be killed twice.  He'd be happy, he says, if someone would kill
him immediately.  *

It is quite interesting to sit in that booth.  You're aware that you
are becoming an actor, but you know people will say afterwards:
Lebohang, you were really smoking what was going on?  And you didn't
even realize that you were acting you know, you are just looking at the
victim as he is speaking and unconsciously you end up throwing up your
hands as he throws his, you end up nodding your head when he nods...
But it becomes very difficult to interpret when they are crying, then
they speak in instalments.  He says something, then he keeps quiet and
he starts again.."  you have to bring the pieces together."  (Lebohang
Matibela, interpreter of the Shepherd's TaI Jy The island inherits the
last light as we disembark from t14 chaloupe.  Down into a colonial
story, with black schoolboys carrying our bags all along the beach.
Against the old slave quarters the sea spends itself.  Our shoes sink
into the beach sand streets.  The roofs lisp milk, and rosy villa walls
flake and stain like European skin.  In the remains of the excesses of
former exploiters, the island's inhabitants live.

A poetry festival on Gored the slave island just off the coast of
Senegal.  We embrace the day and swim out into the bay's silvery haze.
In the square the trees forge blood.  We meet the other poets.
Somewhere in the shimmering, apercu group is practising.  There is raw
honey from Casamance, cloth and jewellery from the Tuareg.  We sit with
two poets from Holland.  A prickly one with scars and a sweaty one with
a white undercoat and countless pair of sunglasses.  We eat out of the
baskets.  Cream of tartar and hibiscus juice.  Youngsters doze on the
sand next to the beached fishing boats.  You just cast down rag
wherever you are and doze off.  Who's making all that noise?"

Those dijnken poets at the hotel," someone mumbles.  It is the day of
the performance.  The Dutch poet with the

Waterholes many glasses sits sweating beneath the woven screens.  The
hotelier scurries around him, yelling at his waiters the poet is
waiting for his suit.  He refuses to perform without his suit.  His
white-linen suit was sent by chaloupe to the mainland to be dry-cleaned
in Dakar.  The hotelier is trying to repair the telephone connection.
The sun is magnesium silver.  The poet with the many glasses says that
if his suit doesn't arrive, he will not get up from his chair again. 
In the meantime several groups perform.  A dancing bird from Mali.  His
toes stabbing like knives into the sand.  Here is a camel with an oryx
mask over his body hang mats woven from rope and dune air.  A puppet
show.  From one character's shining robes shoots an inch-long,
blood-red penis the ornate children fall on to the sand with laughter.
A great big condom is pulled over the penis.  The late afternoon sun
smells of bark and aubergines, of spearmint and dried fish.  The poet
remains in his chair.

Eventually, a joyful boy comes running down the beach with the suit in
a brown paper bag, folded like an offering of atonement in his arms.
Soon the poet appears, resplendent.  He is wearing a different pair of
glasses and his shoes are shining.  Art Tatum is God," he says and
walks over to the stage where, since early that day, the musicians have
been warming their drum-skins at a big open fire.  The poetry begins.
The poets from West Africa are first.  They use French.  After the
first few lines, the poet with the many glasses starts moaning:
Rubbish! Glich6s!  Nothing but cliches about blood and land."  He gets
up irritatedly and walks over to the fires where the masks and dancers
throw writhing shadows against the walls of the square.  The next day
there is a workshop.  Two Senegalese poets are there and also a Berber
he wears a light purply-blue robe, has ad ark skin and blond hair, and
his poetry (which we heard the night before} is interspersed with cries
and the sounds of sandstorms and horses.  Breyten Breytenbach, who
organized the festival, translates back and forth in French and
English.

I am uncomfortable with how easily Europeans write off our continent
never as different to', only as less than'.  I ask Breyten to
translate: In my culture you are a good poet if you can say old things
in a new way.  We have been saying I love you, but you don't notice me
for centuries.  The newer the way you say it, the better poet you are.
In the culture of Senegal, what makes you a good poet?"  The Dutch
smoke quietly.  The Senegalese poet speaks and Breyten translates:, In
my culture you don't just become a poet.  You have to apply first.  And
the older poets come together and your ancestry is studied and your
ability tested.  And if you are chosen you take up an apprenticeship
with the chief poet.  And he teace you the nation's poetry.  And your
peopje's poetry is yu people's lyrical soul, their history.  And you
may not say %t a new way, you may not change it, because then your'
what has happened.  You change history.  If you are talent d enough you
may add your own piece later and maybe eh e something small here and
there... And the chief poet carl ell you exactly what part has been
changed or added in by w eh poet at what time.  The more accurately you
preserve the poetry, the better you perform, the better poet you
are."

The attention shifts to the nomadic poet.  In my culture the task of
the poet is to remember the watering places the metrical feet of the
waterholes.  The survival of the whole group depends on whether you can
find the waterholes in the11 desert.  You must remember them in such a
way that other groups are none the wiser.  The group will never cast
you out or see you as mad but the day you betray the position of the
waterholes to someone else, that is the day they will leave the poet
behind in the dunes."

A TRAGEDY OF ERRORS

Snow has a smell

There is a deal between the ANG and the Truth Commission, we accept
that.  What we're trying to figure out is how far the deal stretches."
The man opposite me bristles with energetic efficiency.  Embarrassed, I
look out of the window, where it is snowing as I've only ever seen it
snow in movies.  This man, a citizen of the country my ancestor
Johannes Christoffel Krog left in 1776, has made an appointment to ask
me informal questions about the South African Truth Commission.

A deal?  To gain time, I refasten my tackies.  Of course there must be
a deal!  How stupidly naive of me never to have thought of it before.
My mind reels in an effort to find a new position but it keeps getting
stuck on one man.

Deals may have been made with certain groupings or individuals, but a
deal with the whole Truth Commission?  that is simply impossible.
Someone like Archbishop Tutu would never willingly destroy a lifetime
of standing up to the harshest possible oppression, give up a lifetime
of sacrifice for what is right, in exchange for some or other improper
political deal.  It doesn't make sense strategically or
psychologically.  Tutu and this goes for some of the other
Commissioners too is the kind of person who would actually prefer to
resign dramatically and use the opportunity to spell out why.  The man
is dying.."  he has nothing to lose except his impeccable integrity."

The man nods his head.  But does Tutu know what is going on in his
Commission?  Does he know..."  he touches his glasses and I realize for
the first time that there are no reflections in them, the lenses absorb
everything '.."  does he know it is said that three investigators were
seconded tpthe Truth Commission from ANC Intelligence?  Does he know
that people say your new Government has taken oyer the chemical warfare
programme from the old regime just as it and probably the nuclear
programme as well?  Does he knit is also claimed that this information
is in the hands of s Investigative Unit and will he demand that it
become part of the final report?"  I don't know how to respond  He
hands me a small a ess bowl of heavenly coffee.  I wet my lips with it,
and th I ay:

I am not an investigative journalist.  I find the whole L a of scoops
and the breaking of stories slightly ridiculous not pathetic. Headlines
make me cringe.  So how do I reprt on this, what should my role be?"  I
He doesn't hesitate: It is to report in such a way that you strengthen
the hand of those who have not made deals, who have the same priorities
as you.  Do not always look at the Truth Commission as a whole, but
focus on what is in it that makes it worthwhile to all of us." 
Suddenly I want to go home.  I have nothing to say to his of us'. In a
moment he has made the snow vanish and I am gazing out on the familiar
landscape of my country but from behind glass.  He wants me to deal
with the Truth Commission as if from the heart of a different life.

At Charles de Gaulle, waiting for my connection, I bump into a comrade
I haven't seen for years.  We check in for the South African flight,
joking about how we no longer have to sweat it through customs, with
our communist tracts and a bite of pornography hidden in the bottom of
the suitcase.  He explains to me out foie gras and truffles and helps
me choose a bottle of chaipagne for my husband.  At the bookstall a
magazine with innie Mandela on its front cover and a loud headline:
Fugitive speaks out on murder of child activist.

My old comrade has seen the BBC documentary in which Katiza Cebekhulu
implicated Winnie in the murder of Stompie Seipei.  He tells me about
it as we find a seat in the departure lounge.  But he also knows more,
he says.  He knows that Nelson Mandela tried to discuss the Stompie
issue with Winnie, tried to talk sense into her head about her handling
of the matter.  But she would not listen to reason, and he believes she
became so angry that she physically attacked Mandela.  The woman is
demented," he says.  Do you think the hearing will reveal that Mandela
himself was responsible for the cover-up?"  My blood turns to
ice-water. If he was responsible for a cover-up I don't want to hear
about it." It slips out before I can think.  My friend looks puzzled.

I mean, the so-called litmus test we used to talk about what would you
do with information implicating the highest authorities in the dirty
work?  this is it.  I was full of moral indignation when they were
interviewing prospective Commissioners and some of them said they'd
treat such revelations differently.  But here I am!  It's my choice
now!  And I'll tell you this: if Mandela did something wrong, I don't
want to hear about it.  Something, something hs got to survive out of
all of this."

He laughs: You whiteys we can never just talk to you.  We talk a bit,
then we have to educate for a long time, then talk a bit again... You
are not the Truth Commission, the decision won't be yours.  But tell me
something else: will someone like Joe Modise, as the last Commander of
MK, also have a public amnesty hearing?"

Of course!  He's applied, and all gross violations have to be heard in
public.  There might be quite an interesting time ahead with all the
ANC people asking for amnesty it will do a lot to dispel the feeling
that the Commission has targeted whites."

I am torn," he says.  One part of me feels that the ANC shouldn't
appear at the Commission at all.  We were fighting a just war..  . Then
another part of me thinks of my brother, who was killed after he joined
MK.  The story we have is that he was part of a group based in
Mozambique who decided that they couldn't tolerate the gross
mismanagement, arrogance and downright abuse of a certain MK commander
any longer.  God knows what they were planning to do.  Whatever it was,
we've heard that this commander got wind of it and asked the Mozambican
army to get rid of them.  One morning at dawn they were surrounded and
wiped out."

Will you come to his hearing and tell your story?"

My uncle is the head of our family, and he was given a large sum of
money.  We will not talk.  What would it achieve?"  We sit there, the
two of us with our on fused African moralities.  When our flight is
called, he gets up a sigh.  It doesn't get easier to live an honourable
life in country."

A day after my return from Europe at the end of October, Glenn Goosen,
the Director of the Truth Commission's Investigative Unit, resigns.  A
Sunday paper carries the story that his resignation came after
accusations of racism.  The next day the Truth Commission issues a
statement saying that Ntsebeza and Goosen disagreed about the
restructuring of the Unit and the resignation had nothing to do with
any racial incident.  The following Sunday the same newspaper tells its
readers that it now has the real reason for the resignation: Goosen
claims he was hampered in his investigation into claims that Ntsebeza's
car was used in the attack on the Heidelberg Tavern.  The fat is in the
fire.  It is Sunday evening.  My colleagues at the radio, busy
preparing for the next morning's current affairs show, are on the line:
what are you doing on this Ntsebeza thing?  I phone John Allen, who
sounds as fed-up with putting out fires on a Sunday as I am with
following the smoke.  The ommission stands by the statement it made
last week.  Perha I should phone Goosen, I say.  Goosen doesn't want
his number given out, Allen says, but he'll call him and ask him to
call me.  Goosen doesn't get back to me.  Phone

Boraine, John Allen advises.

Why?  I wonder.  Would he be ready to confirm the corridor gossip of
the past week?  My work at Parliament has taught me one thing: you
cannot rely on what is whispered in the corridors, but you can
certainly judge by the amount of whispering being done when there's
tension in the Halls of Power.  I ask around: did Goosen hand in a
report to the Truth Commission?  One liaison officer says no, the other
says yes but he's not sure.  Maybe this is what the man who made the
snow disappear was trying to tell me.  Strengthen the hand of those who
keep their eye on the ball.  I file this report: Every Commissioner has
a past most of them a political past.  It has happened twice now that
cases have been put before the Amnesty Committee in which Commissioner
Chris de Jager was involved.  On both occasions, before the case
started De Jager made a public statement recusing himself."

What I don't say is that this is precisely the reason some of us felt
the Commissioners should not represent constituencies but principles
chiefly the principle of human rights.  Then there would be no space
for pressure and blackmail.  But people will never accept the
Commission unless they feel it represents them," I was told by those
who know.  -. My report continues: Earlier this year the media carried
a story alleging that a white Audi belonging to the Head of the
Investigative Unit was involved in the Heidelberg Tavern attack.  Dr.
Alex Boraine issued a statement saying that the matter was being looked
at by Ntsebeza's second in command, Glenn Goosen.  He also stated that
he and the Chairperson had satisfied themselves that no irregularities
had occurred.

The Commission was clearly in a dilemma at that stage.  Ntsebeza was
indispensable to the Truth Commission process.  It was said at the time
of his appointment that he represented the PAC and BC constituencies.
Maybe that is why Ntsebeza was not immediately temporarily removed from
his position as Investigative Head until the report had been completed.
Why Ntsebeza himself did not decide to step down temporarily is also
unclear.

Ntsebeza has brilliantly honed a profile for himself in the past
eighteen months not an easy thing to do alongside a dynamic, dramatic
Chair and a busy Deputy Chair.  (Few Commissioners have managed it ask
those who still get stopped at the door for their entry permits because
no ope knows who they are.)

The decision for Ntsebeza not to step down created a 4eat time bomb for
the Truth Commission: a man has to' investigate his own boss.  It is
common knowledge that the man and his boss are not seeing eye to eye as
it is.  The whit F man is dispensable, his black boss is crucial.  The
white a has been accused of bungling the cross-eamination of .  de
Klerk and the other generals; while his boss is the 1*la apart from
Desmond Tutu, who gains the most credibili*.f r the Truth Commission in
important black quarters.

Now it seems from media reports that in the mean tim a report has
indeed been completed and handed to Tutu' o press statement, no
information to the public, no tr nsparency.  And suddenly Goosen
resigns.  What else can outsiders conclude but that it must have
something to do with this particular report?  On Friday we heard that
Ntsebeza has been notified under Section 19 that he may be implicated
in this week's hearings.  We hear that a lawyer will represent his
interests.  And yet it is the very people working under him whc have to
establish whether he is guilty or not.

Haven't we heard of this kind of investigating before?  Doesn't it
smell like the past?  Are we witnessing a cover-up?  And the next
question, of course, is: what else is being covered up?

While this report is being broadcast I am on my way to the amnesty
hearing of the three APLA cadres who attacked the Heidelberg Tavern. On
my car radio, I hear that Alex Boraine has phoned the station demanding
to be put on air so that he can resp nd to my outrageous claims. 
Stammering with anger, hslashes my report to ribbons.  I am quite
staggered actually at she didn't ask me the questions directly, instead
of necessitating me to phone the SABC to ask for equal time.

It borders on the ridiculous.  I think it is a scurrilous report.  It
is inaccurate and probably based on corridor gossip."

At the hearing I meet up with the radio team.  This is the first time
I've seen them since I got back from overseas and I am shocked by their
obvious physical decline.  Although we as a team have just won a
nationally respected journalism prize for our work on the Truth
Commission, their eyes have a desperate look I haven't noticed before
and their talk has degenerated into a kind of raging, shot through with
curses.  I hear that a fight broke out one night between two of them,
in some desolate little town after a hearing, and they came down to
breakfast the next morning with bruised and swollen faces.  I want to
take them away, out of the drywall maze of the Truth Commission
offices, to somewhere light and soft, and soothe them all back to some
semblance of happiness.

Shortly after the hearing starts, some Truth Commission staff pitch up
with stacks and stacks of photostats: the original statement
implicating Ntsebeza, the one made later to the Truth Commission, the
investigating officer's report, Glenn Goosen's report, the different
statements of the Truth Commission, the whole tutti.  Transparency at
last to a T. Throughout the day, as we're working, journalists keep
coming up to me and patting me encouragingly on the shoulder.  Instinct
tells me the reason for this kindly behaviour lies in the word
scurrilous'.  I don't have a clue what it means.  Arriving home after
eleven that night, I look it up in the Afrikaans-English dictionary.
Scurrilous' means: laag, gemeen, vuil, plat, grof; grossly or obscenely
abusive, coarse buffoonery.  And I explode.  I am so angry that I
cannot function.  Bloody Alex Boraine!  Am I not his ally?  I calm
down.  Perhaps more than any other Commissioner, Boraine's personal
life has been beset by traumatic family tragedies since he took on this
task, including a vicious criminal assault on his daughter and the
illness of his youngest son.  Then I think: No, he would not dare react
like this to any of the male journalists covering the Commission.  But
I'm supposed to be supportive and nothing else.

The next day I hear that Tutu is even angrier about the report than
Boraine and that there is talk of lodging an official complaint with
the Board of the SABC.  At the office I find a letter on my desk.
Boraine is demanding, if-not an apology,

then at least a very good explanation.

On the second-last day of 1993, just before midnight, six AIPLA cadres
entered a tavern in the Cape Town suburI of Observatory and opened fire
on the patrons.  Several pebple were wounded and four killed.  The dead
were the ownf of the restaurant next door, Jose Cerqueira, and three f
ale students, Bernadette Langford, Rolande Palm anLhdyAnne Fourie.  The
first two girls were' coloured the 4ur was white.  These were the final
days of negotiations aidouth Africa's first democratic elections were
just fouu Aonths away.

In contrast to the victims of the St.  James Church rssacre, who
appeared to be well cared for both physicly and psychologically, the
white and coloured victims of the Heidelberg Tavern massacre, some of
them in wheelchairs, seem ablaze with anger and neglect.  They sit in
the rows just behind their attackers, who are slumped nonchalantly in
their seats.  The rest of the hail is filled with aggressive young PAC
supporters.  The air is thick with the potential " for confrontation.
To one side a concerned-looking Dumisa Ntsebeza sits with his lawyer.

I interview a psychologist who specializes in grief.  And an amnesty
hearing that was supposed to be about a lot of other things suddenly
flares into focus around a single issue: the violent death of a
child.

The effect of a violent death on a family seldom receives attenhon.  As
South Africans listen to the voices of parents, brothers and #sters
relating the loss of a family member, the unsaid, so mimes the
unsuspected, is seldom taken into account.

ROuND PALM (father of Rolande Palm): On realizing it was gunfire I
immediately stretched over the table, pulled my daughter and said, Get
down."  In that motion I fell on to the bench and rolled on to the
floor.  My daughter dropped with her head to the table and her back was
exposed.  A hail of bullets was directed at us and a bottle and other
things on the table fell to the floors

As I tried to look up from under the table to see who is shooting, I
noticed my daughter reaching the floor slowly.  In the same instant I
noticed two other girls to my right fly out of their seats.

The next instant I saw this torch-like object which knocked the side
panel in the passage and rolled over to where we were.  I screamed,
It's a grenade, stay down!"  ... Immediately I noticed a trickle of
blood on her shoulder as she was lying face down.  I pressed her to the
ground and counted to ten waiting for this explosion.  Nothing
happened.  I turned her over and she just slumped in my arms.

I lifted my daughter up, felt for her pulse but my hand just sunk in
her neck.  I laid her down on her back, tried to close her eyes but
they would not close.  This is when the realization really hit me that
she was dead.

After a natural death the family can begin the process of mourning.
After a death brought about by violence, political violence, the
justice and police system usually disrupt the rituals of grieving.  The
violent death of a child usually lacks a sense of closure.

ROLAND PALM: I immediately made my way home to tell my wife.  I was
blinded by the shock and tears.  I passed a police van on the corner of
Observatory and Lower Main Road, outside the chemist... A few days
later the investigating officer, Des Segal, came to my house to take a
statement.  In the course of making my statement I told him of the
yellow police van I saw parked next to the tavern when I ran outside. I
said I felt relieved to know the police were so quickly on the scene.

Segal told me I must have been drunk, as there was no such thing as a
police van standing there.  I insisted he take it down in his statement
and he did.  At the court case they didn't use me.  Segal told my wife
that the suspects would walk because I was drunk that night and that
the pplice could not possibly have been on the scene.  I

The irony of her death is that she was not a white person who,
according to APLA, were the legitimate targets of their death squads. I
cannot begin to describe the rage If and have felt for the past years
at her senseless killing.  YIi simply ended Rolande's life as if she
was a worthlessjpi e of rubbish.  You say you did so to lib4crate
Azania.  I ato you you did it for your own selfish and criminal puio
s.

I have lost two children to the system.  My sonny to the Apartheid
system of justice and my daughter at the hands of killers that the
system seems to protect.

The parents of a murdered child wonder what t14 last thoughts, terrors,
despairs were in their child's mind.  What he or she might have become
one day.  The murder of a child violates the natural order, destroying
the parents' stake in the future.

JEANEJTE FOURIE (mother of Lindy-Anne Fourie): Her blak friends called
her Lindiwe and they were as important to her as her white friends.
Lindiwe could have been your friend.  You did your own cause
immeasurable harm by killing her she was a gentle person.  She taught
me how subtly embedded my racism was.  in the most hidden-away fibres
of my... As a medical person I had to go straight back into the wards
of Groote Schuur to treat your colleague who had been shot.."  and I
needed to do that without showing any bitterness that you have killed
my child... God gave me that grace..  . I came here hoping to hear the
truth about who he people in High Command were who organized the who
dastardly affair.  I am not convinced that that truth has me out.." and
until it does come out, I am not happy that you can just disappear into
the wwork... Although the killer should be blamed for the death, the
families of victims are often plagued by their own guilt.  A sudden
death also may leave all sorts of issues between the victim and the
family unresolved.  Siblings feel guilty that they survived.  Parents
are torn by self-doubt.  Aren't parents supposed to keep their children
safe from harm at any cost?  The murder of a child becomes a kind of
looming icon of the profound failure of the parents to protect their
child.

ROLAND PALM: The pain of losing my son was compounded a million times
by the death of my daughter.  I felt responsible and guilty for both of
them.  I have lived with that for the past four years.

My personality has changed.  I have not been able, despite extensive
therapy and counselling, to shed the anger, rage, guilt, feelings of
revenge and helpless desperation at the system that allows murderers to
escape punishment.

JOHANN FOURIE (father of Lindy-Anne Fourie): Ag Pappie, moenie worry me
[ Oh Daddy, don't worry'] we'll be all right."

These are the last words exchanged between me and Lindy-Anne at around
6:30 on the evening of December 30, 1'993.

As Lindy's father, responsible for her existence, I accepted the
responsibility of raising and caring for her to the best of my
ability.."  when our children become adults, and more than equal to
their parents, that is when the battles all seem worth it and many of
life's mysteries seem to fall into place... about our offspring.."  but
I and my wife Jeanette have been robbed.  Robbed of our own flesh and
blood.  Robbed of the most natural form of happiness that humans can
experience the love of.  our own daughter

No longer do we hear the voice on the telephone say,

Howdy Pops, how are the brother and the Mater?"  No longer do I see her
wild flowing hair as she races past us with her favourite dog in hot
pursuit.  You see sir, we were ordinary people, doing our ordinary
work, in our own ordinary and uncomplicated manner..  . So why did she
have to die so young and by such violent means?

Research proves that the stresses of losing a child are responsible for
an extremely high rate of divorce among grieving parents.  Research
also shows that men and women greve differently and that the
differences and discrepancies Qften create resentment.

JOHANN FOURIE: My wife has told you her grief.  She h preferred to talk
directly to the killers.  My grief is diffee I talk to you, Mr.
Chairman, as the peson who t' their amnesty.

ROLAND PALM: Suffice to say, my marriage has suffered  irreparable
harm. My wife suffers from extreme and ety and nervous tension.  We are
both on constant medication.

BENJAMIN BRAUDE: I feel as if I have become a monster', I feel distant
from my family and am unable to guide them as leader of the household.
My life seems to be a constant seesaw.  I feel as if my manhood has
been taken away from me My wife and I do not share our marital bed any
longer and our sex life has become non-existent.

Events that once brought families together, such as birthdays and
holidays, become reminders of loss.  The internalized grief felt by
parents may bring about a variety of serious illnesses.  Some parents
of murdered victims soon follow them to the grave.

JEANETTE FOURIE: The reason that I am here, have been here through this
week and particularly today, which is very important to me, is to tell
you that on that day, the day you killed y child, you ripped my heart
out.  Lindiwe was one of thost precious people... but I am biased,
because she was my daughter..  . this country could have produced.  I
resent being called a victim.  I have a choice in the matter.  I

am a survivor.  Lindy was a victim, she had no choice.  I just had
major surgery which I trace as a direct result of the stress and trauma
that resulted after the Heidelberg incident.  It has been demonstrated
that cancer of the colon results from tremendous stress.  First my
heart was ripped out and now half of my gut.  I am happy that you are
well I hoped that emotionally and psychologically you could be well...
You could not tell us here how you felt, which indicates to me that
possibly you have been trained not to feel.  I can see that that would
be important in a killing machine... I have no objection to amnesty for
you... Thank you for being able to look me in the eye.."  and for
hearing my story.

The severest loss is that sense of invulnerability that allows you to
lead a normal life to go out, to drive a car, to let your children
visit others this is totally destroyed.  The unnatural death of a child
brings an existential despair you feel scared, alone and
incapacitated.

BENJAMIN BRAUDE: A month after the shooting, my life had fallen to
pieces.  I withdrew totally from the day-to-day activities of life .. .
I began to drink alcohol heavily, suffered from insomnia and a lack of
concentration on things going on-around me..  . After the incident I
applied for a job at the Crab Shack Restaurant in Milnerton.  During my
first shift deliveries were being made to the restaurant via the back
entrance.  I was unaware of the delivery and when I saw the black
gentleman walking into the back entrance I thought it was a possible
attack.  I broke out in a cold sweat and had a panic attack, resulting
in the fact that I broke down and was unable to continue working at the
restaurant.  The realization as to how quickly one's life could be
taken became a real nightmare for me... I seldom feel as if I will be
able to be a normal person again.

The grief about a child killed in violence is a grief unlike any other,
the psychologist says.

*

But no one has much time to concentrate on the victims.  Speculation is
raging about the possible involvement of Commissioner Dumisa Ntsebeza
in the Heidelberg Tavern attack and the implications this has for the
Truth Commissipn.  Should he apply for amnesty?  Should he resign?
Would the Commission accept a late amnesty application from one of its
own Commissioners?

All three of the men seeking amnesty for the Heidelber4 Tavern attack
deny that they ever used a white car tpT transport weapons or that they
are familiar with Ntsebea.

Then Bennet Sibaya, a gardener from J'Zenilworth, shffi to his seat,
his hands clasped in front of his chest.  He had been under the witness
protection programme for the past ve k. While the legal arguments are
presented, and even whit he himself testifies, Sibaya never once raises
his eyes.  He sits ith his head sunk into his body and has to be asked
repeate4 to speak more slowly.  When he is instructed to look u his
mouth strains and his eyes stare wildly into the room.  Sibaya says he
was in Guguletu, looking for the house of a girlfriend, when he saw
five men taking firearms bundled up in a blue overall from one car and
loading them into the boot of a white Audi.  The men were working very
stealthily, and he became convinced they were plotting to kill somebod
When the car's brake lights went on he memorized the registration
number.  After the men had driven off he saw a piece of paper in the
street.  He picked it up and saw that it had directions on it,
including the words Hartleyvale Stadium' and Heidelberg'.  He decided
to report the matter to the police.  But at the Guguletu police station
the map was torn up, and Sibaya was told to go home and sleep it off.
In any case, the police apparently said to him, Heidelberg is not here
in Cape Town, it's an up-country town.

During the lunch break a group of us discuss Sibaya's testimo4.  The
way he spoke about the registration number XA 12 8 was interesting.  He
expressed it like this: XA twelve, Jeight-four-eight."  Somehow that
had a ring of authenticity to it.  The other convincing moment was the
situation at the police station: the night before New Year's Eve, white
policemen stationed in a black area.."  who would want to hear a story
about guns being transported?  It would just mean follow-up work over
New Year, in an area you'd rather not venture into, with everyone full
of the holiday spirit.  And there is indeed a town called Heidelberg a
few hundred kilometres away.  Then it's time for the cross-examination.
And Ntsebeza's lawyer, Christine Qunta, climbs into Sibaya in a way
that leaves most of us speechless.  She is elegantly dressed,
impeccably prepared and utterly single-minded.  None of the three
amnesty applicants the killers, the real murderers took such a
battering, and Sibaya is only a witness.  Qunta hammers him with harsh
questions and sarcastic remarks.  She addresses him in sophisticated
English, ridicules his answers, listens to his Xhosa on the earphones
and corrects the interpreters, points out inconsistencies.  Those of us
who've been schooled for two years now in the ethics of the Truth
Commission trust the victim, believe the poorest of the poor, treat the
simple and illiterate with the tender est of respect are dumbfounded.
Through the Commission we have come to accept that poor people seldom
have reason to lie, whereas the well-dressed rich often have every
reason you can think of.  After a fierce bout of cross-examination, one
of the staff members of the Commission collapses into a chair in the
media room: It is sickening, it is absolutely sickening..."  But then
it hits home: if this is the only way to clear his name, it's an
indication of how desperate Ntsebeza's situation must be.  Qunta
insists on a swift decision on allegations she describes as a huge
thumb-suck', because not only is Ntsebeza's reputation at stake, but
the credibility of the entire Truth Commission.

In her cross-examination Qunta focuses on the discrepancies between the
statement Sibaya made to the police four days after the incident and
the one he made to the Truth Commission.  For instance: was the white
Audi parked on the northern side of the NYl 13 facing the NYl 15 or was
it on the NY 129?  This particular question takes nearly an hour, by
which point everyone except Qunta is totally confused.  In the end
Sibaya acknowledges that he thought the car was on the NYl 13, but when
he was taken there by the police the next day he realized it was
actually the NY129.  Why does the girlfriend he mentioned in his
statement say she doesn't kpow him?  She's embarrassed now, he answers,
because I pizked her up in a shebeen.  How can he remember the
registration number of the car, but he can't remember his own number?
Why is his statement to the police in English, whd he now says he only
speaks Xhosa?  How could an il liter t person who left school in
Standard 2 read the .ro 4s

Hartleyvale Stadium' and Heidelberg' pn a piece of pc in the dark?  But
Sibaya sticks to his story.  Now and te he remarks darkly: truth and
lies can never lie on the sam t le.

And the money in his bank account?  His former bbs left him his house
when he went back to Germany, Sibay ays, and now he rents the place
out.  Qunta laughs and sha s her head.

Passionate discussions erupt in the media room, the passages, the Truth
Commission offices: the whites think Ntsebeza is involved, the blacks
think he has been set up.  It infuriates me that the Commission has
allowed the whole issue to degenerate into a simple choice about race.
None of us have the resources of an investigative unit at our disposAl.
Yet we are expected to gather from Goosen's flimsy report and Sibaya's
peculiar testimony what is really going on.  And there is no space to
argue in it has become a matter of race.  The little bit of healing,
the trust, the unity that have been built up over two years, at great
effort and with many sacrifices, have been wiped out in one day.
Meanwhile, the request for an apology is still lying on my desk.

But the worst is yet to come, when the hearing continues the next day.
Sibaya is asked whether he can identify the man he saw behind the whee4
of the white Audi that night.  Sibaya points o one of the Amnesty
Committee members, Ntsiki Sandi.  people laugh.  He looks like him,"
smiles Sibaya, noddii his head.  Then he gets up, in his crumpled,
faded shirt and down-at-heel shoes, and walks around the room.

Some distance from Ntsebeza he stops and wags his finger

It's him."

No words can capture the expression on Dumisa Ntsebeza's face.  It is a
mixture of mortification, amazement and a strained attempt at
indifference.  An excited babble reverberates through the room; every
journalist knows this is drama at its best.

When he pointed me out," Ntsebeza tells me afterwards, I felt as bad as
I usually feel when I lose a case I've been defending, when I know my
client has done nothing but he gets convicted anyway.  I knew (a), that
Sibaya was putting on an act, and (b), that I was iunocent but I was
going to lose, because the whole world would focus on the drama of him
pointing me out and the whole world would see a likelihood of my
involvement."

An indication of how fatal the incident might prove to be is that both
Tutu and Boraine, who are abroad, are asked to come home.

The amnesty hearing finishes late on Friday afternoon with the
testimony of one of the victims, Quentin Cornelius.  We hear him... and
we don't.

QUENTIN CORNELIUS: Lindy-Anne, whom I met in Venda, and her father came
to fetch me from Stilbaai to celebrate New Year with them [..  .1

I dived to try and get myself under the dos est table the bullet went
through my side and hit my spine, fracturing my spinal column in nine
different places.  My friend Lindy was not so lucky.  She died from
four bullets that penetrated her chest from behind.  Bernadette
Langford, who sat opposite me, was also killed.

I have mixed feelings regarding this application.  Since 30 December
1993 my life has never been the same .. . for obvious reasons being in
a wheelchair.."  it is, however, very difficult when you have root
nerve pain every single day of your life to such an extent that you do
not know how to cope with it any more.  When you have lost a kidney and
various parts of your intestines and have constant bladder and other
infections You end up in hospital twice a year.  When your healthy and
strong legs have been taken away from you... I'd like to have each of
the perpetrators look me in the eye and choose whether they wouldn't
mind' having a rifle stuck in their spine and having a trigger being
pulled on them in cold blood, fracturing their spine leaving them
emotionally and physically scarred and disabled as I have been... Would
they rather stay in jail and serve their sentences for the crime they
committed would they prefer swapping places with me in wheelchair.  I
know what I would choose... I peer at the applicants for a sign of
remorse, a sign of a sign that they hear, that they understand pain,
that wish things were different..  . They seem impassive at best
proudly arrogant at worst.  I scold myself how do I know cannot read
the body codes of black people.  It is as simple as that.  When I
interview Boraine or any of the white Commissioners I know when they
cannot tell me the truth, when they're battling to formulate something
in a neutral, harmless way.  I know it from the way their eyes change
colour, the slight flush, a looseness in the cheeks, the flatness of
the voice, the movement of the head.  But when I interview the black
Commissioners I am at a loss.  They can tell me anything and I will
believe it.  But that's not quite true, I argue with myself.  I know
Tutu is struggling to tell me something when he starts with ah-ah-ahm..
. All these ah-ahms have to be cut out for broadcast so when I have a
huge pile of recording tape on the floor afterwards, I know it was a
difficult interview for Tutu.

I also know how black victims misinterpret the expression and
intonation of Dirk Coetzee.  Heiaughs," says Charity Kondile,"en he
tells how he braaied my son."  But I can see it's a grime.  I can see
that his mouth is dry and his head has a barely pjrceptible tremble he
is either on medication or suffering ifom post-traumatic stress.  But
the Kondiles see a man with an arrogant smile on his face.

Will things in this country always break up in colour?  Will I always
be a prisoner of my past with no normal vices and virtues always with
this kind of instinctive, guilty obsequiousness?

Pippa Green, one of the best journalists in the country, is waiting in
my office.  She has made some phone calls this morning.  Bennet Sibaya
does not own a house in Kenilworth.  He not only has thousands in the
bank, he recently tried to buy a duplex flat in Claremont, and showed a
bank document indicating an investment of over two hundred thousand
rand.  He is a compulsive gambler and is often dropped off at the totes
by white men in a combi.

But how come the Investigative Unit could not find that out in three
months?"

Maybe it didn't want to?"

Why wasn't it forced to find out more?"

Maybe people had already made up their minds about Ntsebeza's
involvement," she says.

Well, the final report by Goosen says two things: they find Sibaya to
be a plausible wimess, but they nevertheless recommend an independent
investigation."

So why did Tutu and Boraine decide not to follow that up or at least
release it to the press so that we could do some checking?"

I draw up my shoulders.

Monday brings a most unusual media briefing, in the wake of a crisis
meeting of the full Commission.  Apart from the usual journalists, the
room suddenly fills up with Truth Commission staff as Dumisa Ntsebeza
takes a seat opposite the Chairperson and his Deputy.

During the crisis meeting earlier that morning, we learn, Ntsebeza left
the room so that discussions about the Sibaya incident could be open
and frank.  And they were precisely that, says Alex Boraine.  The
Commission has decided to ask for an independent inquiry into Sibaya's
evidence by a person with impeccable credentials and to ask Ntsebeza to
recuse himself from any cases involving APLA cadres.

The Chairperson takes all the blame on himself.  I should really have
followed my normal gut-level instincts in this case' and that is what
we have been doing all along, playing open cards.  I should have and I
didn't I should have informed my fellow Commissioners as soon as this
became clear, I should have said to the media, you know, there is this
allegation against Dumisa, and, as I felt, we should have gon I for an
independent investigation straight away.  In justification, one could
point out that all these facts were available o the police from 1994
they've dci ne nothing about it.  Whn, Dumisa was appointed
Commissioner he had a se cur tyt clearance and nothing was made of
this.  What is more, would amnesty applicants prefer to lie and maybe
lose the amnesties to protect him?"  I

Now for another announcement.  Bennet Sibaya is sitting in the
Archbishop's office at this very moment.

It is absolutely quiet.  Most of the journalists stop taking notes, but
don't look up.

Yes, Sibaya has confessed that he was coached to lie.  In January 1994,
after being caught poaching crayfish in Bantry Bay, he was tortured and
ordered to implicate Ntsebeza.  Now he has been stricken by his
conscience.  Apparently Sibaya spent the weekend looking everywhere for
the Archbishop he even turned up at Bishop's Court, his previous home.
Finally he contacted the Commission's offices.  Sibaya told the
Archbishop that after he falsely identified Ntsebeza the burden of
guilt became too big to carry.  He had already decided to tell the
truth when he testified, he said, but when he arrived at the hearing he
saw mostly whites and no matter how hard he looked, he couldn't see the
Archbishop's purple roth.  For him, the Truth Commission is the
Archbishoj Because he couldn't quite find his bearings in this sea of
whit faces, he thought it safer to stick to his original story until
Tie could speak to Tutu.  But the next day he still did not see him. So
he deliberately pointed out the wrong person, Ntsiki Sandi, hoping to
make it clear that he was lying.  But he was pressured to look again.

Now Sibaya wants to apologize to Ntsebeza in public and he wants his
apology published widely.

No one says a word.  I draw curly figures on my notebook.  Sibaya comes
in.  He is wearing a striped shirt, a flowery tie and a navy
double-breasted jacket.  He clumsily embraces Ntsebeza.  Enemies tried
to divide them, he says, but now they are brothers.

I do an interview with the Chairperson.  I am so sad," he sighs,

I am so sad, whatever the facts you are just aware of the deceit, the
underhandedness and you feel defiled.  I'm also appalled at the way the
media handled this.  You never investigated Sibaya .. . On the other
hand, I'm glad you badgered us to the point where we ended up with this
meeting and this particular decision."

As I walk back I realize this was the first interview I've had with
Tutu that he didn't preface with his usual prayer.  I feel iced out,
isolated in my questioning.

I sit down at my desk and write to Boraine and Tutu: I have thought
about your anger, comments and request for a long time questioning my
motives, procedures, instincts, sources and style.  And as the week
dragged on I was sick in my heart

And I kept on trying to work out to what extent I personally was
responsible for what happened."  I set out my fears about whether the
Truth Commission indeed has a system that will push all the information
to the surface.  I conclude: But maybe I went about it the wrong way.
For that I say without reservation: I am absolutely and very sorry.  I
never meant to cast doubt on the integrity of either of you.  I hope
this in some way helps, because I am missing you both."

Something has shifted and I'm filled with loss.

Judge Richard Goldstone, appointed by President Nelson Mandela to
investigate the Sibaya incident, finds that all the accusations against
Dumisa Ntsebeza were false.  The negative consequences of the decision
to allow members of the Investigative Unit to investigate their
immediate superior are manifest.  This decision has ultimately resulted
in tremendous tension, dislocation and controversy within the TRC."

I am suddenly sick and tired of the Truth Commission.  Commissioners
have become smug, self-righteous, arrogant and bloated with
self-importance.  Corridor flourishes.  This one is vain.  That one is
lazy.  sleeping with somebody-or-other.  This lot get they're not the
focus of media attention.  That lot for high-profile jobs in
government.  This one is the them all.  Those who have not given up
their former they promised to do are always abroad.  In the afternoon
one by one, the big, thick German cars slide out of the garage.

And the women!  They have never managed to subvert the developing
stereotype of the Commission: women as victims, men as fighters and
leaders.  They never take the lead in a considered, directed way.  At
hearings they easily become sentimental or moralistic.  They're either
fighting among themselves or revelling in the role of the supportive
little woman.

While the man ne are busy with the Big Politics, the voices of the
victims have been packed away safely on computer files somewhere.  The
perpetrators have been dispensed with.  Reparation and reconciliation
are women's issues.

The last victim hearings finished more than five months ago, and the
focus has been lost.  No more the voices, like a leaking tap in the
back of your mind, to remind you what this Commission is all about. And
I miss the microphones and translation earphones.  You seldom see them
these days.  On televisn, you see the Commissioners filing up the
street to lay 4arges, or holding press conferences, or meeting
dignitries but you don't see them listening to ordinary people any
more.  For me, the Truth Commission microphone with its little red
light was the ultimate symbol of the whole process: here the
marginalized voice speaks to the public ear, the unspeakable is spoken
and translated the personal story brought from the iunermost depths of
the individual.  binds us anew to the collective.  What has happened to
that?  Has it all become politics?

I remember the words of Jose.  Zalaquett: the shorter the lifespan of a
Truth Commission, the better its chances of success.

The following conversation, and those in the final two Buruma; Guilt
and Shame, edited by Herbert Morris; Imagination, Fiction, Myth, by
Johan Degenaar; and After the Catastrophe, by Carl Jung.

Death is a master from Africa his eyes are blue wir trinken dich abends
und morgens wir trinken und trinken der Tod ist em Meister and
Deutschland seiiiAugen ist blau.

we drink you evening and morning we drink and drink, death is a master
from Germany his eyes are blue, he will strike you with a lead bullet
he will strike you with precision, a man lives in the house your golden
hair Margarete, he sets his hounds on us he gives us a grave in the
sky, he plays with the serpents and dreams death is a master from
Germany, your golden hair Margarete, your ashy hair Shulamith.

The way you say ash'.  The way you say drink'.  How a single letter can
rip my heart to water.  You close the book of twentieth-century German
verse and I know that I love you.

Every educated German knows the line: Der Tod ist em Meister aus
Deutschland, you explain.  After the Second World War it was said in
Germany: it is barbaric to write a poem after Auschwitz.  Yet Paul Cdan
wrote this indescribably beautiful Fugue of Death.  The reception of
the poem was ambivalent.  Isn't the poem too lyrical?  Just a bit too
beautiful?  Is the horror not too accessible?  In the end Celan himself
felt this ambivalence and asked anthologists to remove the poem from
their books."

That is precisely why I say that maybe writers in South Africa should
shut up for a while.  That one has no rig1t to appropriate a story paid
for with a lifetime of pain and destruction.  Words come more easily
for writers, perhaps.  So let the domain rather belong to those who
literally paid bloo for every faltering word they utter before the Trut
Commission."

This kind of over-respectfulness, awe it happend jh Germany.  In the
fifties and sixties writers didn't even c$l Nazis by name they called
them buffalo-eaters in leather coats."  .  f

The thing is, Germany has produced some of the greatest writers ever. 
We in this country have failed in a sensei-4 the things told here
surpass the wildest imaginings of any writer.  Nowhere in our
literature do you find captured the extjnt of the pathos, the pain, the
horror, the voices of this country.  Shouldn't we give up our
privileged position and let the space belong to those who deserve
it?"

Are you saying this because you yourself can't find a form for dealing
with your past?"

No."  I was speaking to Ariel Dorfman about this when visited South
Africa.  The Truth Commission in Chile was held behind closed doors so
the stories were not told in public.  Yet he writes these stories.  I
wanted to know isn't it sacrilege to pretend you know?  My experience
tells me that there is no way you can begin to imagine the language,
the rhythm, the imagery of the original stories.  I often write pieces
down from memory, and when I check the original tape it is always, but
always much better than my own effort.  Dorfman answered that a lot of
the stories were already known among the oppressed.  That might be so,
I said, but the heightened atmosere of the public telling usually
brings the best aspects of the tory and its teller together.  The story
told on the Truth Cosion platform is usually much more powerful than
the one told afterwards for the television camera or the tape recorder.
Then Dorfman said his work is a sort of mixture some of it is what he's
heard, and some he makes up.  So I asked, But isn't that a sacrilege to
use someone else's story, a story that has cost him his life?  He
looked at me, and then he said: Do you want the awful truth? How else
would it get out?  How else would the story be told?  '

I'll tell you how... The reluctance of German literature to look
Auschwitz in the face, the refusal to deal with it except in school
textbooks, museums and memorials, is precisely this fear of sacrilege
you're talking about.  As if any attempt to give a body to the
unnameable is to trivialize its holy character.  It's all well and good
to listen to victims in court cases, the argument goes, but artists
should keep their grubby hands off the stories.  German artists could
not find a form in which to deal with Auschwitz.  They refused to take
possession of their own history.  So the inevitable happened. Hollywood
took it away from them.  A soap opera laid claim to the statistic, the
metaphor, the abstraction that was Auschwitz."

You lock your office.  Outside the campus lies deserted in the throat
of the late afternoon sky.  Our conversation becomes part of the big
South African tongue of consciousness groping down towards a broken
tooth.

I say: Was Apartheid the product of some horrific shortcoming in
Afrikaner culture?  Could one find the key to this in Afrikaner songs
and literature, in beer and braaivleis?  How do I live with the fact
that all the words used to humiliate, all the orders given to kill,
belonged to the langauge of my heart?  At the hearings, many of the
victims faithfully reproduced these parts of their stories in Afrikaans
as proof of the bloody fingerprints upon them."

Jung talks about inferiority.  Do you know about that?"

All I know is that my grandfather wanted to send my mother to Rhodes
University so that she could learn to speak English better than an
Englishman and that my mother refused.  She told him she doesn't need
to speak English better than an Englishman.  But why do you ask about
inferiority.  Do you think Afrikaners are suffering from it?"

According to Jung inferiority leads to a hysterical dissociation of the
personality, which consists essentially in, as he puts it, wanting to
jump over one's shadow, and looking for everything dark, inferior and
culpable not in oneself but in others.  That is why the hysteric always
complains of being surrounded by inferior mischief-makers, a crowd of
sub men who should be exterminated so that the Superman can live at!
his high level of perfection.  All men are dangerous if their leaders
have unlimited power."

It feels to me that if you look at the past only from the viewpoint of
the victim, or the viewpoint of the perpetrator, the ultimate
consequence is hatred..."

Are you grieving?"

His eyes are dark.  An afternoon of limp il light turns into tatters of
grey and twilight.

How can I?  What have I lost?  Why do I feel I am gainint all the time?
One does not grieve for Apartheid.  Shouldi grieve for a phantom-
fatherland perhaps?  I think ultimately feel I don't have the right to
grieve for the dead I shoulkl rather take responsibility for the
oppressors."

We drive out over the dark plains.

The South African Truth Commission has one unique feature the special
hearings into the role of the media, the health sector, the judiciary
and big business in South Africas Apartheid past.  Although the
hearings generally fail to expose individual culprits they have either
resigned or moved sideways, and the latest black employees arrive to
take the rap it is clear that the mere fact of making a submission
usually creates some turmoil in these structures.  In some of the media
houses, journalists have publicly taken a different stand to their
bosses, while in some businesses there have been endless debates and
angry words.

The busin4s hearings provide a touch of surrealism.  In the posh foyeif
the Carlton Hotel in downtown Johannesburg, where not so long ago I sat
waiting for Joe Mamasela, the

Truth Commissioners look somewhat forlorn.  Tutu's purple robe is a
vivid slash of anachronism.  When he opens the meeting with a prayer,
most of the businessmen look around, wide-eyed and nonplussed.

And yet.  The breathtakingly wealthy, the Captains of Industry, like
Nicky Oppenheimer and Johan Rupert, the bosses of mighty organizations,
like Julian Ogilvie-Thompson and Bobby Godsell, sit opposite the Truth
Commission just as hundreds of others have sat before them.  Free to be
questioned and held accountable like ordinary mortals.  Creating the
impression that no one is above the law not even the rich.

The tone of the hearings is set by Professor Sample Terblanche, with
his flailing limbs, snow-white hair and wonderful, horrible Free State
English accent.  He loves to wallow in a word.

The hiss story of a hunnndred years of rracial capitalism enrrriched
whites unnndeseeervedly."  He says that by the end of the last century,
black farmers were producing more maize than white farmers, which is
why they did not want to work on white farms or in the mines.  But they
were eventually driven off the fields they had ploughed by the Glen
Grey Act of 1894 and the Land Act of 1913.  Black farmers were turned
into a reservoir of cheap labour for business.

He spells out the exploitation: the wages of black workers did not
increase at all between 1910 and 1970.  In fact, their wages in 1972
were even lower than they had been in 1911.  And yet during this
period, the gold price rose by 45 per cent and the wages of white
workers doubled.

In 1970, Terblanche says, the system of racial capitalism changed once
again, from favouritism to patronage, to protection.  Under P.W. Botha
an abnormal cooperation developed between the securocratic state and
business.  Business did not destroy Apartheid, says Terblanche.  It
actually strengthened Botha's Government and helped to create a
neo-Apartheid.

This is the first time that the idea of the beneficiary as opposed to
the perpetrator has surfaced in full force.  Did businesses benefit
from apartheid?

Of course they did, says Lot Ndlovu of the Black Management Forum.

Of course we didn't, say prominent white business leaders.  In fact,
Apartheid prevented us from realizing our potential.

Lot Ndlovu disagrees.  Low wages, bad housing 6and appalling working
conditions increased the profit margiis of white business, he says.
There was no place for blades in power structures until Durban workers
marched agains their bosses in 1973.  Then business woke up and quickly
beg aI appointing black people into certain supervisory and management
positions.  But they were just used by and large asj a buffer as
messengers, as conduits, to go out and tell the workers what the bosses
were saying and try and plac4te the workers.  Alternatively to create
the impression that the was progress."

But business insists that it did not benefit from Apa4eid.  Johan
Rupert says Rembrandt was started by Afrilcane and sustained by
Afrikaners long before the Afrikanerf had financial clout.  Rembrandt
has treated its shareholders well, it is treating its workers well. 
There is a staff turnover of less than 2 per cent.  The company pays
its floor sweepers R3 600 per month more than the Government pays its
maths teachers!  Rembrandt is also treating the taxman well, Rupert
smiles, to the tune of 10 billion over the last couple of year's. 
Maybe not enough was done to oppose Apartheid, but the fact that
Rembrandt is still inside the country says something.

It's left to the Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut to bring clarity to the
debate about benefit.  When business compares itself to business
abroad, it feels deprived.  Apartheid prevented the majority of South
Africans from becoming a substantial buying and economic force, and so
business feels that the system hampered its development and profits.

Bosses such as Rupert have provided statistics on how their overseas
branches fare better, despite facing stiffer competit io4 But we
shouldn't be comparing ourselves with our intern4ional counterparts,
says Theo van Wyk.  We should compe ourselves with black business and
then we will realize.  just how much we've benefited.

When Julian Ogilvie-Thompson starts reading Anglo American submission
in his Victorian accent, someone in the media room calls out: For that
accent alone you should apply for amnesty."  Ogilvie-Thompson is at
pains to point out that Anglo never had contact with the National
Party.  In the thirteen years that John Vorster was Prime Minister, the
firm only spoke to him once and that was when Vorster asked permission
to exhume the bodies of some Ossewabrandwag members from the
Koffiefontein Mine.  It is highly unusual, he says, for the biggest
conglomerate in a country to have no contact with its rulers.

The Afrikaner businessmen quote the poet N.P. van Wyk Louw.  0 wye en
droewe land," says Professor Sample Terblanche.  0 wide and woeful
land."

I believe in loyal resistance," says Johan Rupert.  Van Wyk Louw's
lojale ver set

Read Charles Dickens," says Ogilvie-Thompson.

All the bosses that oppressed us are here," a worker recites,

I feel their hair against my shoulders."

Forgive us for Steve Biko," says Rupert.  2Prof Terblanche is a member
of the Flat Earth Society," says Nigel Bruce.  We English have never
been advantaged by Apartheid."

It is striking how drastically the tenor of the submissions changes
over the three days of the hearings.  On the first day, Barlow Rand and
the Chamber of Mines get people's backs up with their insistence that
they never benefited from Apartheid.  They rattle off pages of
resolutions, statements and newspaper articles to prove that they have
always fought boldly against Apartheid.

So wonderful," says Sam Shilowa, General Secretary of the Congress of
South African Trade Unions, everybody in the country was a
revolutionary!"

But, from day one, representatives of Anglo-American and other big
companies are listening carefully from the back rows.  It doesn't take
them long to figure out that insistent pleas of iunocence do not look
too good on the eight o'clock news.  By the third day everyone is
admitting that they benefited, and saying how sorry they are, how much
more they're going to do to set things right.

Most companies try to put together a delegation inchjding a white, a
black and if possible a woman.  The Land Bank is the most blatant. They
present two submissions: a left-ying one delivered by a black man, and
a right-wing one delivered by an Afrikaner.  In between them sits their
boss, Helena Ddy, the widow of SACP hero Joe Slovo.  7 iinto Mist has
gathered on our faces.  I sene my hair esc4 sleep and water..

This is to be the last day.

Late that night I wake up.  Your head lies topp away from me as if
falling into shards of moonlight at the edge of the bed.  Your heavy
arm on my breast like adar plough share

In silence we drive to the airport.  I think of your feet licking
themselves in the sun.  You pile my luggage on a trolley.

You don't have to do this, you know," you say.  Your voice has lost all
that I know.

I turn and walk alone towards the sliding doors.  Wherthey open I look
back.  You are standing with your arms folded like breastwork.  Like
stone.  Like an angry stump.  Inside the building my chest heaves into
a spasm of pain.

MOTHER FACES THE NATION

NEVER MIND THE official title A Human Rights Violation Hearing into the
Activities of the Mandela United Football Club it's called the Winnie
hearing'.  As a South African media event it is compared to the release
of Nelson Mandela from prison in 1990.  The international news desks
say: provided that Saddam Hussein isn't bombed in the next few days,
the Winnie hearing will be the biggest news story on the globe this
week.  It is the last week of November 1997.

The statistics are frightening.  More than two hundred journalists from
sixteen countries, more than twenty foreign television crews and one
hundred news agencies from around the world have been accredited by the
Truth Commission.  Apart from visual and audio feeds, these journalists
need telephone lines, modems for laptops, translation from African
languages, information: Who is testifying?  Who is the lawyer?  What
case does that relate to?  How do you pronounce this surname?

When the director of the Truth Commission's media department is taken
to see the venue chosen by the Johannesburg office, he apparently blows
his top an ordinary low-cost recreation centre with thin walls, small
rooms, low ceilings and cheap finishes.  The demands of the hearing are
much more complex than merely accommodating the media.  Thirty-four
witnesses are to testify some for Winnie, and some against.  All of
them need space to consult privately with their lawyers.

They need privacy to cry and be debriefed by trauma counsellors.  They
need space to get angry at the accused without the accused watching
them.  Madikizela-Mandela needs her own consulting room big enough to
accommodate her bodyguards, her family and her legal team.  Since tie
re are rumours even before the hearing starts that she is intirhidating
witnesses, it is essential that she doesn't come into cort act with any
of them at the venue.  Some of those set to testify are in jail they
need a room with special security arrangements acL ptable to the prison
authorities.  The Commissioners themves need space to talk, rest,
discuss strategy without eing hounded by the media.  One of them in
particular nd pace4 Id to pray (Tutu has been praying constantly clur,y
the tea breaks and taking longer rests than usual after ii recent
cancer treatment).  The lawyers need space to prot t their
independence, so that not even a whisper of coniracy is possible.  And
all of them have to be fed.

An unprepossessing recreation centre in the lower middleclass suburb of
Mayfair, Johannesburg, is destined to handle all of this.

Why is it that a woman, a black woman from a long-is Slated country,
creates such an unprecedented media frenzy Is it because Winnie
Madikizela-Mandela answers to the archetype: Black and Beautiful?  Or
because she answers to the stereotype: Black and Evil?

A few days after the much publicized divorce of the Mandelas, a crowd
of angry youths marched down an avenue in Durban.  Although they were
protesting about the lack of educational reform, one of their placards
reads: We don't wait Nelson Mandela the Saint!  We want Nelson Mandela
thJ Revolutionary."  On the same day a group of women weomed Winnie
Mandela at a Women's Day rally in Pietermaritzburg.  The song they sang
said: Winnie and

Nelson the world has parted you, but for us you are two sides of the
same coin.  You fulfill us.  We can't have one without the other!"

There is a vast gallery of perceptions about Winnie
Madikizela-Mandela.

Picture One: In Parliament she is a backbencher.  She seldom speaks.
Outside Parliament, at the wrought-iron gates, a hawker sells key rings
bearing the image of her face.  Incongruous: the woman and the legend
that feed off each other.

Picture Two: As a politician she has an exceptional grasp of the
popular mood, and she plays to different constituencies in very
different ways.  At home she appeals to groups who feel that the system
somehow doesn't work for them.  On American television she plays to the
black diaspora she is the mother figure, the regal symbol of solidarity
with the homeland, the long-lost mythology of what it was to be African
adorned in beads and turbans (the emblems of honour the crown, the
wreath, the mitre have always been associated with the head).  Media
experts say she's like a chameleon, moving across boundaries in quite
an extraordinary way.  And her honour depends on public
acknowledgement.  Public opinion forms the constant tribunal before
which the claims of honour are tested.

Picture Three: Much of Winnie's power is non-verbal.  She doesn't need
to shout Amandla!"  She just has to raise her fist.  She lives in
iconic images the haunting footage of her sensual, liberated beauty set
off against the dusty, desolate, corrugated-iron township of Brandfort.
When she stands, she always stands triumphantly alone.  When she sits,
she sits alone and the air is filled with conspiracy and fear.

Picture Four: She has committed the gravest sin she let people down. It
is easier to forgive a murder than a betrayal.  She was a tireless
fighter, through trials and banishments she kept Mandela's name on the
map, and that gives her a great deal of credit on the political balance
sheet.  But it comes at a price: when you are this popular, this
revered, you are expected to be like Caesar's wife.  I

Picture Five: Winnie is also trashy tabloid.  She lusts after then and
they after her.  She shops, she buys diamonds and drips L with them on
occasion, she eliminates dispensable subjects she's a dangerous and
rowdy warlord strutting among vh4 glum democrats.  She refuses to
become part of paroiiaJ; pleasantness.  She refuses to serve the
masters.  She refuses t make the world safe for democracy.

Picture Six: Winnie is pre- and post-feminist.  It is throph her that
we instinctively understand MaNthq'tsi, Nongqawuse, Helen of Troy...
MaNthatisi, who ruled khe Tlokwa as regent of her minor son Sekonyela,
acquired such a fierce reputation that all marauding bands were
erroneously known as Mantatees'.  Among her enemies, rumours circulated
that she was a grotesque giantess with one eye in the middle of her
forehead, who suckled her warriors before battle and sent swarms of
bees before them.  In contrast to this horrible image, among her own
followers she was known affectionately as Mosadinyana the Little Woman.
She was celebrated for her expertise in throwing the axe .. . But
perhaps the character of Lady Macbeth encapsulates the diverse elements
of Winnie's personality most aptly vaulting ambition, a capacity for
ruthless conspiracy, abuse of devotion, the smell of blood that will
not leave her hands, the persistent ghosts all leading to dementia.

Picture Seen: Winnie's dilemma is essentially also that of the ANG.  4e
the ANG she has accumulated an enormous amount f political credit. Like
the ANG she is asking us to treat he differently.  But the world is not
here to admire a defiant, unrepentant black woman; the world has come
to watch us burn a witch.

The name of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela has come up at several hearings
on human rights violations.  Parents testified before the Truth
Commission about the disappearance of their children while in contact
with the Mandela household.  As a result she was subpoenaed for a
Section 29 hearing behind closed doors.  There she demanded a public
hearing to clear her name before the elections for President and Deputy
President of the ANC take place.

The hearing held in Mayfair is an unusual one.  As she does not want
amnesty from the Commission, she.  needn't tell the truth.

Will she come?  Won't she simply send her lawyers?

Cameras are lined up.  Shouting.  Jostling.  Everybody is called
outside while the hall is checked by sniffer dogs.

If she's clever she'll come, and just sit and listen," someone says. By
the end of it we'll all feel so sorry for her, she'll be okay."

No man, if she's really clever she'll ask to speak and tell it all.
Spill every last bean.  Then she'll definitely be our next President,
never mind Deputy President."

Her arrival is swamped by the media.  We South Africans, unused to
fighting our way to the front, don't even catch a glimpse.  Don't
worry," says an American journalist who overhears my complaints, she's
not arriving for you, she's arriving for the Afro-American audience.
She's already given more than ten hours of interview time to us.  Her
constituency is out there."  I recall how she's ignored several
requests for a radio interview.  Isn't she interested in talking to
those she claims as her constituency the poor who cannot read, who
don't own television sets?  *

COUNRY OF MY SKULL

On the monitor in the media room we watch the grand entrance.  She is
tall.  She towers.  And it seems incomprehensible that this woman in
the prim, light-blue suit and three strings of pearls, with her bevy of
beautiful daughters and well-dressed bodyguards, is embroiled in so
many unsavoi7ry stories.

The hearing has barely started when a bodyguard with a golden earring
carries in a big purple cooler box and puts it; down between mother and
daughters.  It is hot in the glare of the camera lights hanging from
the low ceiling.  As the temperature rises, as the legal arguments heat
up, Madikizla Mandela keeps her cool with ice and minral water.

That her mere presence is intimidating is clear from the start.  The
victims find it difficult to look at her.j TJxe Commissioners seldom
turn their gaze in her direction Ac cameras move from her exquisite
face, her diamant&studed sunglasses, her throngs of delicate bangles
and rings, t the faces of the victims engraved with hardship, pain,
poverty.  Is this a clash between the black poor and the black elite?

Outside the hall a group of followers from the ANC Women's League are
chanting support.  They are all old and wrinkled and poor.  Winnie
didn't kill alone!"  they shout.

Winnie had a mandate from us to kill!"  I switch off my tape recorder.
I don't want to hear it.  I don't want to broadcast I don't want to
live in a country where women mandate one another to murder.  This
hearing will test us beyond ourselves, I know.

The next day four big engines are pumping away next to the building.
Massive pipes, shiny as tinfoil, feed cool streams of instant air into
the hall.

Phumlile Dlamini was three months pregnant by one of
Madikizla-Mandela's' lovers.  Winnie didn't like that.  She came tour
house and spoke to my' mother and said she will bring 4 back.  My
mother said, Please bring my child back do it kill her... She, Winnie,
hit me first.  Then she told the Football Club: See what you can do
with this one."  They then all assaulted me.  I wanted to lay a charge,
but my brother said the Football Team will burn our house.  People were
scared to air their views.  They loved Winnie and trusted Winnie as the
Mother of the Community.  After all that, I changed my mind... I didn't
want to hear people refer to her as the Mother of the Nation."

The mother of Siboniso Shabalala agrees.  Sitting there in her little
straw hat, she also talks of fear.

Has Madikizela-Mandela ever threatened you?"

Yes, I saw her scaring other people I am scared of her even now."

My hands are not dripping with the blood of the African children," says
one-time friend Xoliswa Falati, her bulging eyes darting all over the
room.  I've never compromised her.  I went to prison for her and she
was so much ungrateful.  She dehumanizes a person.  She reduces a
person to nothing.  She regards herself as a demigod.  She regards
herself as a super being I never knew that Mrs.  Mandela was taking
these hard drinks.  She is aggressive when she's taking that."  This is
the only explanation ventured for why Madikizela-Mandela's behaviour
changed so much during the last part of the 1980s.  And it comes from
the woman suspected of having supplied Madikizela-Mandela with
cocaine.

Sorry, sisi," says Archbishop Desmond Tutu.  Just answer the questions,
do not make a circus out of the hearing."

I am bottled up.  I'm like a bottle of champagne all the time," Falati
fumes.  Now I have to explode .. . Winnie shakes her head, laughs and
indicates with a circular movement of her hand that Falati is crazy.
She's busy indicating that I am mad.  She's pointing at me that I'm
crazy..  . You can laugh if you want, but you don't sleep at night."

Another of Winnie's lovers objects to Falati's testimony.  Falati says
dismissively: Oh, you are a Xhosa, typical of a Xhosa, that's why you
are denying everything.  All Xhosas are lying like that, you are a real
Xhosa.  And Winnie is a Xhosa as well."  But why did she protect Winnie
and give false evidence in court about the killing of Stompie?  That
was our culture, to protect our leaders.  I was scared, I had seen how
people were brutally beaten.  She gives you orders, you don't have to
reply."  Falati ends with a poetic flourish: Yours is not to reason
why.  Yours is to do and die."

Do you hate Winnie Mandela?"  asks the lawyer.  I

No," says Falati.

Are you saying you love her?"

And the bewildered face is fraught with conflict.  I don't know," she
whispers.

The kidnapping and murder of Stompie Seipei are ii beyond the normal
horror we should feel.  Because at one.  they have been common-law
crimes, but they are also al the ruthless abuse of power they resemble
far too closely abuses of Apartheid itself."  The words of Methodist
Peter Storey.

As the hearing continues, the death of Stompie becomes the symbol of
what went wrong in the Mandela household in 1989.  Stompie, a
fourteen-year-old child activist, and three other young adult males
were kidnapped from the Methodist manse in Soweto by members of the
Mandela United Football Club.  The reasons given: they had to be
protected from the alleged sexual abuse of the Reverend (now Bishop
Paul Verryn; and Stompie was believed to be an informer.

Storey captures the essence of the case.  The truth about Stompie's
death has been trimmed to suit political interests.  To dispel this
suffocating fog of silence and lies is very important for the future of
this country.  This week for the first time there is a probing beneath
the surface of the skin of South Africa's shame.  The primary cancer
will always be and has always been Apartheid.  But secondary infections
have touched mny of Apartheid's opponents and eroded their knowledgef
good and evil.  And one of the tragedies of life is it's possib to
become that which we hate most a ruthless abuse of ri ower and a
latitude that allow our deeds to resemble the abuses we fought
against.

Beyond its normal horror, Stompie's death wasn't merely a political
tragedy, it was also a moral tragedy.  It has done things to people...
we need not only to be liberated in this country, but we need to become
human."

In a dress of brown chintz, Stompie Seipei's mother sits in the
audience with her four-year-old daughter on her lap although lap' is
perhaps too ample a term.  Not much of a lap is available as the plump
Mrs.  Seipei sits squashed for days on a plastic chair, the little girl
at times all but dangling from her mother's nipple.  With translation
equipment plugged into her ears, Mrs.  Seipei misses nothing.  Her eyes
are alert with concentration.

Forensic pathologist Dr.  Patricia Klepp describes the body:

Stompie Seipei's body had lain in the heat for five days before it was
discovered and was infested with maggots.  The corpse had been that of
a small boy, four and a half feet tall.  The brain had turned to
liquid, the skin slipping off the bones.  Blood had poured out of his
throat from two penetrating wounds on the right side, each the size of
a blade roughly 1.6 centimetres long, caused by a dagger-type blade.
His lungs had collapsed.  There was blood in his stomach.  He was
bruised all over."

The body was found on 6 January 1989.  A day later, Kenny Kgase, one of
the other youths kidnapped and held at Madikizela-Mandela's house,
escaped and told people how Stompie had been singled out for brutal
assaults.  On 16 January the other two youths, Thabiso Mono and Pelo
Mekgwe, were released into the hands of Dr.  Nthato Motlana a victory'
achieved at last under growing pressure from Nelson Mandela in jail and
ANC leader Oliver Tambo in exile.

The two senior ANC leaders intervened after damning reports from the
Mandela Crisis Committee reached them.  This Committee had been formed
some months before Stompie's death, after the Mandela house was burnt
down by angry youths.  The community, by then sick and tired of the
Football Club's reign of terror, apparently simply looked on as the
fire spread.  To prevent a full-scale clash between the

Club and the community a Crisis Committee was formed, made up of church
and community leaders, under the chairmanship of the highly respected
Reverend Frank Chikane.  In January 1989, their mandate came to include
the abduction of the four youths.

Jerry Richardson, Madikizela-Mandela's football coach:

The first thing that I did to Stompie was to hold him on both sides.. .
throw him up in the air and let him fall freely on to the ground. And
Mommy was sitting and watching us.  He iras tortured so severely that
at one stage I could see that he would ultimately die.  We kicked him
like a ball."

Thabiso Mono, one of those abducted: Jerry Richardn f said: Bring a
chair for Mommy.  She questioned us whye allow a white priest to sleep
with us... she start hitting u with fists and then the whole group
joined."

Katiza Cebekhulu: Mrs.  Mandela sjambokked StomliI.  She said, Why does
he sleep with a white man?  '

John Morgan, Madikizela-Mandela's driver: The day after the assault I
found Stompie in a deformed state.  His face was as round as a
football.  And I tried to help him drink some coffee, and feed him
bread, as he was not in a position to help himself."  Morgan says he
later found Stompie in a pool of blood flowing from his neck.

That was the same day the Crisis Committee visited Madikizela-Mandela
and demanded the release of the boys.

Did you demand to see the boys?"

No."

Why not?"

That was not part of our brief."

The neutral, carefully chosen words come from the lips of the Reverend
Frank Chikane.  And I cannot but remember his interview as a
prospective Truth Commissioner and how he reacted to the litmus test:
what would you do,if you came across information implicating the
highest authorities in a violation?  ow impressively Chikane had
answered then: All informat4n needs to be treated in the same way...
otherwise we creat$ new injustice as bad as the previous one."

The failure of the Crisis Committee to deal effectively with the
situation is described by Storey: I realized that there were two things
running here.  There is an attempt to find out the truth of Stompie and
possibly still save his life.  On the other hand, there was a political
agenda here the Crisis Committee was involved in damage control."

According to Richardson, the-assault on Stompie went too far for him to
be released.  That night, after the Crisis Committee left, a decision
was made to kill him.  Early the next morning all the boys living in
the backyard were called into the house to sing freedom songs to a
depressed Madikizela-Mandela.  While they were busy, Richardson dragged
the weak and disorientated Stompie to a vehicle.  He was taken to some
open veld, made to lie on his back, and then slaughtered like a goat
with garden shears.  Not a cut movement like slicing bread, but a
stabbing movement."

I loved her with all my heart," says Richardson.  I would have done
anything for her.  When other people got into a lift with us I wondered
why they got inside the same lift.  Because I did not want anyone to
touch Mommy and I was worried that they might touch Mommy.  Only myself
could touch Mommy not anyone else.  I loved her."

At the hearing, he carries a soft leather soccer ball ( This protects
me .. . it has muti') and a pillowcase with these words written on it
in Kokii: Now it's Jerry versus Winnie."

Ten days after the abduction the other two boys were released.  There
was a hostage situation," says Storey.  She was in charge of
negotiations from the side of the Mandela house.  She was the one who
was deciding what was to happen.  She was the one who was making
decisions when, how and under what conditions the youths were to be
released.  She was aware of everything that happened in her house."

The Crisis Committee saw the wounds on the youngsters, who insisted
that they had fallen from trees and hurt themselves.  We didn't believe
this, but if we had removed them ourselves from the Mandela home we
could have been charged with kidnapping," says Sydney Mufamadi of the
Crisis Committee.

News of Stompie's abduction and death was kept from the community.  It
only became known when the Weekly Mail broke the story on 20 January.
The Mandela Crisis Committee tried to block the reports, because it was
afraid they would harm the progress of negotiations with Mandela in
jail.

Isn't there also another reason?  asks Dumisa Ntsebeza: All those
people engaged in trying to resolve the conflict' felt compromised by
the fact that Winnie Mandela was at powerful political figure in her
own right.  And also the wife of one of the most revered leaders in the
country.  This ac even influences our ability to find the truth now
be4u here, today, even ourselves are hesitant to put this toyo

For the past eight years, as Bishop Storey puts it, it has been
possible to mention Paul Verryn in this country with ut conjuring up
the idea of sodomy, rape or sexual abuse.  iNnd Storey makes another
point: Everybody keeps talking bout youths, or children one was a
child, the others were adults and everybody has withdrawn their claims
of sodomy except one..."

Paul Verryn speaks.  Mrs.  Mandela, really my feelings about you have
taken me in many directions.  I long for our reconciliation.  I have
been profoundly, profoundly affected by some of the things that you
have said about me, that have hurt me and cut me to the quick.  I have
had to struggle the come to some place of learning, to forgive, even if
you do not want forgiveness or even think that I deserve to offer that
to you.  I struggle to find a way in which we can be reconciled, for
the sake oTthis nation and for the people that I believe God loves so
deeply."

A bizarre space evolves from the evidence.  A house which had become
the centrifugal force behind seemingly opposing attitude.  The house of
the liberation movement's most reveredolitical lineage and the house of
lowly informers.  The hose where destabilized youngsters were both
protected and killed.  The house of famous, regal personalities and the
house of a particular kind of gangster personality brutal, insecure,
inclined to pathological lying.  Oddly enough, many of the thugs were
rural, Zulu-speaking boys.  Winnie Mandela was called: Mommy."  Her
second in command, Xoliswa Falati, was called: MaXtra Strong."  Her
followers were named: Shakes', Killer', Sponge' and Guyboy'.  Her house
was called Parliament' and she had a special chair no one else dared
sit in.  People were assaulted in the Fish Oil Room' and the shack at
the back where the abducted were kept was called Lusaka'.

Two key areas in the Mandela home keep cropping up: the jacuzzi and
Zinzi Mandela's bedroom.  The body of Stompie Seipei was seen lying
near the jacuzzi.  Some discussions took place in the empty jacuzzi.
And Cebekhulu finally alleges that he saw Winnie Madikizela-Mandela in
the vicinity of the jacuzzi lifting a shiny object and plunging it
twice into a body believed to be that of Stompie Seipei.

But it is the bedroom of the young Zinzi Mandela that seems to have
been the springboard for pleasure and guerrilla planning.  Not only did
the team gather there socially, but one member tells the Commission
that he received a crash course on the dismantling of an AK-47 in
Zinzi's bedroom.  Guns were stashed in her cupboard.  Winnie is a brave
woman.  She is capable of everything and Zinzi takes after her mother,"
says a former Football Club member.  She is not only beautiful, she is
capable of anything."  Two of Zinzi Mandela's four children are
believed to have been fathered by members of the Mandela United
Football Club.

The point of resemblance between the mores of a streetcorner society
and those of the political aristocracy is this: both are contemptuous
of legality.  The political aristocracy claim the right to honour by
tradition, which makes them the leaders of society and therefore a law
unto themselves'.  Street-corner society also claims to be a law unto
itself, not because it is above the law but because it is outside it.

Baroness Emma Harriet Nicholson presents South Mricans with the
unacceptable face of colonialism.  On a BBC documentary screened in
October 1997, she promised to confront South Africans with Katiza
Cebekhulu's evidence about the Stompie Seipei case so that they can
decide what they want to do with it'.  In exchange for bringing us
Cebekhulu, she demanded an air ticket, witness protction, a suspension
of his warrant of arrest, legal representation, and permission to
accompany him and testify.  Granted.  Now'here she sits next to
Cebekhulu, behind their lawyer, with a silly smile on her face.  She
has allowed no journalist to come  hear him.  You all want to make
money out of him," shis pped at the airport.

She testifies that as a champion of human rights s came to hear that a
South African was being held in a Zan an jail.  She found that she
could get Cebekhulu out of jail, ut that no country would accept him:
neither the United ngdom, nor Denmark, nor Sweden, nor America, nor C
da, nor any of the front-line states.  And the reason: it wo d be too
expensive to guarantee his safety, because he had offended a part' of
the ANC.

After her testimony she calls Stompie's mother outside and, in full
view of the packed media rooms, sets about convincing Mrs.  Seipei to
lay charges against Madikizela-Mandela.

We're working towards reconciliation in this country," a journalist
tells Nicholson, and that's why we use a re conciliatory mechanism like
the Commission."

The court needs to deal with murder," she sniffs, and I want to be Mrs.
Seipei's voice."

Thanks to the media hype surrounding the book Katiza's Journey, in
which Cebekhulu tells his story, he was initially regarded as quite an
important witness against MadikizelaMandela.  Especially as he was the
only person who had implicated her directly in the execution of a
murder.  But the book proves to be a major problem.  South Africans
quickly discover factual errors in it.  At'the time Cebekhulu is
dealing w4, the ANC offices were not in Shell House but in Sauer Stet. 
So his whole account of a meeting with Winnie on the eleventh floor of
Shell House, and how she forced him to flee the country, is suddenly
suspect. His floor plan of MadikizelaMandela's house is incorrect.  His
affidavit has an indignant tone not usually heard in South African
statements: the wives of political leaders, it suggests, should lead
humble lives.

This sounds more like Nicholson than Cebekhulu.  Or is it now the BBC's
Bridgeland that I'm dealing with?  Who am I cross-examining?"  cries
Madikizela-Mandela's exasperated lawyer, Ishmael Semenya.  Is
everything in the book true?"

No," says Cebekhulu, only the parts attributed to me except the Shell
House episode."

None of the people present at the assault of Stompie implicate Winnie
the way you do?  Although most of them have turned against her. Why?"

They are scared of that woman," ventures Cebekhulu.

Isn't it that you were so desperate in the Zambian jail that you
decided to exaggerate what you saw in order to get out of there?"

Cebekhulu used me as his scribe," says the Baroness, who has a hearing
problem and relies largely on lip-reading.

The ventriloquists surrounding Cebekhulu see to it that his evidence
feels as shaky as everything else we've heard so far.

It's pooh-pooh' here and I really don't know' there.  For four days
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela has watched powerful men bend over backwards
to avoid saying anything bad about her.  And it's become clear: those
who didn't have the courage to stand up to her in the past, still don't
have it today.

It is already dark outside when two former UDF leaders take the stand:
Murphy Morobe and Azhar Cachalia.

By mid-1985, virtually the entire UDE leadership had either been
detained or was on trial, says Cachalia.  About five thousand people
had been detained in one year alone.  Thousands of destabilized and
leaderless youths saw themselves as the soldiers of the struggle.  But
they soon became gangs, roaming the streets and meting out their own
version of justice.

They became personal fiefdoms and small power bases using extreme forms
of punishment.  And it is in this climate that Mrs.  Mandela created
her own personal vigilante gang.  I think my initial response when
hearing about the Football Club was that it was inappropriate to use
the revered Mandela name in this way.  Surely there were other ways
that Mrs.  Mandela could assist youths?  Soon disturbing reports o
criminal activity by the Football Club emerged.  I

Perhaps the most sickening case involved the abduction ly the Club of
two youths accused of being informers.  On one of them the letter M was
sliced into his chest with a penknife I and the words Viva ANC carved
down his thigh.  Battery acid was then poured over the open wounds." It
was said the Mandela herself oversaw this operation; but a Football Cl
b member testifies that Zinzi Mandela did the actual letteriig with
molten plastic.

No wonder the pupils of the Daliwonga High School set thj Mandela home
on fire.  By early 1989, says Cachalia."  cert4 objective facts had
emerged: four males including one chill-.  Stompie had been forcibly
removed from the Metho jt manse to the Mandela house; they had been
viciously beaten and kept against their will; one of the youths, Kenny
Kgase, escaped and reported his ordeal; Stompie's body had been
positively identified and all attempts to secure Winnie
Madikizela-Mandela's cooperation had failed not even Nelson Mandela and
Oliver Tambo could win her over; Paul Verryn had been framed; the
Crisis Committee had been' ineffective and the community had reached
boiling point.

And let me explain part of that boiling point," says Cachalia.  We were
fighting against the brutalization of our youths in jails.  And now
this happens in the Mandela house."

In a bold and highly moral step, the UDF leadership decided at the
beginning of 1989 to distance itself publicly from Winnie Mandela.  One
of those leaders was the organization's spokesperson Murphy Morobe.  He
had grown up in Winnie Mandela's street, and would often stop by at the
Mandela use on his way home from school.  On Robben Island he ad heard
Nelson Mandela debate the cult of leadershii- how an unquestioned
leader easily abuses power.

And in all of this, I was a living soul," says Murphy

Morobe.  Apart from the moral repugnance with which some of us recoiled
from the activities of what people in the township generally regarded
as Winnie's Boys , one of our major concerns at a political level was
the extent to which the activities of these boys were beginning to
distract everyone from our urgent and primary task of fighting the
regime."

This decision to distance himself had a profound influence on me as an
individual on my relationship with MadikizelaMandela..  . and had an
effect on my relationship with many others inside and outsi4,e the
movement.

The point I'm making in conclusion is that I got involved in this
because I believe these were issues of prciple... and for me it was
important that my organization, my movement begin to face them up
front

No one is quite sure whether the standing ovation in the hall is for
the sheer moral courage of these two men, or whether it is in
recognition of the enormous price one pays for moral courage in this
country.  Once upon a time they were prominent leaders of the UDF.  In
the new dispensation they are nothing more than the backroom boys for
politicians who still remember.  Murphy Morobe is Chairperson of the
Finance and Fiscal Commission, while Azhar Cachalia heads the Safety
and Security Secretariat.

Testimony of Nicodemus Sono, the father of Lob Sono

I last saw my son in the company of Winnie MadikizelaMandela he was
bleeding, bruised, shaking, crying.  I begged her to leave Lob with me.
The movement will deal with this dog, she told me before driving away
in her blue and white combi... I haven't seen him again.  I failed
Lob.

Thereafter the worst came .. . My eldest daughter was looking for a
job, she was in Langlaagte Station.  She saw a man exactly as her
brother.  She stood there, she was trapped, she was crying, and another
lady came to her and asked her,

What is wrong?  She said, That man looks like my brother who
disappeared in 1989.  The lady spoke to the gentleman and asked him
what his name was.  He said he was somebody, he was a Zulu, he had
taken out his ID to reassure Gail that

I am not your brother Lob.  My child was lost, she was crying.  When
she came home she couldn't speak, she couldn't eat.

We are still not at ease.  I am having nightmares, dreams, sometimes I
hear knocks on the door, thinking it is Lob.  When I am sleeping, I can
see him flying from the sky, coming home, saying that Mom, I am back
home.  Then I will open my arms and try to hug him, and say, Welcome
home.  I am pleading with Mrs.  Mandela today, in front of the world,
that Please, Mrs.  Mandela, please, give us our son back.  '

Mrs.  Winnie Madikizela-Mandela: The logic defies me.  Why would I
assault a boy and take him back to his father and then kill him?  Why?
And why is Mr.  Sono jumping on the bandwagon to accuse me of the most
heinous of deeds?"

During the struggle, when comrades criticized Winnie
Madikizela-Mandela's outrageous behaviour, a specific line of argument
always surfaced: Look at Albertina Sisulu.  She's been harassed just as
much.  She has suffered just as much.  Yet she's never put a foot
wrong."  It's for that very reason that Albertina Sisulu's testimony
before the Truth Commission is in many ways a tough test of her mettle.
She is such a respected veteran of the struggle that no matter what she
says, she will surely be believed especially in the course of a hearing
that is suffocating in lies, evasions, intimidation and fear.

Sisulu the wife of one of Nelson Mandela's oldest friends, Walter
Sisulu worked as a nurse for the Soweto doctor AbuBaker Asvat.  She was
at work on the day he was gunned down in his surgery, just a few days
after the discovery of Stompie Seipei's body.  f.arlier in the hearing,
evidence has been led on how Madikiz4-Mandela asked Asvat to treat
Stompie after the assault.  HV refused saying the child should be taken
to a hospital.  Evidence has also been led that Madikizela-Mandela took
Katiza Cebekhulu to Asvat, demanding that he examine him for proof that
he had been sodomized by Paul Verryn.  This too Asvat refused to do,
and referred Cebekhulu to a specialist.

Sisulu describes the day two unknown men killed Asvat.

I heard the doctor's voice calling a patient by name and heard the
examining-room door click, as this was a security door which could only
be unlocked by pressing a button from the inside.  I do not know what
happened there but as there was silence after the click I assumed the
doctor was busy with the patient.  After about ten minutes I heard
something that sounded like a hot... I shouted, Abu!  I thought that
perhaps he might be doing something.  No response.  I heard a second
shot similar to the first one.  This time there was also a scream by
Dr.  Asvat... I recognized his voice."

Abu-Baker Asvat was like my son," says Albertina Sisulu.  Yet the week
before the Winnie hearing, rumours were doing the rounds that she was
agonizing over her appearance at the Truth Commission.  And that the
ANC had sent her a lawyer.

Sisulu denies having seen Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Katiza
Cebekhulu at Asvat's surgery.

Are you aware of any argument on the day Asvat was killed between Asvat
and Madikizela-Mandela in his surgery?"

Sisulu: If Mrs.  Mandela has gone to see him she wouldn't go to my
admission room because that's where I was always..."

But wouldn't she have heard the click of the security door just as she
did when Asvat's killers entered the consulting room?

There is another discrepancy.  Madikizela-Mandela has always claimed
that she was in Brandfort when Stompie Seipei was assaulted.  In a BBC
documentary on Asvat's death, made at the beginning of 1997, Sisulu
identified her own handwriting on a medical card which proves that
MadikizelaMandela is lying.  Now, at the Mayfair hearing, she denies
that the handwriting is hers.

Duniisa Ntsebeza graciously suggests an explanation: Can it be that you
are trying your very best to say as little as possible about your
comrade and colleague and as little as possible that may incriminate
and implicate her .. . is it possible that it's because she is your
comrade?  And the Mandelas and the Sisulus come a very long way both
from the male side and the female side?  And is it because of that
reason that you wouldn't like to be the one who should be identifid in
South Africa's history as having dared to speak out about your comrade
in terms that seem to suggest that she was involved in the death of Dr.
Asvat?"

It is difficult to gauge whose face looks more distressed1 j Albertina
Sisulu's or that of her ashen-haired husband in hej audience.  Instead
of answering Ntsebeza, she goes or?at.j length about her contribution
to the struggle as if to ayJ

Did I not do enough?"

So even as I am shielding Mrs.  Mandela I am not here to lies.  I tell
exactly what I know and what I have seen..  Asvat was my child.  If he
had anything to do with the Mandelas and he had told me, I would have
stopped him and he would not be dead... What else would Albertina
Sisulu do?"

By the time she gets to this, she is covering her face with her hand.

Afterwards someone sees Madikizela-Mandela trying to embrace Albertina
Sisulu, who apparently rebuffs her with:

Ha yi, suka wena."  [ Go away!"]

Sisulu returns to the witness stand on the last day of the hearing and
it's proven that it was in fact not her handwriting on the medical
card.  But the fact remains that not a word of reproach for
Madikizela-Mandela has left her lips.  Whatever she still knows, she
has become part of a gallery of lives that Winnie Mandela has, if not
destroyed, then profoundly changed: Mananki Seipei, Nicodemus Sono,
Phumlile Dlamini, the Asvats, Nomsa Shabalala, Paul Verryn, Azhar
Cachalia and Murphy Morobe.  The are not yet over, but the toll is
high. beings

John Allen calls me aside.  A whole lot of amnesties have been granted
but they will be released in Cape Town.  I don't know why the Amnesty
Committee has decided to release them in the middle of the Winnie
hearing all the journalists familiar with the process are up here in
Jo'burg.  But if radio could get the bunch out on air it would help."

I look at the list.  All the important ANC names: Thabo Mbeki, former
MK Commander Joe Modise, Mac Maharaj responsible for Operation Villa..
. 37 of them in total.

Does this mean that there won't be any public hearings for them?"

Yes."

Outside, cars and trucks are passing in a smoky stream hidden under a
leather jacket to keep out the noise, Angie is filing a voicer for the
news.  I write the story on the laptop.  Something is not right, I say
over and over again.  Something is not right.

To the right of the Commissioners, a phalanx of mostly white lawyers
representing victims and perpetrators is building up.  I represent the
family of Lob Sono," says the lawyer, pronouncing it: Loubou Sounou.
Tutu shakes his head: Lo-16 So-n.  When the next lawyer talks about Dr.
Assevat, and another wants to put a question to Mrs.
Mazikidela-Mandela, the Chairperson simply throws his hands in the
air.

But when the lawyer of the Chili family pronounces the surname like the
spice, Tutu stops the proceedings: Agge nee boetie, nou't ek genoeg
gehad [ No, man, now I've had enough'] .. . it's xlin."  I am sorry
sir," the lawyer says neatly and confidently it is not possible for me
to pronounce that sound."

If you take their money, you respect their surname put your tongue
behind your teeth: x!ili."

We all wait in despair is this the time or the place?  But hark!  I
represent the... xl... x!-iii family."

Tutu smiles benevolently.

In these hearings, the Truth Commission is focusing on three particular
cases: the disappearance of Lob Sono, the death of Stompie Seipei and
the death of Dr.  Abu-Baker Asvat.  The cases have a lot in common.  On
the one hand, they're all linked to Winnie Madikizela-Mandela... on the
other hand, they involve the same three investigating policemen and a
history of missing documents, defective investigations and unusual
conduct.  As members of the murder and robbery squad at the Protea
police station, Henk Hesslinga," Frel Dempsey and H.T. Moodley
investigated the three cases.  all three cases, things went wrong with
the particular evidenJ linking Madilcizela-Mandela to the murder.

The Lob Sono case.  The driver of4 the combi, 14h I Siyakamela, makes a
statement confirming that the sVe ly assaulted Sono was sitting ill the
vehicle with Madci IaMandela when they talked to his pleading father.
hat statement gets lost.  The Truth Commission tracks wn Siyakamela,
who is initially willing to give a new statrient but later refuses,
saying that Mommy has contacted

The Stom pie Seipei case.  A police informer makes a statement that
Winnie was involved in the assault on Stompie.  His statement is
removed by the security police, who say they are also investigating the
matter. The informer is later blown to pieces by Vlakplaas commander
Eugene de Kock.  it also emerges that Hesslinga was once a member of
Koevoet, the notorious police unit, and a colleague of De Kock.

The Asvat case.  The two killers are arrested, but they are convicted
for robbery only.  In their statement they admit that they stole R120.
The Asvat family has maintained for years that not a single cent was
removed from the surgery.  The killers now say they were tortured into
admitting to the robbery.  They also say they were tortured at every
point where they said something to implicate Madikizela-Mandela.

The question hanging in the air is whether MadikizelaMande,la herself
worked with the police.  It is clear that there was cikse contact
between the Mandela household and the local folice.  She probably
thought she was running them, while hey probably thought the boot was
on the other foot.  But there was also a broader contact between the
judicial system and the politicians, who knew how things stood in the
first tentative negotiations with Nelson Mandela in Victor Verster
Prison.  At the time, some Attorney-Generals refused to prosecute
her.

The price for the negotiations was the embrace of violation and abuse a
moral ambiguity that suited the Afrikaner bureaucracy perfectly in its
last decaying years.

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela denies every single allegation of human
rights abuses made against her.  in her response she alternates between
the words ludicrous' and ridiculous'.  She uses the words so often that
relatives of the victims sitting in the audience begin to anticipate
her answers with their own sneering versions of ridiculous' and
ludicrous'.

So Mr.  Ikaneng, Mr.  Mekgwe, Mr.  Mono, Mr.  Dempsey, Mr.  Kgase, Mr.
Morgan, Mr.  Richardson, Miss Falati have all conspired to lie and
implicate you?  Is that what I'm understanding you to mean?"

They have lied, sir."  ... You are not suggesting, for God's sake, that
I would be responsible for the actions of those youths.."  they led
their lives and I led mine... II couldn't be held responsible for
that."  ... I am not playing around and I will not allow you to talk to
me like that."... It was not a violation of human rights that my car
was used to drive my daughter around on my business."... Why would I do
that?"

Azhar Cachalia is part of the Indian cabal I learnt later they call
Murphy Morobe Murphy Patel they were all part of the Indian cabal.".. .
I have given you my answer, if you don't like it, it's too bad."  .. .
I was, am and will always be the head of the household.  All my life
I've been head of that family

I delegate nothing to anyone."  .. . I am an ordinary human being they
did things to me that is not acceptable.  While many sat comfortably in
their houses, we fought a just war."

it is Thursday

A cameraman is wearing this T-shirt:

Life is SHORT

But my God this Thursday afternoon seems incredibly long

In the middle of the flow of denials a bodyguard carries in huge
bouquets of white and red flowers and puts them doirn near Winnie's
table.

My brain is splitting into a headache.  I have never been this
depressed at a Truth Commission hearing.  It's like reporting I on a
third-rate movie this miasma of scandal, arrogance, ambition, lies and
unbridled gangsterism.  This he arm  about my country, I am thinking.
And wlether there is sac for all of us.  And the conditions for this
space.  for

I also have a distinct feeling that for now this hearing h s nothing to
do with me, with whites.  Blacks are decidi g among themselves what
they regard as right and wrong.  ey are making that decision here,
today.  Either a black pqr on may kill because of Apartheid or none of
us may kill no matter the reason.  This hearing has little to do with
the past.  It has everything to do with the future.

The thought is unbearable in this confined space packed with
journalists.  I extricate myself from the web of cables and go outside
for air.  On the pavement a man is selling little white plates with
faces on them: Nelson Mandela, Thabi Mbeki, Joe Slovo and Winnie
Mandela all in the same row.  I flinch from the ardent sun and turn
back where to?

Where to?

I cannot live in a space where the face of Nelson Mandela or Joe Slovo
is interchangeable with that of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

We are struggling to establish a different dispensation characterized
by a new morality, integrity.  Truthfulness.  Accounjibility."

I sto5 in my tracks.  It is Tutu.  He's speaking.  I burst past the
gufds and run upstairs.  I see him sitting at the Commissioners' table
greyer than in my thoughts, and despite the purple garb more shrunken
than I have ever seen him.  But like a blade he cuts through the sordid
layers of lies and pretences, dressed up for the past two weeks in an
armour of legal terms.

Some of us were devastated and also found it exhilarating what had
happened at this hearing.  Devastated by the performances from eminent
leaders of the struggle the moral ineptitude that emanated from them
was unexpected and shattering.  But there were also the splendid
exceptions who stood out in stark contrast.

We need to demonstrate qualitatively that this new dispensation is
different morally.  We need to stand up to be counted for goodness, for
truth, for compassion, and not kowtow to the powerful.

I acknowledge Madikizela-Mandela's role in the history of our struggle.
And yet one used to say that something went wrong... horribly, badly
wrong..  . what, I don't know.  And all of us can only say: There but
for the grace of God go I. But something went wrong.

Many, many love you.

Many, many say you should have been where you ought to be.  The First
Lady of the country.  I speak to you as someone who loves you very
deeply... I want you to stand up and say: There are things that went
wrong... There are people out there who want to embrace you.  I still
embrace you' and Tutu folds his arms in front of him as if embracing
her because I love you.  I love you very deeply.  There are many out
there who would have wanted to do so.  If you were able to bring
yourself to be able to say:

Something went wrong... and say, I'm sorry, I'm sorry for my part in
what went wrong... I beg you, I beg you... I beg you please... You are
a great person.  And you don't know how your.  greatness would be
enhanced if you were to say, I'm sorry.."  things went wrong.  Forgive
me.  And for the first time Tutu looks directly at her.  His voice has
fallen to a whisper.  I beg you."  Time freezes.  Tutu has risked...
everything.

I hear my blood slushing in my veins.

It leaps, suddenly, in me up.

It bursts through my skin.

Ah, the Commission!  The deepest heart of my heart.  Heart that can
only come from this soil brave with its teeth firmly in the jugular of
the only truth that matters.  And that heart black.  I belong to that
blinding black African heart.  M throat bloats up in tears my pen falls
to the floor, I blubbr behind my hand, my glasses fog up for one brief,
shimmering moment this country, this country is also truly I

The heart is on its feet.

From far away I hear Winnie Mandela: I am saying itAs true: things went
horribly wrong and we were aware tat there were factors that led to
that: For that I am deeply sorry."1

But she didn't mean it!  Outside the hall angry victims giving
interviews to the media.  I The journalists are angry too.  She didn't
mean it!  She simply aped the words Tutu put in her mouth she aped it
for the benefit of international media coverage!

I cuddle the Commission to my breast.  I am elated.  I am so proud for
all of us Winnie Madikizela-Mandela has bent a knee to that heart.  In
public, she had to admit to the fundamental heart of this country.  She
had to.  She danced to that blessed pulse.

You're so naive," says a colleague who can hardly hide his anger.  Tutu
has just provided her with a respectable platform for faking sweet
words to further her populist political career She's walking away from
this as the only winner."

You are so wrong."

We are rolling up cables and packing away equipment.  I want to hold
everything.  I want to lay myself down over this place of us all.

The esnce of this hearing was the collision of two cultures I've in
the, black community.  The culture of responsibIty, human virtue and
guilt, and the culture of clan honour and shame."

He rolls his eyes in his skull.  I push him down on a chair.  My
paralyzed palate jumps to life.

Honour becomes the code, the atmosphere breathed by any close-knit
group a group outside the powerful group whether it's based on clan
loyalties, or ethnicity, or colour.  Winnie is the monarch of the
people for whom the new system does not work.  She symbolizes their
collective honour.  She personifies their aspirations and their right
to status. She has to cling to that honour.  If she admits to
wrongdoing, she dishonours them all."

So why do you expect ANG ministers to admit to wrongdoing, but not
her?"

Because the principle of democracy is virtue.  It affirms the equality
and dignity of all people, their rights and duties regardless of their
status.  Winnie's ethos of honour is fundamentally opposed to this.  It
toes the honour line.  It establishes two opposing sets of rules: one
for the kinsmen and one for strangers.  That is why she holds the
Government accountable for lack of delivery to the poor but she doesn't
feel accountable for killing the same people.  She and her group live
according to their own rules and the result is a permanent ambivalence:
a kind of self-deceit wrapped up in self-interest.  In the meantime,
their consciousness is obsessed with honour.  And in the field of
honour might is right."

So where's the collision?"

Tutu instinctively latched on to her operative principle of honour and
challenged her on her own turf.  He left the calls for moral
accountability behind.  He honed in on her honour.  He told her: You
are a great person, you should have been our First Lady you deserve
that honour.  You will be even greater if you admit that things went
wrong. And by begging her publicly, he said to her: I honour you as my
equal. And in the culture of honour, you are answerable for your honour
only to your social equals.  She dared not refuse.  She had to take
it."

So where is the victory for morality?"

By admitting that things went wrong, she herself wiped out her whole
culture of honour.  As from today her followers will have to say: She
killed for us, but she herself said things went wrong.  A space was
created for the first time for both her and her followers to admit in
an honourable way that things went wrong.  Dare one ask for more?"

So thanks to the duality of honour the killer becomes the chief and the
tyrant the minister."  He sneers and clicks his b4g shut.

But the killer and the tyrant for the first time contain el in the same
frame.  as the rest of us!  Isn't that some kind of beginning?"

ii,

2I

BELOVED COUNTRY OF GRIEF AND

GRACE

WE SHOULD BE harder on Winnie than on Magnus Malan or P.W. Botha,
because she stood for more.  She is supposed to be one of us someone
with principles," says a colleague.  It is midnight in Melville and
we're talking about evil.  He is working on a television documentary on
the subject.

Do you believe in evil?"  he asks me.

The mere fact that you use the word believe means you see it as
something that's not concrete."

Of course," he says.

There's no of course about it.  When I think of Hitler it is as if
total evil is a fact.  It is touchable.  When I touch him, I touch
evil.  And kitsch and evil are in perfect symbiosis in Hitler.  But
that is too easy, I think .. . besides, it's a male thing, this
obsession with evil."

He laughs.  This is getting interesting.  Why is it male?"

For starters, all the journalists zooming in on the perpetraiors are
male the smell of male bonding, male culture, misguided bravery the
machismo fascinates men.  With women it's different, and I think it has
to do with giving birth.  You have children, they all come out of you
yet one is a wonderful person, the other a stront.  But you know that
deep down in him, he also has something good."

Let me tell you, I've seen just as many female journalists drinking
with the man ne to get a good story.  But let's go back a bit why is it
too easy to decide that Hitler is evil?"

Because you deny him his humanity..."

He has forfeited his right to humanity!"

By refusing to acknowledge that he is human like yourself, you are
saying that you are not capable of what he did.  So you can relax.  And
I say you are capable of it."

But if you refrain from judging him, you kill off the awareness that
you should avoid certain ideologies, cFrtam.  people, because they
represent evil.."  that you should have nothing to do with them."

I put my wineglass in front of him and a pin from my jaclet.

Are these evil?  Every morsel, every molecule is being struck by
perfection and imperfection there is not a single a Ken that you can
pinpoint and say: this is absolute evil an t s is absolute good.  Good
and evil are never absolute.  Every god is imperfect in its own way and
every evil has an u4&le ying potential to be good."

Are you denying there are people with the char is a, the intelligence,
the power to manipulate a whole population into doing evil?  What then
would you say is the difference4 between Mandela and Verwoerd?  Between
Winnie and.W. or Winnie and Tutu?"

The odd one out is Tutu he is not a politician.  But the real
difference, I would say, lies in what some people describe as a culture
of shame and a culture of guilt.  The essence of shame is the honour of
a group, the essence of guilt is the responsibility of the individual
towards a specific morlity.  Verwoerd formulated a policy to build and
protect the honour of his people white Afrikaners should be proud of
who they are.

Wait-wait-wait..  . tell me about this distinction between shame and
guilt ."

It was used to explain the difference between the way the Japanese and
the Germans dealt with the aftermath of the Second World War.  The
Japanese had a culture of shame under an emperor, a God-given ruler.
The Germans had a cult re of guilt.  The usual catchy definitions are
things like: PecAe feel guilty when they violate the rights of others.
They feel shame when they fail themselves, when they fail their group.
Guilt is linked to violation; shame is linked to failure.  Shame
requires an audience.  Guilt does not.  And shame is more overwhelming
and more isolating than guilt."

So where does honour fit in?"

The basis of shame is honour.  Honour functions when the image a person
has of himself is indistinguishable from that presented to him by other
people.  The ethos of honour is opposed to a morality which affirms the
equality in dignity of all people and consequently the equality of
their rights and duties.  In a society in which honour is the keystone
of the values, any choice other than that imposed by the code of honour
is unthinkable, and it is at the moment of choice that the pressure of
the group is at its strongest.

I suddenly remember a photograph of Hitler I once saw in a magazine. He
is surrounded by children, and one girl is offering him a flower. The
admiration on their fine, pure faces.  And I remember sitting on my
father's shoulders next to the main road from Johannesburg, waiting to
see Verwoerd passing by on his way to Cape Town.  When he saw the cars
outside Kroonstad, he stopped.  I remember he touched my arm.  I also
remember how we only bought at Afrikaner shops even if it was more
expensive.  How the Afrikaner shop owners gave burs aries to poor
Afrikaners.

Honour became Verwoerd's driving force.  To protect the honour of the
Afrikaner, anything was permissible even the most dishonourable policy.
And the dishonour of the leader is the dishonour of the group.  That is
why the knife in Verwoerd's heart was regarded as a knife in the
Afrikaner's heart.  That is why P.W. says he will divide Afrikaners if
he appears before the Truth Commission he is embedded in honour and
shame.  And it's why Botha and Afrikaners like him do not feel guilty
because they have done something wrong they feel ashamed because they
have been caught out."

Ja.  Lekker.  The Truth Commission concurs with the universal view that
the Afrikaner is guilty.  We have betrayed civilization and its values.
We have brought shame and disgrace upon our heads .. . And the world
doesn't care whether it's Van de Merwe or Van der Berg.  So, where were
we .. . Winnie, I can see, definitely functions in a culture of shame.
But Mandela?"

I'm not sure whether it's possible for any politician to function in a
culture of guilt.  The politician's dream is to have millions of
obedient, unquestioning followers.  So he has to!  mobilize.  And
here's one of the differences between Mandela and Mbeki.  Mandela knows
the value of mobilizing o morality it works well in the Western world
and with whites.  Play on their guilt by being impossibly forgiving. 
Mbeki, on the other hand, mobilizes blacks on the basis of p honour the
honour of blacks in Africa.  But both of them fin it difficult to fire
a Minister or a Media Liaison Officer for mis behaviour or
mismanagement. Maybe this is the basis f transformation from a
liberation iaovement to a governmefit: to move from a culture of guilt
to one of shame." I Someone walking past the cafe recognizes my
companig from his television reporting and shouts: Fuck off, you and
your Truth Commission bullshit and Afrikaner-bashing!"  He shrugs his
shoulders.

How do you deal with this?  Does it make you angry or sad?"

In the beginning it would give me a kick I am not one of them!  Now I
want to grab this fool by the neck and hiss: The fatherland ceases to
be a fatherland when its soul is destroyed.  , Can't you see that we
have to stay true to the highest demands made on us by the best of our
ancestors not by the idols of the false tradition of Afrikaner
nationalism?  He laughs.  But this is not my kind of language."

And what do our ancestors tell us?"

He grins: Commando tactics small mobile groups, changing direction very
quickly the only principle is personal survival."

See, the culture of honour... maybe the moment the word verraaier or
traitor surfaces, you know that what is being defeded is no longer a
universal' morality but honour."

Okay."  o the Truth Commission itself is obviously a culture of guilt
making a huge entrance into an arena ruled for decades by different
cultures of shame."

Although in its origins and in its behaviour until it started talking
to the Nats anyway the ANC was very much based on a culture of
individual responsibility, with the virtues of discussion,
consultation, human rights and so forth.  But they seem to find it
increasingly difficult to stick to it."

Maybe that is the reason why so much hope is invested in the Truth
Commission, why so much publicity has been generated around it.  People
realize instinctively this is the last, the very last opportunity for
the majority of people to break into a culture of guilt and individual
responsibility.  If the majority can do that, then the politicians will
never again have such a stranglehold over this country.

I change tack: But what about ubuntu a person is a person through other
persons doesn't that effectively safeguard the culture of honour?
Through the honour of others you are honoured.  Won't that discourage
you from standing up against your group when they do wrong?"

Well, Tutu has gone a long way towards redefining the concept of
ubuntu.  Maybe the more interesting question is: if the definition of
us , of the South African group , of

African were to be changed to the extent that it now included you,
wouldn't you then move happily into the culture of honour and shame?
Isn't that why you so quickly apologized to Tutu and Boraine about the
Ntsebeza affair?"

I am taken aback.

He goes on: When the Commission decided to investigate itself, to keep
information away from the media it appropriated a culture of shame
within its broader culture of guilt.  If Dumisa Ntsebeza is
dishonoured, then the whole Commission is dishonoured, then the process
will fail. You dared to criticize.  Then you were told in so many words
by Alex Boraine that you wished to destroy the Commission, that for the
greater good you had to accept certain things.  What happened
afterwards proved you right and yet you apologized.  Because you want
to be included in their circle the circle of guilt."

There's nothing I can say.  Except perhaps that since the victim
hearings ended, the Commission has become too loud too many egos, too
many squabbles, too much politics.

Litany here along the long white shadow where I thought where I thought
I'd leave the litany of locust of locust and death I'll always hear the
litany of sound here along the long white shadow lustre where I grab
lustre grab honour that once was white the truth I've heard and how to
molest it that I travel I travel along the corn and chaff of my pa4t
that my past crawls forth on its deadly knees without ppce looking up I
that I claw on my knees claw to that place that light place that does
not want to dim here along the long white shadow of mortal and molested
truth we buried many we buried without shroud or ritual many we buried
and from the graves it sprouts the shadow sprouts of lustre, burdock
and wheat the locusts of sound here along the long white shadow and my
past sits so well in its teeth all along its teeth sit well in the
shadow of sulphur and lime it's time the time of assassin and shame and
tin

I keeslipping slipping out of truth while next to me along the long
white shadow walks the shidder that I was walks the long white shudder
of ash set me I who keep slipping in the long white shadow out of time
out of random and lies I want slipping from the shudder along the
emptiness of litany and shadow set me set me from revenge and loss from
ruins set me from the long white scar the lichen and ash set me free
into remorse oh my hand my hand grabs the sheet like a throat.

Cringing on-the banks of the Rubicon of Truth

The Priest and the Politician."  The Crunch between the Crocodile and
the Commission."  The Tail Is Testing the Truth."  The possibilities
are endless and we use them all.

Die Groot Krokodil is the only former political leader of any note who
has not put in an appearance before the Truth Commission.  When the
party he once led made its political submission under the leadership of
F.W. de Klerk, P.W. Botha refused to cooperate with his successor the
man who cleverly ousted him.

Archbishop Tutu personally went to the Wilderness to speak to Botha.
Yes, he abides by the law.  Yes, he is prepared to answer questions.

But a long list was sent to you at the end of 1996.  Where are the
answers?

No, the old man needs a lawyer.

Tutu personally asks the Office of President Nelson Mandela to pay the
fees for a lawyer.  As stipulated in state contracts, the state is
responsible for footing any bills covering legal actions that flow from
an office once held.  So the President's Office will have to pay for
P.W. Botha's lawyer.

Not one lawyer, a team of lawyers because a vast amount of research is
needed to answer the questions.

Okay, a team then.

Where are the answers?

No, the lawyers are battling to access certain documents.

Tutu personally asks the Minister of Justice to allow Botha's legal
team access to all documentation.

Where are the answers?

No, Botha is suffering from ill health.  He had to have a operation.
And indeed, blurred television footage shows him shuffling along in a
walking frame in the depths of his gardn.

Where are the answers?

It is June.  Botha's wife Tannic Elize dies unexpectedly Tutu
personally attends the funeral.  Tutu is crazy, the an Commissioners
say.

Spring, and a hearing is held on the workings of brainchild, the State
Security Council.  Botha is sul appear.  He cannot come, he is ill.

Where are the answers?  I

Patience, patience but the man is eighty-two and not in good health.
11

Apparently even an old man's fancy turns to thoughts of love.  The
newspapers publish photographs of a toothy P.W. lovingly kissed by a
blonde woman with skattige ogies.  In her younger days she was a meter
maid.  She is half his age.  She owns a guest house.  He wants to sell
his own house for more than two million and buy a place on the beach.

In the setting sun, the old crocodile stretches his jaws in a tirade
against the Truth Commission.

I will not appear before the Truth Commission.  I don't perform in
circuses."... I won't allow myself to be threatened.  The Truth
Commission is tearing Afrikaners apart."  ... I am not asking for
amnesty.  I never authorized murders.  I will not apologize for the
fight against a Marxist revolutionary onslaught."

Desmond Tutu: I have to say that I am very deeply saddened, because we
have gone out of our way to give him the kind of treatment even to
nobody else... we have taken account of his ill health, s age and the
fact that he was State President."

P.W. Bdtha: I'm not a fool.  I made many mistakes, but I

ask God on my knees for the light to come.  An Afrikaner doesn't go on
his knees before people, he does it before God."

Alex Boraine: We are constantly told about Botha's health problems. But
when we hear that he's entered into a new relationship with someone
half his age and has enough energy to launch vicious attacks on the
Truth Commission, we have to ask ourselves how ill is he?"

Desmond Tutu: At his wife's funeral a black radio reporter came up to
me, stuck a microphone in my face and said:

Explain, you, to my black listeners, what you are doing here.  '

Botha is subpoenaed a second time.  He doesn't turn up.  Tutu and
Boraine march to the Attorney-General's office to lay a charge of
contempt of court.  The Attorney-General finds that the subpoena is
invalid the time has not been filled in.

During the business hearings we came to learn of a letter written to
P.W. Botha by the Afrikaner business magnate Anton Rupert (father of
Johan) in January 1986, after Botha apparently stated that it was
better to be poor than to yield'.  Rupert wrote: I am appealing to you
personally.  Reaffirm your rejection of Apartheid.  It is crucifying
us; it is destroying our language; it is degrading a once heroic nation
into the lepers of the world.  Remove the burden of the curse of a
transgression against mankind from the backs of our children and
grandchildren... Should you fail in this God-given task, then one day
we shall surely end up with a Nuremberg."

But Die Groot Krokodil ruled supreme.

At some point in the eighties a group of academics went to see P.W.
Botha to tell him that things could not go on as they were.  After
listening to all of them, Botha stood up and said:

My dear Professors you can come here with all your clever arguments and
academic learning, but I, P.W. Botha, governs from a guts feeling."

It's the s that made me leave the National Party," one of them said
afterwards.  *

Friday 19 December 1997 has been set aside by the Truth Commission for
the testimony of former State President P.W. Botha.  The questions put
to him will be based largely on the 2 000 pages of answers he has
supplied in response to the Commission's written questions.  This pile
of papers, leaded on a small luggage trolley, was delivered to the
Truth Commission's offices by his lawyer two weeks earlier.  By now
Botha's refusal to appear before the Truth Commissin has become a
symbol: he represents the unrepentant white rulcl of yesterday,
ensconced in so much financial and polit privilege that nothing in
their lives has changed.

I'm preparing a radio preview, and so I ask for a recording of Botha's
voice from the sound archnes.  Of all thin js, ey send me his Rubicon
speech.  The speech all of us hoped would turn the country around.  For
days before, there ere rumours that P.W. was going to make some ajor
announcements.  It was 1985.

I lift the following sound clip: I believe wear today crossing the
Rubicon, Mr.  Chairman.  In South Africa -there can be no turning back.
I have a manifesto for the future of our country and we must engage in
positive action in the months and years that lie ahead..."

And I remember Pik Botha's testimony before the Commission about this
very speech: I wrote the Rubicon part' of Mr.  Botha's speech.  He kept
the Rubicon line, but remo4ed everything I put before it the un banning
of the ANC and the release of Nelson Mandela."

This speech, afterwards described as the biggest anticlimax in South
Africa's history, plunged the country into a political and financial
crisis.  Although Botha professed to be crossing the Rubicon of reform,
outside his speech-bubble vicious oppression continued unabated.
Precisely how vicious, South Africans learnt in the months of Truth
Commission hearings devoted to the mid-eighties.

I filth is report: Today Botha stands before a Rubicon of
adiffentkind.

Soij feel: leave him alone.  The spectacle of a doddering old geriatric
being hauled before the Truth Commission just a block away from the
Parliament where he once ruled the roost, will do South Africa's image
of rainbows and

Shosholoza no good..

But those who've listened to the victims' testimonies and the
perpetrators' amnesty hearings will know that in the mid1980s, when
P.W. Botha was at the peak of his power, Apartheid rule acquired its
coldest, its most brutal and murderous edge.

It was also in the eighties that it dawned on the Goverument that the
law could no longer be used to suppress the surging quest for freedom.
New laws, bannings, detentions all seemed powerless to stop the
uprising of the majority.

Thus the eighties became the time where new centres of control received
information, took decisions and gave instructions.  Laws were no longer
needed.  They functioned outside the law.  The taxpayer paid for the
era of hit squads, vigilantes, disinformation campaigns, cross-border
raids, chemical warfare and states of emergency.

Now people would like to see the man who engineered these systems cross
the Wilderness Rubicon.  They want him to step outside his luxurious
surroundings, which are protected at our expense, to come with his
legal team, paid for by our money, and make a gesture of accountability
to the South African Truth Commission."

Solzhenitsyn's words, quoted by Kader Asmal long before the Truth
Commission was established, come back to me again: By not dealing with
past human rights violations, we are not simply protecting the
perpetrators' trivial old age; we are thereby ripping the foundations
of justice from beneath new generations."

Botha is subpoenaed a third time.  Again he ignores it.  Now the Truth
Commission lays criminal charges with Frank Kahn, the Attorney-General
of the Western Cape, and a summons is issued for Botha to appear in
court.  We don't expect him to tell the truth, but we would at least
like him to feel the new South Africa where it hurts most: on his
skin.

What a delight it is to learn that a black magistrate, Victor Lugaju,
will preside over Botha's case in the regional court in George.

A triumph for affirmative action!  Thanks to this new Government's
policy of appointing people from form err disadvantaged communities, we
have the right man in the right place at the right time.

From the airport in George, Botha's former constituency, drive to the
Wilderness in search of Die Groot Krokodil's It is the day before his
appearance in court.  It doesn't Patrick and me long to identify the
house: crowds' photographers, in the regulation shorts and tackies, a
slung over each shoulder, waiting.  The silvery-pink outside the door
belongs to the flame, they tell us.  relationship with Reinet te Water
Naude, thirty-five yearsj junior, has been making headlines for months.
Just' months or so after Tannic Elize died, Mrs.  The Water Naude
appeared on the scene.  I am a Christian and Mrs.  Naude is a
Christian," Botha told an Afrikaans Sunday newspaper, and as Christians
we love each other.  It is written like this in the Bible.."  what will
become of this relationship I will find out on my knees."

The sun is setting in rose and honey over the luscious splendour of the
Wilderness.  The photographers are waiting for the arrival of former
Defence Force Generals Constand Viljoen, Jannie Geldenhuys and Magnus
Malan.  We wait with them.

I pick up the tourist brochure on the dashboard.  It seems that one of
the great attractions of the area is a visit to a crocodile farm.  In
ancient Egypt crocodiles were worshipped as gods.  A whole city called
Crocodilopolis was built in their honour.  Their priests put gold
bracelets on their arms, and fed them on cakes and honey in a sacred
lake.  Apparently the old crocodiles get to lie on the soft grass,
while the younger ones have make do with the sloping banks.  Crocodiles
can see at night like cats.  They can close their nostrils and stay for
up to two hours under water.  A special transparent eyelid also allows
them to see under water, and their ears are protected by a thin skin
which stops the water but lets through sound.

I look at the huge house and suddenly become aware of a slit of light
at the big sliding doors and there he is ... the old man himself.  All
I see is the silhouette of his big right ear.  He is staring at us. The
dusk is quiet, with only the far-off sound of cars on the highway. I
call the others, but as my hand moves he closes the curtains so swiftly
that I think I've imagined him.

At the ANC office in town, members are putting up posters on a wall.
Botha's Charge Sheet, one of them reads: Vlakplaas Death Unit Botha
guil... Victoria Mxenge Botha guilty Steve Biko Botha guilty.  From
Total Onslaught to Final Onslaught.  From the Forced Removals of
Lawaaikamp to Forced Appearance in Court.  (Lawaaikamp is a squatter
area in George.)

The local pubs are full of media people.  Originally the acting
magistrate of George, Elna Grobler, decided that only two people from
the media would be allowed inside the sixty seat courtroom.  An outcry
followed.  Okay, six.  Then the photographers threatened to disrupt
proceedings: P.W."s appearance will be their front-page stories they
simply have to get the material.  And the story is the precise moment
when the former State President appears before a black man in an
ordinary regional court.  If they aren't given access to that very
moment, they will simply have to force their way in.  The police phone
Mrs.  Grobler, Mrs.  Grobler phones Botha, Botha phones his lawyer
Ernst Penzhorn, and an agreement is reached.  Botha will use a side
entrance and walk past a gallery of cameras.  The media undertake to
abide by the law and not make any recordings of the proceedings.  When
the appearance is over, Botha will turn around in the dock and allow
the media to photograph him for five minutes.  Everyone is happy.

The next day Botha has the whole circus to himself.

To the right of the court, cordoned off with barbed wire, ANC
protesters are toyi-toyiing and singing: Botha is not a man, Botha is a
boy."  To the left a dozen ooms with long socks and open-neck shirts
are waving an old South African flag.  Right in front of the building,
from the back of a bakkie, a black man is singing his heart out to the
accompaniment of loud canned music: The people need the Loooord."
Overhead a helicopter hovers and all around us the police are
organizing.

I am one of the chosen six allowed into the courtroom.  In the front
row sits Botha's daughter who lives in Geo4 Elanza Maritz.  My
favourite car a Ford Elanza," whispJrs television journalist Max du
Preez.  He is bristling pith mischief.  e 2

The Generals sit in the second row.  Who are t her two?"  asks Max. 
)

I

Isn't it Lapa Munnik and Greyling Wentzel?"

No," Max assures me kindly, both of them are de

But in the end it turns out to be those two polii4ians Munnik, who
looks like a car salesman, and Wentzel,he one with the bywoner face,
sitting next to the short black mayor of George and a group calling
themselves: Die Afrikaanse Kultuurvereniging van Outenikwland.  [The
Afrikaans Cultural Society of Outeniqualand.]

Botha enters with his petite blonde.."  plover, is the word that comes
to mind, on his arm.  A plover pecks off the leehes and bits of food
that get stuck between the crocodile's teeth, says the brochure.  How
can you tell if it's a crocodile rather than an alligator?  By the
fourth tooth that sticks out on each side of the lower jaw.

Botha knows his turf.  He takes a seat not in, but next to, the dock.
He turns around often and smiles a somewhat rattling crown-toothed
smile at Mrs.  Te Water Naude in the family bench.  She smiles back
with pious intimacy.

The magistrate enters.  Everybody stands.  The proceedings begin.

Ar the first few sentences, Lugaju calls a halt.  Will they contuein
English please, he does not understand Afrikaans; Some people suck in
their breath.  Do they want a court interpreter?  No, the lawyers
prefer to speak in Afrikaans and then translate it themselves.

Before you can turn around, the magistrate has postponed the case for a
month.  It is over.

The racket from the rest of the media, waiting outside for their
five-minute shoot, grows even louder.  Then the doors open with a
flood.  I run to put my microphone with the others on the speaker's
desk.  People climb up on the court furniture, cameras roll, some are
already shouting their first questions.  The police yell at us to stay
back.  It is unbelievably hot inside the court.  Botha flings the
microphones off the desk in one sweep: take this away!  We shout that
we need sound.  The police cut us off.  Then above the clamour I hear
His Master's Voice.  Stop!  Sowing!  Havoc!"  he shouts.  If you don't
behave yourself I won't address you!"  He storms out.  We calm down and
everyone gets their equipment in order.  He comes back.

Life is full of irony," his upper lip curls with pleasure.  Half a
century ago in this court I was sworn in as the Member of Parliament
for George.  And here I am today... I am not better than General De
Wet.  I am not better than President Steyn.  Like them I stand firm in
my principles.  I can do no different.  So help me God."

Squashed in under the desk, Patrick and I glance at each other.  All of
us are sweating profusely, but Botha is enjoying himself.  He thumps
his finger on the desk.  I believe in God, I believe in Jesus, I
believe in the Holy Ghost, and I pray that they as a unit take control
of this country and this world!"  God, what is this man saying?  The
man who masterminded the death units!  I told Mandela to his face, yes,
I've met him three times, I've treated him like a gentleman in jail, I
told him anarchy and the forces of communism and socialism will destroy
you."  It is no longer necessary to take notes.  We've heard this
before.

I am sick and tired of the hollow parrot-cry of

Apartheid!  I've said many times that the word Apartheid means good
neighbourliness..."  Some journalist laughs.

He swings around, tail thrashing.  Who's laughing?"

Everyone is tjoepstil.

A crocodile's teeth come out easily, but when one falls out,

another grows in its place straight away, says the brochure.  A tooth
can be renewed 45 times.

I honour the soldiers, I honour the police of the past!  I salute
them!"

His eyes are enlarged by his glasses into two dark cad blots.  He
relishes the attention.  He cocks his head, he flap's the wattles of
his throat, his face is flushed, his hand tremAes until he heaves it
into the familiar threatening forefinger.

The tiger in the Afrikaner is awakened!"  he cries.

Did you know that there are no tigers in Africa?"  Max Preez asks
sweetly.

Stung and furious, Botha turns on him, shaking his, r. hjs.

Yes and if there was YOU won't be one of them!"

Aits, maar die oubaas s dit mooi!"  laughs Max.  [ the old boss put
that beautifully!"]

The lawyers try to usher Botha out.  That was tlq last question, they
say.  I am enjoying myself," Botha griq and rubs his soft white paws.

I

Are you not going to apologize?"  I ask.

For what?"  he snaps.

For the cross-border raids," I answer, for the death squads, for the

He cuts in: If you'll shut up, I will answer you!  I don't apologize..
. I pray for them."

He looks straight into my eyes.  And for a split second I look back
into the flat, mud-coloured surfaces of his eyes, grotesquely enlarged
by his glasses.  And I know that this man, who has had Mandela offering
to accompany him to the Truth Commission, who has had Tutu begging him
to assist the Commission, who has had the world's media chasing after
him ... is dom.  He is not senile, or old, or suffering from the
effects of a stroke: he is a fool n dwaas.  And we have been governed
by this stupidity for decades.

I try to find a pathWay in my thoughts to him.  A link.  An Afrikaer
connection of a kind.  No.  I can still find common grounj with those
who are baffling to deal with a dramcally changed order, with our part
in the past but with this swaggering fool there is nothing.

When Botha is finally led away, I get up and start walking.  Out, just
out.

Fresh air hits my face at the same time as this uplifting thought: he
doesn't govern, thank God, the crawling, trotting, occasionally gliding
crocodile, pushing itself along with its arrogant tail, does not govern
any more.

A few days before 16 December, Reconciliation Day, I get a bleeper
message: Commissioner Mary Burton to launch Book of Reconciliation.
Wonderful!  I think, and rush over to interview her.  I have long felt
that the Truth Commission, and more specifically the Reparation and
Rehabilitation Committee, have failed to mobilize the feelings of
helpless guilt in the former oppressors.  After the first few weeks of
hearings, something as simple as a Sunday collection for the victims in
churches around the country would have involved thousands of people in
a liberating ritual of some kind.

Now at last something is happening.  Books will be kept at the
Commission's offices in various centres, and ordinary people will be
able to sign them as a personal gesture of their commitment to
reconciliation.  There will even be an electronic version on the
Internet.  I decide at once to take my whole family to sign on
Reconciliation Day, with the idea of transforming the Blood River
ritual of my personal history into a new ritual of reconciliation and
responsibility.

Will Tutu or Boraine or Ntsebeza participate in the launching of the
Book of Reconciliation?  No, they are all busy, but they're right
behind the initiative.  In fact, the whole Commission thinks it's a
wonderful idea.  So, can people sign the Book on Reconciliation Day?
No, we can't expect the staff to work on a public holiday.

When you report on the workings of Parliament you realize quite
quickly: if a parliamentary committee consists only of women, no one
not even the political parties themselves will take it seriously.  And
no reputable male journalist will report on it.  The last time I looked
at the Book of

Reconciliation in Cape Town, it had been signed by seven people.
Another forty-five had signed on the Internet.

Most beloved state of heart I return again and again

We travel up-country for our yearly Free State Christmas and K I'm
surprised how far one can see.  How vast, how despertely beautiful this
country is.  And the strength with which it just1 stays itself.  My
eyes lick the horizons clean.  We take turns to drive, and the closer
we get to the Free State, the lighter w a V 1ecome.

We wind our way slowly through my home town, thru streets thronged with
shoppers.  The Christmas rusl* h s become completely black.  The road
takes us past the po where houses stand empty and broken-down, wires h
g loose and weeds flourish.  I remember my mother telling e that the
township authorities had bought, the lane1 for informal settlements.
From far I see the eucalyptus trees of my youth, then the poplars and
willows, and then spangled by the midday light the sandstone house like
a honeycomb.

What the..  .!  my husband stops.  On the gate is a huge notice: If you
set foot on this farm without a specific appointment, expect to be met
by an armed response.  It appears in Afrikaans and Sesotho as well.

Jerked out of our memories, we are all wide awake.  Surely this has
nothing to do with us?  Very slowly we drive up the gravel road to the
yard.  The lush thicket of trees around the house looks different.."
the undergrowth and low-hanging branches have been cut open to shoulder
height.  We understand now no one can hide near the house.

But they are all sitting outside and we tumble into the embrace of
warmth and jokes and happy memories.  We are all there.  My brother
Hendrik cuts three watermelons.  Afterwards we swim in the big cement
dam behind the orchard while the sun sets in a splendour of clouds. The
noises of the y4d become more distinct the milking of cows, the
tractors eing put away, then the sounds of frogs and birds rising like
moisture from the vlei.

That evening my elder brother Andries explains.  Do not go for walks
before eight in the morning or after five in the afternoon.  Close the
gates so that the three dogs can circle the house at night.  Do not go
out to any car that stops in the yard.  Of the nineteen farmers
murdered these past months, two were in this area.

We lie deep in the family double bed in the guest room.  My children
are sleeping all over the place in makeshift beds.  In the night I am
awakened by thunder.  I open the shutter and stand entranced by the
storm my nostrils filled with the blessed smell of wet earth and stone.
This is the place that first wakened me for words and it still does
after all these years, these many other voices.

Early the next morning I go looking for coffee in my mother's
kitchen.

Julie Kapenaars have brought us rain."  My father is pleased.

I see my mother coming back from the chicken-run with her two youngest
grandchildren, each swinging a basket of eggs.  She seems frail, but
the scene is so peaceful, we are so lucky, so privileged... But whereas
this privilege used to upset me in the past, now I can hold it against
a truth that we are all aware of.  No longer an unaware privilege, but
one that we know the price and mortality of.

On Christmas Day we go to the service in the moederkerk in the centre
of town.  Next to the big church the statue of Voortrekker leader Sarel
Cilliers is still at its post Cilliers atop a cannon, his hand raised
to take the oath of Blood River: God, if You help us to overpower the
blacks, we will keep this day, 16 December, holy for ever.

After the service we drive back to the farm.  Just before the turn-off
Andries speeds past us in his bakkie with his lights flashing.  We slow
down.  When he is in front we drive on to the farm in convoy.  I see
the barrel of a rifle next to him, and my sister-in-law Bettie takes
out her handgun.  At the house we all wait in the cars.

The first thing you check is whether the dogs are moving around
naturally," Bettie says.

But soon everybody is engrossed in preparing the Christmas meal: the
ham is being carved, the turkey falls in delicate white slices spiced
with tarragon and thyme out sid the children play cricket, the cousins
from the farm teach the others marabaraba... the younger girls lay the
table a9d fold festive serviettes.

I go out to the bakkie to help Andries carry in the coo with the beer.
A car draws up in the yard.  Without a word e children stop playing and
move closer to the house.  y brother puts down the cooler.  His body
has become taj it d vigilant.  His daughter Sumien runs into the house
and pars in a minute with the gun.  A black man gets out.  j

Go into the house," Andries orders us without tak his eyes off the car.
It is quiet inside.  We try to be ari when Andries's familiar chuckle
and his fluent Sesotho.  It i' man who grew up with my father, he has
come to wish him a merry Christmas.

How do you survive this?"  I ask.

It is difficult, especially for Ma and Pa.  She said the other day land
is the essence of the Afrikaner, because land brings freedom.  Now this
piece of land that Great-great-grandfather Delport bought with golden
pounds..."

Ja, ja, so many pounds it broke the table," I add.

Mama said she cannot cope with the fact that this farm, this lifelong
haven, this place that has always been the safest place we know, has
turned into an island under threat.  That when a car comes up the
gravel road, we don't know whether it's carrying friends or killers."

He sighs.

But to a certain extent I suppose this is more real.  This is more in
step with the country than the paradise of our youth.  What we had
could not last.."  the question is will this last?"

On a actor tube we drift down the river.  Like a small brooch of bores
my husband and I lie entwined on the soft flow of low velvet
river-water.  Cicadas lisp, there is the tender rumbling of river
doves, the willows with their limp green whips, the green reeds where
finches hang like gems.  Above it the white banks and the sky.  Slowly
we bob and spin.

I've written about this farm obsessively.  No other season can heal my
words.  I don't speak of it.  I call no planets hither.  My being is
weak with it, hangs on to it yet it can no longer come from me.  I
trail my hand in the water.  My husband kisses my neck.  You always
return to me..  ."  he whispers and the wrinkles in his voice are
motionless, and I never recover from you."

My bones catch fire.  I grab his slippery wrist.  My skin will never
forget him, my first love.  I am with him, as I am with my own blood I
am with him, my blood-beloved.

You lot from the city who talk to politicians and read newspapers .. .
what do you say when should we leave the country?"

We're standing around the fire where chops and wors are sizzling.  To
one side stands a black three-legged pot with pap.  My sisters-in-law
unwrap garlic bread and open tinfoil with buttery pa tats and
potatoes.

If you wanted to leave, you should have left already.  Now it's too
late."

No seriously," Hendrik says, when do you know the moment has come for
you to load your bakkie and leave?  And my second question is where
to?"

I ask the obvious question.  Why do you want to leave?"

Because this is no longer my country."

How can you say that!  Look where we are today and how It 15 ..

Would you die for this country?  If a war broke out tomorrow, would you
go?  Would you send your sons to defend this country?"

The yelling of the children playing kiejiat by the water is suddenly
among us.

No, I wouldn't

There, see it's not your country either."

Wait, let me finish ... I really do feel this is my country,

but I think that no one, no country, no politician has the right to ask
anyone to die for them.  They can make claims on my life, I'll make
sacrifices in that, but my death is my own.

Then you don't really love this country.  Do you think any Englishman
or American would refuse to defend thir country?  And why is that?
Because they feel it's theirs.  I will only fight for my wife and my
children and this farm."

Americans are prepared to fight for their country because," they have a
lot to lose," says my level-headed husband.  You' don't want to fight
because you feel nothing is yours yo F only want to defend the things
that are closest to you."

Andries opens a beer.  I want to talk about the Tfut Commission because
I keep on thinking maybe I o t understand what's going on.  But to me
it looks like a The politicians discussed it and amnesty was accepted a
a concession to us.  Now let me ask you: why did I only i ar about the
Commission after the first hearings were held?1 y did no politician
bother to explain to us: we are negoti' ing this thing called amnesty,
this is how it will work and this is what we will score?"

I was personally involved in organizing a workshop in Stellenbosch on
the possibility of a Truth Commission this was a few months after the
election.  Politicians and dominees and reporters were invited, but
they didn't come.  Die Burger, which could have reached
Afrikaans-speakers in the Cape, refused to cover the event.  Later I
reported on the drafting of the legislation for the Commission, and the
NP politicians had only one strategy and that was to try and score
political points by accusing the ANC of one-sided ness  Petty
grandstanding suited them better than actually explaining to their
voters what it was all about."

I have a question of my own.  These killings of farmers do you agree
with Mandela that it is a third force?"

For sure.  If you'd been in the army like the two of us, you'd know the
the violent actions of the right wing and black criminal are always
amateurish.  The police usually catch them prty quickly.  I mean, Walus
shoots Chris Hani and he's caught half an hour later with the gun nog
in his car.  That would never happen to an army-trained soldier.  And
these people killing farmers are professional they are swift, they are
accurate and they never kill so many people in one area that it becomes
impossible for others to go on living there.  I also think the killings
are linked to the armed robberies.  Come kill some farmers for pleasure
and rob a bank for your salary in between."

When will you leave?"  I ask.

I cannot leave.  I'm too old,.  I'm over forty.  I've lived here all my
life.  Where would I go?  But what I will do is fight.  There is no way
my children, my wife, or Ma and Pa will be harmed or gunned down and
I'll just stand and cry on television.  That day I will fight.  And let
me tell you the country's full of well-trained soldiers, thousands and
thousands of men who've been in the army.  It would take less than
three months to put together a solid structure for effective
underground violence.  And when someone says the boere are hus en so,
we'll take him out neatly."

So when will that day arrive?"

When we don't have anything to lose."

But shnuldn't you be putting your energies into building the
country?"

They don't want our energies.  They want to build the country
themselves.  And that's fair enough.  You know, I've never heard a
white man say, It's a pity they took my job away.  What they say is
It's a pity the black man who took my place can't do the job.  I don't
want them to say they'll keep our schools white, or they'll protect our
language, or we can keep our jobs.  I don't want that.  I want them to
realize that we can be of help or of use or whatever."

And when they accuse you of racism, when they hold you responsible for
all this killing and destruction don't you think it's unfair?"

No!  They're right I was a racist.  I wanted everything for myself.  I
wanted the best.  I did terrible things to get it and to keep it.  Now
it's their turn."

Surely you at least want them to treat you better than you treated
them?"

No!  I just wish they would want exactly what I wanted the best.  For
themselves.  Then they'd realize that we can help them to get it." 
Down to my last skin

The first Sunday of the New Year and the Commission is on the front
page: TRC set to be torn apart over ANC amnesties.  The amnesties
granted to senior ANC leaders by the Amnety C6himittee in November last
year are still causing co ct The newspaper says there are two factiois:
one group u4de Dumisa Ntsebeza feels the Amnesty Committee's dee(ioj
should be accepted; the other under Alex Boraine fee lt matter should
be taken on review.  This tension the rep goes on will come to a head
during a two-day retreat n Robben Island, which the Commissioners will
undertake this very Sunday.

I remember a press conference shortly before Christmas, where Tutu said
that the Commission was in two minds about the matter.  Can the
Commission take one of its own Committees to court?  And what will the
consequences be if it is left to the National Party to take the
Commission to court instead?  Since the Winnie hearing, the ANC
amnesties have' been in the spotlight constantly.  The decision
produced outrage in Afrikaner quarters.  General Constand Viljoen
wanted to know whether he could apply for amnesty for violations that
might appear on other amnesty applications.  As Chief of the Army I
armed thousands of young men every year.  I don't know what some of
them did.  Can't I apply in general terms for that?"  Viljoen was told
that he could not.  It's not our fault that the ANC received better
legal advice than Viljoen," said the Truth Commission.  When the ANC
amnesties were made known in the same week in which P.W. Botha was
subpoend, one of the' two Afrikaners on the Commission resigued.I am
just a token," Chris de Jager said afterwards.

A tokenvith no power."

At thai same press conference, I asked Tutu: Don't you feel conned by
the ANC amnesty?  As a reporter, I personally made a big hullabaloo
about the fact that the ANC was prepared to take responsibility Look,
here's a huge box full of applications, all the top leaders have
applied.  While the National Party won't admit to a thing... And now
they come with these amnesty applications, which are vague at best and
misleading at worst.  It's a sham.  Don't you you who have threatened
to resign if they don't apply don't you feel cheated by them?"

No," Tutu said without hesitation.  The ANC made a solid political
submission confessing to a lot of important things.  People who've been
victimized by the ANC many of them have testified right from the
beginning.  You must remember one thing, this is a moral universe the
truth will always out.  If there are ANC people who lied, the truth
will catch up with them."

And now this story of a split.  Although I am preparing Sunday dinner,
I find myself walking from window to window, distracted and upset. What
if it's true?  What if they are already at loggerheads?  What if other
Commissioners resign?  Now would be just the right time to do it you've
spent two years building up a profile, you've been banking a judge's
salary .. . get out now and you won't be held responsible for
everything that goes wrong from here on.  The idea sickens me.  Was it
a racial conflict again?  But my thoughts keep butting up against the
man in the dress.  Tutu has years of experience .. . but is he up to
it?

Ever since he returned from America after his cancer treatment he's
seemed very rhetorical.  Whenever he's confronted with anything he
simply keeps saying: God is good, God is good.  You want to say to him:
that's not enough from you sometimes God alone is not enough.  Has he
lost faith in the Commission?  Is he too ill?  Is he disappointed in
the Commissioners?  If the Commission can't make it work, what hope
does the country have?

On Tuesday the media sail out to Robben Island for a press conference.
Despite the crowd of blistering pink tourists, one does not travel that
distance, by that boat, untouched.  The cliche that is Table Mountain
stands breathlessly in blue, the sea is a quiet, glaucous heaving.  And
you think of the countless soul-destroying crossings made in this boat
the Susan Kruger.  Named after the wife of Justice Minister Jimmy
Kruger, himself enshrined in infamy for remarking that the death of
Steve Biko left him cold.  As the boat slips out of the harbour, I
think of Biko and how his story is the only famou one that has not been
put before the Truth Commissio iJ Because his family chose to take the
Commission to the Constitutional Court, we never got to heir about the
lati#e they saw him, how they remember him, how his child ne coping
without him, even as they live in his gigantic shtdjw.

We were not allowed to sit on the boat, to see people," as an
ex-convict.  We were taken below, there was a little trapdoor where
they kept the tyres we were kept there; the belly of the boat so when
the sea was rough you'd fl it many of us got sick.  And you don't see a
thing."

A bus takes us to the part of the Island where the retreat was held.
From afar I peer out to try and pick up whether any animosity is
visible.  But the Commissioners are sitting outside in the sun,
drinking, talking.  And they look so relaxed in soft summery clothing
and sandals that I hardly recognize some them.

It took them less than half an hour to come to the following decision,
Tutu says: the Commission will ask the High Court for a declaratory
order on the ANC amnesties.  And will then act accordingly.  And that
is that.  If this is a crisis, says Tutu, then give me more.  But it
seems there is a perverse desire in some quarters that this Commission
must fail.  I want to say to them a lot more hinges on the success of
this Commission than you may think, maybe even the very continuation of
our newly won democracy.

If anyone had told me in 1996 that we would become the kind of group
that we have become in 1998 united, althoui we differ I would not have
believed it.  Because things were often quite bad .. . you came away
from

Commission meetings feeling chewed up.  I think that overall if we, as
diverse as we have been, diverse in gender, faith, race, age if we
could jell as a group then there is great hope for our country."

What made the group jell?"

In part, I would say it is the experiences we have gone through
together, even if they were awful..  . But coming to this island was a
special experience the history of this place, the ghosts who are moving
around here.  Robben Island has always been a place of reconciliation.
And we said we wanted to be open to God I think God surprised us.  It
was actually a fun time drinking, singing, dancing, eating.  We
ourselves were surprised that it could be so beautiful .. . And we just
knew: our freedom will last, because it was so costly."

I do a Q n A with a radio station, standing on a low stone wall so that
I can pick up the cellphone signal, looking back to the continent.
There is a rawness in my chest.  It is mine.  I belong to that
continent.  My gaze, my eyes are one with the thousands of others that
have looked back over the centuries towards Africa.  Ours.  Mine.  Yes,
I would die for this.  It slips out, like a smooth holy sound.  And I
realize that it is the Commission alone that has brought me to these
moments of fierce belonging.

When I am away from these people, I falter, I lose faith.  I do not
want to let go of them ever.

The Commissioners travel back with us on the boat.  I pick them out one
by one, as they sit with the wind and sea spray in their faces.  I want
to remember them like this.

Was it really that easy to come to the decision?"  I ask one of them.

Yes," she says, Tutu has a way of making it possible, of transcending a
particular problem, of taking it to a level where we all just naturally
meet."  I look at him in the bow of the boat, joking with his sailor
cap over his eyes.  Because of him.

The Truth Commission was supposed to end in the middle of

December 1997, but its lifespan kept being extended, and as I write
this now, it is due to hand in its final report by the end of July
1998.  But the latest news is that even this might no longer be
possible.  By opting to take the slow, laborious route of full legal
proceedings for amnesty, the Amnesty Committee1 has admitted that it
will not finish the amnesties in time foil the final report.  So the
final report will not be final.  An addendum will be added after six
months.  Six months!"  one of the Commissioners sighs.  It's more
likely to be two years.  From the beginning it was a mistake that the
Amnesty I Committee was not fully rooted in the Commission.  I would go
so far as to say that even its autonomy as a big mista An unfinished
report after more than two years, thousands f amnesties unravelling
towards the millenmum, 1aj controversial decision on the ANC leaders.."
en ons sit met die gebakte pere."  [ .. . and we're left holding the
baby."] 4

Some journalists move on to new beats, others prefer stay.  I take up
the post of parliamentary editor for radio jj Cape Town.

In a wild arch of air I rock with the Commissioners in the boat back to
the mainland.  I am filled with an indescribable tenderness towards
this Commission.  With all its mistakes, its arrogance, its racism, its
sanctimony, its incompetence, the lying, the failure to get an interim
reparation policy off the ground after two years, the showing off with
all of this it has been so brave, so naively brave in the winds of
deceit, rancour and hate.  Against a flood crashing with the weight of
a brutalizing past on to new usurping politics, the Commission has kept
alive the idea of a common humanity.  Painstakingly it has chiselled a
way beyond racism and made space for all of our voices.  For all its
failures, it carries a flame of hope that makes me proud to be from
here, of here.

But I want to put it more simply.  I want this hand of mine to write
it. or us all; all voices, all victims:

because of you this country no longer lies between us but within it
breathes becalmed after being wounded in its wondrous throat in the
cradle of my skull it sings, it ignites my tongue, my inner ear, the
cavity of heart shudders towards the outline new in soft intimate
clicks and gutturals of my soul the retina learns to expand daily
because of a thousand stories I was scorched a new skin.

I am changed for ever.  I want to say: forgive me forgive me forgive
me

You whom I have wronged, please take me with you.

EN VOL

ii A BOOK LIKE THIS has to start s9mewhere.  It strtjtl when Professor
Andre du Tort discussed overseas 1*u* Commissions with me in the
offices of Die Suid-Afrika4n #ay back in 1993.  And it started when
Pippa Green ask me to become part of her political reporting team and
lar insisted that I head SABC Radio's team covering the lj4ith
Commission.  Thank you both for a loyalty and a friendship that I don't
deserve.  Thanks also to Franz Kruger and Barney Mthombothi, my SABC
bosses.

I only survived the coverage thanks to my unique colleagues: Kenneth
Makatees, Angie Kapelianis, Dumisane Shange, Zola Ntutu, Tapelo
Mokushane, Andries Sathekge, and the unshakeable Darren Taylor.  I am
grateful t them, and to Ross Colvin (for checking the facts), John
Yelcf, Roger Friedman, Stephen Laufer (whose phrasing I have used in
places) and Adri Kotze.  Prabhakara fed us all with oatmeal cookies,
and Francois du Tort of the SABC Archives patiently found the material
I was looking for.

Thank you to Anton Harber, then of the Mail & Guardian, who was the
first editor to ask me to write something in English, and to Shaun de
Waal for editing my work for the paper.

I am deeply thankful to the staff of the Truth Commission for always
being so helpful and accessible, and especially John Arlen.  I would
like to send a whole lot of Government liaison oicers to him for a
crash course.  Thank you also Allan blam and Merwede van der Merwe, who
helped me

ENVOI

mentally and physically through a breakdown.

Thanks to my children Andries, Susan, Philip and Willem, who installed
me into Windows with infinite patience, never despaired when I yelled,
Where is that piece I wrote last night?"  lied relentlessly on the
phone about my whereabouts, took endless messages, and cooked their own
suppers.  My special thanks to Andries, who spent hours on the
translations.

How do I thank a publisher who refused to take no for an answer when I
said, No, I don't want to write a book about the Truth Commission';
stuck with me when I said, No, I can't write a book," and also, I dare
not write a book'; and was still there when I came round to saying, I
have to write a book, otherwise I'll go crazy."  Stephen Johnson of
Random House had me signing my first contract as thick as a Bible, and
not only fussed about the book like a man with a vision but provided a
cheerful thread through my bouts of depression and self-doubt.

Without Ivan Vladislavk this would be half the book it is.  His care
and dedication, help with finding a poetic style, editing of text and
testimonies, and quiet encouragement make him a crucial part of this
product.

But the man behind this book is my husband John.  When I told him I
simply had to do it, no matter the cost or the consequences, he gave a
double gulp and rolled up his sleeves.  Throughout the writing, he kept
everything together with love, grace and an angry brow.  He is the man
of my heart.

I have told many lies in this book about the truth.  I have exploited
many lives and many texts not least those of my mother and my family on
the farm.  I hope you will all understand.  Antjie Cape Town February
1998

FEW OF US remember exactly what happened on the that Archbishop Desmond
Tutu placed the five thick v u es of the Truth Commission Final Report
in the hands f grim looking President Nelson Mandela.  It was a frag il
ment but what brought the precariousness home were e two speeches.  Our
President and his Prophet are famous for diverging from their written
speeches.  Both of them, at day, read their speeches sentence for
sentence, comma by comma.  As if each of them instinctively knew the
feelings were so volatile that overstepping the invisible line would
blow it all up.

It was only when the two of them were dancing after the formalities
(Mandela like a boxer, upright, punching the air to joyous choral
sound; Tutu like a township urchin, his' head bowed, arms flailing
around his knees) that we started to breathe more freely; not because
the process was over, not because it had ended as dramatically as it
had begun, but because of the remarkable consistency of the TRC.  A
huge pitchfork, it had kept throwing the country into the air and,
without fail, the same people fell as corn and the same people were
blown as chaff by the wind.  And after three years one thought that
perhaps people would act differently, chaff had possibly become corn.
But no to our great relief, despite F.W de Klerk and the ANC's last
minute attempts to infhjnce the release of the report, the two moral
giants of our coury, as always before and despite immense pressure,
were still" unequivocally, corn.

*

While this was happening, a journalist received a call on her cellphone
from an Afrikaner perpetrator.  He had appeared before the Amnesty
Committee for a number of vicious killings.  I was able to take
everything up until now," he breathed bitterly, but the fact that F.W.
de Klerk insisted that the pathetic half-page about him be cut from the
report, makes me want to vomit.  Here we sit for months in the greatest
shame, rejected and despised by everybody... and the bastard has
problems with a few fucking lines because he is scared of a Pinochet
being done on him while he is gallivanting overseas with his Greek
mistress."

We heard afterwards that the report had already been printed when the
TRC received the court order to temporarily remove its final finding on
former President F.W. de Klerk.  A TRC official rushed down to the
printers where the first copies were being packed into a van to be
transported to Pretoria.  Half an hour later people were sitting all
around the printer's works, blotting out in black ink half of page 225
and a sentence on page 226 carefully placing pieces of paper on both
sides of the censored pages to prevent smudging.

The report was to be handed to President Nelson Mandela on 29 October
1998 a date scheduled long in advance to suit the busy President and
the Commissioners compelled to fly in from abroad for the ceremony. The
Commission completed most of its work by the end of June 1998 leaving
only the judicially trapped Amnesty Committee to slog it out with
hundreds of cases still to be heard.

The journalists covering the Truth Commission were all invited to a
special farewell cocktail party.  As the TRC never paid for any
alcohol, it was a sensitive and rather unusual exception.  We arrived
from all over.  Like the Truth Commissioners all of us were battling to
establish what was popularly called Life after the Truth Commission'.
On the escalator into the hotel in Pretoria my cellphone rang.  A
colleague from the Johannesburg newsroom had just returned from an
unscheduled and certainly unexpected media briefing by the ANC.  A
high-powered ANC delegation at the press conference announced that it
was trying to obtain an interdict to prevent the TRC from making its
report public on the following day.  The reason given was that the
party had tried in vain to secure a meeting with the Commission to
discuss its findings on the ANC contained in the final report.  As he
asks me to get comment from Tutu, I see John Allen unloading luggage
from a car boot and Tutu hurriedly going up another escalator.

Can you comment?"  Allen shakes his head, Not untili we've seen the
actual papers."  In the foyer journalists ar already frantic in every
corner, on the phoie to their bosses Facts begin to filter through. The
ANC was sent all findings on the party that was to be published in the
TC final report and were given, a deadline to responl.  apparently
failed to do so.  In the end the organiztifmn contacted the TRC and
asked for a postponement to another date.  It was agreed upon, but the
ANC again failed to meet the deadline.  The ANG stated in its interdict
application{ hat the attitude of some of the Commissioners was arrogant
and confusing.  As journalists speculated aloud that the offending
Commissioner had to be Dumisa Ntsebeza, we' were informed that the
interdict application would be heard later that evening or early during
the next morning.  In a courtroom usually reserved for divorce hearings
at the Cape Town High Court.

What to do now?  The venue for the presentation ceremony is prepared,
equipment installed, victims, choirs and guests already ensconced in
hotels nearby.  Journalists are supposed to be in a secure lockup' from
six o'clock the next morning in order to wade through the final report
and to start filing comprehensive news reports the moment Mandela has
the report in hand, scheduled for around two o'clock in the afternoon.
Some Commissioners arrive and seem equally dumbfounded about the latest
developments.

We all bait for Tutu.  He is deeply upset, we hear, and was at one
stein tears in his room.  The initially cosy atmosphere of the coctail
room suddenly becomes dingy and depressing.

They sFy we criminalized the struggle," says one of the

Commissioners.  Are they saying that to necklace someone was part of
our struggle for freedom?.  Who is criminalizing the struggle here?"
Another says: It actually doesn't matter what happens now the ANC has
killed it for me these past few days I felt something die in me.

Tutu and his wife, Leah, come in.  He speaks.  But like a depressed
person.  This Commission has always been more than just people."  We
hear and we wait.  Calls go to and fro during the night.  Four o'clock
the current affairs shows phone where is the story?  At six all of us
stand bleary eyed and desperately tired still empty-handed at the
lockup venue.  It is a beautiful spring Pretoria day, jacaranda
blossoms fleecing the streets.  The court will sit at seven a.m., then
we hear it is to be at eight.  Tutu, Yasmin Zooka and Dumisa Ntsebeza
eventually arrive after a night of negotiations with lawyers.  We will
fight them, they say.  If the oppressed has become the oppressor I will
fight them, says Tutu.  Words for which he will never be forgiven.  But
they look flabby, tired worn out by politics within and outside the
Commission.

We stand around.  Some listen to radio.  One station has opened its
switchboard for people to give their opinion on air about the ANC
interdict.  The lines are clogged one black caller after the other says
I vote ANC, but they have made a mistake, we demand to see that report.
At the same time, in the radio studio, black academics claim to have no
problems with the ANC's position.  The ANC has fought a just war and
therefore could not have committed gross human rights violations.

We wait on.  The TRC cannot give us the final report in case the court
grants the interdict.  If we wait any longer there is scant chance that
we will be able to read more than the three page summary we are told
exists.  Depressed we sit around in the heat and do listless Q+A
interviews with radio stations.  Alex Boraine arrives.  While he is
being interviewed a journalist on a cellphone shouts: it's been turned
down!  The court has refused the interdict'.  A victory!"  laughs
Boraine.  We lurch into overdrive, but when the five bound volumes of
the final report, nearly too heavy to carry, are put in front of us,
most of the journalists there start to laugh.  Two hours left before
the ceremony.  Read here, then, overwhelmed by the paper mountain grab
something else until most settled down to read what we could of the
findings in the final volume

Emerging eventually from the lockup to move to the hail where the
actual ceremony will take place, we hear that Mandela was, apparently,
not consulted by the ANCon Its decision to apply for an interdict.  In
the hall the Commissioners sat dispersed in one area of the vast space.
They were clearly divided, uncomfortable.  Later we heard that tef very
last Truth Commission meeting was bitter aidJp acrimonious some felt
that the ANG's simple wish to h#vet discussions had to be accommodated,
others felt that lhi would set a precedent, forcing the Commission to
havf discussions with every other party and individual. The unit of the
TRC was gone some Commissioners were already' government posts, others
building careers on their T C experiences. Both Tutu and Boraine were
teaching at American universities.

It was decided to put the issue to the vote.  Fifteen Commissioners
were left after two had resigned from the TRC some time before.  The
outcome was seven for and seven against discussions with the ANC
forcing Tutu to cast the decisive vote.  It must have been a difficult
meeting.  For some Commissioners who supported the ANC throughout their
lives to go against the party; to oppose the very people you fought
with shoulder to shoulder.  We heard that Tutu was in a total
depression on the day of the ceremony and tried to secure a meeting
with Mandela.  He went in there small and timid and downcast when he
came out he was a different person laughing, walking tall," someone
told me.  Of all of these events, we knew nothing.  But we could sense,
strongly, division and an unravelling of power.

The poIicians start arriving Ministers Dullah Omar, Kader Asl, Joe
Modise, Jay Naidoo, and Alfred Nzo also with an all of uncertainty.
Mbeki would have been there, but he sends i,ord that his wife will
attend on his behalf.  She doesn't turn up.  Mandela and his companion
Graca Machel sit stiff and stern on the stage.  Tutu and Leah sit
holding hands staring at the table in front of them.

Then the victims enter a cross-section has been invited to attend the
ceremony.  Black and white, rich and poor, male and female among them
there was no division.  They have all come and take their seats between
the Commissioners and staff on the one hand and the politicians on the
other.

Everybody stands up.

Tutu speaks: Many will be upset by this report.  Some have sought to
discredit this preemptively  Even if they were to succeed, what is that
to the point?  It won't change the fact that they killed Stanza Bopape,
they bombed Khotso House, they tortured their own people in their camps
in Tanzania, in Angola, they neck laced people that is what the
perpetrators told us it is not an invention by the Commission."

Mandela speaks: I therefore take this opportunity to say that I accept
the report as it is, with all its imperfections, as an aid that the TRC
has given us to help reconcile and build our nation."  Mandela is such
a solid party man.  For him to take a stance differing from his party
must have been exceptionally difficult.

It was a very significant moment: the Politician and his Prophet
embracing each other while the clouds of political resentment against
the Truth Commission process finally closed in irritation and anger
behind them.

so much hurt for truth so much destruction so little left for survival
where does one go from here?  voices slung in anger over the solid cold
length of our past how long does it take for a voice to reach another
in this country held bleeding between us?

The TRC's final report consists of five substantial volumes.  The first
of these deals with the methodology, concepts and principles, legal
challenges and its mandate.  This volume also contains the financial,
managerial and operational reports of the TRC.  The second volume gives
an oversight of the history1 of the State's activities, inside and
outside South Africa, and of the Liberation movements.  Both of these
volumes contain a directory of organizational structures and the names
of those who held office, as well as an account of the Special P
Investigations unit of the TRC.  The third volume deals withj the human
rights abuses in every province 9nd its regiona political conflict.
Volume four accounts for the speci$ institutional hearings into the
role of business, the churche,j media, prisons, and compulsory military
service, the youthf and women.  The final volume contains a list of
names of those ( classified by the TRC as victims of human rights
violations, ij analyses the context in which such abuses are made
possible, I includes a reparation policy, findings and also
recommendations to prevent future abuses.  It includes, too, a minority
position by Commissioner Wynand Malan.

The report reads fluently and is interspersed with fascinating bits of
testimony.  It is formidable in what it manages to pull together.  For
example, all the Apartheid .  legislation ever passed by name,
intention, and date of passing, area it is all catalogued.  Apartheid's
many Commissions of Inquiry are listed.  Some of the contentious issues
are well argued and full cognizance is taken of the most current
thinking around each of them when the report's findings differ from
currently accepted norms, it provides ample examples of testimony to
justify the TRC's interpretation.  The report was also made available
on the Internet while most newspapers carried abridged versions of all
five volumes in special inserts.

But the taste' was gone.  The ANC's request for an interdict dominated
te news and overshadowed the content of the report.  It w quite clear
that the party could not have read the final report when it decided to
go to court.  The report does not treat the liberation movements in the
same manner that it deals with the Apartheid government.  One
particularly well argued section, based on the latest human rights
thinking, states that both the ANC and PAC fought a just war', but the
report makes a definite distinction between a just war' and unjust
means."

The TRC gives its final media briefing in Pretoria on the following
day.  Again, only a few Commissioners turn up.  We failed the victims,"
they say.  Our biggest regret is that we failed the victims here we
are, three years down the line and the victims still don't have
anything."  They recommend that future commissions ensure that they
have the powers and the means to implement some form of reparation
swiftly and without the involvement or possible sanction of a
government to impede the process.

Tutu asks his own peculiar forgiveness: Sometimes one was arrogant in
the attitude towards the NG Kerk (the predominantly Afrikaans Dutch
Reformed Church) why didn't you condemn them openly and then they would
say no, we speak behind closed doors.  And then Mandela comes to power,
I am sifting at a meal with him and I tell him about some of the things
I don't like and I say to myself: Aha, Tutu!  Here you are sifting
behind closed doors... and I would want -to say I am sorry for having
commended the gospel of grace many times ungraciously."  He reiterates:
I did not struggle in order to remove one set of those who thought they
were tin gods to replace it with others who are tempted to think that
they are."

Responding to a question on the problems that the ANC has with the
report, Alex Boraine says: Very early on in our discussion with the ANC
we referred to international instruments of human rights in which the
ANC themselves had participated they helped to write them and they
agreed with us that within a just cause parties should take moral and
political responsibility for gross human rights violations."

I interview Yasmin Zooka afterwards of all the Commissioners, she and
Dumisa Ntsebeza (despite unsavoury talk about the latter's sexual
behaviour) have grown most in formulating a fearless stance.  She says:
It is critical to put people on the Commission who are governed by
their moral conscience and a fierce independence of spirit.  I think
that it is in the last six months of the Commission that we have been
called upon to go back to the inner core of ourselves."

Several reasons have been put forward for the ANC wanting the report
changed.  One was that they really did not read the whole report even
after its publication and reacted, prematurely.  But their strong
criticism in the court papers andj I at their media briefing revealed
real irritati9n, anger and 4 resentment that must have its origins much
further back.  (

Another reason often postulated is that the TRC report #s particularly
damning about the IFP.  As the ANC is regularly!  in negotiations with
the IFP to form an alliance of some kind it would not do to have one's
prospective new partnerf besmirched by their alliance with the bloody
hands of thel previous government.  Such criticism by the TRC was, it
is said, unwelcome at this stage.  It is also suggested that the ANC
does not wish to let go of the rhetoric of Apartheid they need the
dictum that all that was white was bad and all that was black is good.
A more intelligent reading is that Mbeki was in a bind: to realize his
African Renaissance , dream, he needs to inst il pride in blacks as a
black African people.  He needs to isolate blacks from whites in an
effort to restore pride and confidence in themselves as blacks and as
blacks in Africa.  On the other hand he needs to restore the moral
fibre in a country wrecked by criminal violence.  His efforts to do
both sometimes lead to contradictions.

None of these reasons work completely for me.  Part of me feels that
this was, for once, an unpremeditated reaction by the ANC an angry,
clumsy cry from the heart.  There was obviously division within the ANC
itself on the report yet no one could voice it.  Only after reading an
article by journalist Ichael Ignatieff could I grasp the possible
underpinning of the ANC's response to the final report of the TRC:
Aggressors have their own defence against truth, but so do victims.
People who believe themselves to be victims of aggression have an
understandable incapacity to believe that they also committed
atrocities.  Myths of innocence and victimhood are a powerful obstacle
in the way of confronting unwelcome facts."  According to Ignatieff,
truth commissions can and do change the frame of public discourse and
public memory.  But they cannot be judged a failure because they fail
to change behaviour and institutions.  This is not their function."

One wants to upderstand this country.  One wants to live an informed
life here to the benefit of all South Africans.  So one continues to
listen closely.  But it is difficult to make sense of our daily diet of
contradictory codes.  How do you interpret them into your own small
life?  The first parliamentary debate on reconciliation, months before
the release of the final report, was filled with these contradictions,
raised many such.  questions.

ANC President Thabo Mbeki chose this occasion to deliver his famous two
nation' speech: South Africa is a country of two nations a rich white
nation and a poor black nation.  For him reconciliation is not between
perpetrators (of all colours) and victims (of all colours) but between
the beneficiaries (the whites) and the exploited (the blacks).  How
does one, he asked, weld these two nations which coexist in South
Africa into one?

The first requirement is that we must accept that it will take time to
create the material base for nation building and reconciliation."

Mbeki then asked whether people in the country behave as if their main
priority is reconciliation?  My own answer to this question," he says,
would be a definite No!"  The reasons he gives for his conclusion are
that many white-owned corporations are still not registered for tax
purposes, they demand more money, complain about affirmative action,
did not apply for amnesty, and resist, generally, the transformation of
our society.  All of this keeps us away from achieving this goal (of
national unity and reconciliation) and is producing a rage among
millions of people'.

Ostensibly, it seems true.  There is a general rage among blacks
(according to Mbeki) and whites (according to Constand Viljoen) and it
does begin to seem as if people migh tear at each other's throats.  But
for some reason it is not these two nations that are at each other, not
white and black, bpt Zulus killing each other in the Kwazulu-Natal
Midlands or coloureds' on the Cape Flats or criminals, of all colours,
killing apparently innocent people, of all colours.  Is it mere
coincidence that the groups who were most reluctant participate in the
TRC process were experiencing internal turmoil?

Currently, South Africans seem to be further apart before.  But this is
a sign of reconciliation, say the expert ii reconciliation!

But the response of Afrikaner leadership to the TRC has a final
consequence.  I remember attending a speech by Tutu to the press
gallery in Parliament, pleading with Afrikaners to accept and offer the
hand of reconciliation.  He was, quite literally, quivering, sweat
running down his face, his mouth distorted, his eyes angry and full of
tears.  The journalists present, mainly English and black, watched
impassively.

I grew heavy with desperation.  What does one do with this anguish of
Tutu?  This need for an appropriate response from Afrikaners?  How does
one define appropriate'?  Despite everything Afrikaner churches did ask
for forgiveness, Afrikaner business people, and a group of Afrikaner
journalists mainly Afrikaners appeared before the Amnesty Committee.
What more does Tutu want?  Is it something as insignificant as an
apology from a senile P.W. Botha?  Is it more?  An Afrikaner Millinn
March?  Is it more than money?  Is it to giv the land back?  What word,
what embrace will unburden all?

Shortly fore the handing over of the final report I interviewed the
German government on reparation of victims more than a hundred billion
dollars was given to Jews outside of the country making Germany a
prominent redistributor of wealth.  Its money changed Israel into an
industrialized state.  There's the Willy Brandt gesture.  I also
interviewed the head of the Jewish community in Berlin.

How can you possibly suggest that this is enough for what they did?"
Dead weight in my arms.  Why try?

But as the months after the final report go by, I slowly realize
something else.  The failure of Afrikaner leadership to admit that
something is owed has not only left the Afrikaner trapped in anger and
guilt, but it has, somewhat deviously, deprived the oppressed from the
opportunity to say, clearly: this is what you owe.

We of the white nation try to work out the conditions for our remaining
here.  We are here for better or worse.  We want to be here, but we
have to accept that we can no longer stay here on our terms.  Therefore
I prick up my ears and try to hear what the new conditions for my
existence are.  Taxes.  Mbeki mentioned that the transfer of resources.
Is that it?  Is he saying: your money will do, but please dear God,
spare us your meagre little white souls?

We are being told who we are what we have done wrong, but not what we
owe.  Why this vagueness?

I cannot believe my ears when I hear that whites still want to know
what they should do," says clinical psychologist Nomf undo Walaza,
interviewed before the Truth Commission debate in Parliament.

I really don't know," I tell her, The struggle taught me to listen.  In
the eighties I thought I could contribute my writing skills, my access
to power, to the media for the struggle, but it was soon clear that was
not what was needed what the struggle wanted at that stage was my
minibus and my fax machine.  I don't want to fall into that trap again
assuming that I know what black people want.  Do you only want us to
ask forgiveness?  Do people not prefer what Mbeki calls the transfer of
resources'?  And how should that happen?  Do you want all the land
back?  What is it that people want?"  I plead.

The past is never repaid in one final grand gesture," says

Walaza, this is a country filled with poor people.  Every white person
can make a difference to the lives interacting with theirs." 
Charity?

I thought, afterwards: we are trapped.  If there is no for un in which
people can think what they want and others worr# about what they owe,
then both are trapped in anger ar1d guilt.  By not determining
precisely what is needed, the whites are exposed to constant reproach.
If you give specifics they can be met.  And should one not also be
willing to be available I as a punch bag  Can that be part of the deal?
Just shut your big mouths when we blame you for this, after all, is the
onJy bloody thing we ask while rebuilding ourselies, by ourselvs.

The two nations are both affected, one by injury, the other it guilt,
and the first reaction is to withdraw from each oth People withdraw
physically or mentally from each other aft dr injury.  A mother in
front of the Truth Commission said that she did not want, even, to see
a white person.  People are leaving the country or pulling back into
their own family or group spaces of language or history.  Academics say
that this withdrawal may last one second or for centuries, but that it
is a necessary and healthy psychological response.

There were two Afrikaners on the Truth Commission: Wynand Malan,
appointed to bring the moderate Afrikaners along with the process and
Chris de Jager who belonged to the right wing.  The latter resigned
from the Commission after it took former State President P.W. Botha to
court for refusing to appear before the TRC.  Wynand Malan, who
complained bitterly throughout the workings of the Commission about the
hostility of his colleagues, ultimately submitted a minority report in
which he defends Apartheid.  In a rect article in the English press a
black academic asked: Wehave Mandela pleading reconciliation, we have
Tutu plead fng reconciliation where, oh where is the White

Prince of Reconciliation?"  Indeed: where is he?  And, of course, it
can be nothing else but a he'.

One of the stipulations in the Act that established the TRC is that
recommendations should be made to prevent future goveruments from
repeating the mistakes of the past.  But as time has passed, it becomes
clear that old habits die hard.  The most telling example relates to
the chemical and biological warfare secrets of the old regime.  These
are locked away in a safe and the keys?  The new goverument holds them.
While the TRC was exposing the horror of the country's death row, the
population was baying for the reinstatement of the death penalty.
Switching on a radio in the middle of a bulletin, it is sometimes
difficult to make out whether the story of torture is relating a
historical occurrence or reporting current news.  The accusations that
Parliament was never told about the Apartheid regime's destabilizing
incursion into Angola continue, to ring out.  But the non-racial South
African Defence Force of the first democratically elected government of
the majority moved into Lesotho, and Parliament was only informed of
this action two weeks after the event.  A BBC documentary about police
brutality saw a country ambivalent in its rejection of such deeds on
the one hand and its thirst to revenge itself on the perpetrators of
vicious crimes on the other.

When the first victim hearings started no one thought it particularly
strange that blacks and whites were sharing the same stage that a
mother whose child was killed by the Apartheid state sat next to and
wept with a mother whose child was killed defending Apartheid.  It is
only since looking into the treatment of victims in Europe after the
Second World War that I have realized what a remarkable step South
Africa took in regarding both sets of victims the same way.  By
treating pain and grief identically, the TRC exploded the myth that
whites and blacks experience grief in a lesser or greater manner.  That
grief and sorrow are ethnically exclusive.

The defining parameter in our continuing struggle for national unity
and reconciliation is the question of race."

Thabo Mbeci (During the second parliamentary debate on
reconciliation.)

Deputy President Thabo Mbeki led the South African parliament in a
national debate on the final report of the Truth Reconciliation
Commission.  A debate was scheduled at end of the final session of the
first democratically ele Parliament.  The gallery was packed with
students, vie academics and representatives of NGOs.  In the Presi
lodge I recognized a small mottled group two Truth missioners and a few
members of their staff.  The flamboyant figures were gone.  Those left
behind were out context, out of power and out of favour.  Somewhere on
the gallery one recognized another familiar Truth Commission face or
two. In the corridors of power the only voice which had challenged
political power for two years had now grown unobtrusive.  The TRC, once
something to boast of or to go to court about, has become
dispensable.

Mbeki was the first speaker.  He referred to the 340-year old almond
and thorn bush hedge planted by Dutch settler Jan van Riebeeck to
ensure the safety of the newly arrived white European settlers by
keeping the menacing black African hordes of pagan primitives-at
bay."

It was deathly still in Parliament when Mbeki made these opening
remarks on the Truth Commission's final report.  The last time Mbeki
had spoken about the TRC was when the ANG explained why it was taking
the Commission to court to prevent it releasing its report in October
1998.

People wkre confused at the time.  No one could quite understandvhat
the problem of the ANC was with the TRC.  After a mea briefing the only
accessible phrase was that the TRC's final' report was crimmalizing the
struggle."  Yes, and that, everyone agreed, was bad.

Mbeki's opening speech put the TRC squarely within the context of race.
It is this reality of a state founded on conquest, that had to be
retained by the same means with which it was conquered, which led,
inevitably, to the gross violations of human rights which constitute
the heart of the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission."

Egged on by expressions of shock and horror from the ANC parliamentary
benches, Mbeki proceeded to build upon his argument with quotations by
early European travellers in Africa about the blacks they had
encountered.  In a word, a beastlike people' Dutchman Cornelius van
Purmderend in 1609.  They eat.."  as dogs do... they live..  . like
animals'.  Frenchman Pyrard de Laval in 1610.  it is a great pity that
such creatures as they be should enjoy so sweet a country' Englishman
Ralph Standish in 1612.  Mbeki then used this racial context to explain
why the liberation struggle had been a just war and why it was,
therefore, outrageous to accuse the ANC of gross violations of human
rights.

Then it was time for the other parties.  IFP leader Mangosuthu
Buthelezi, of whom the TRC report said that it had erred in not
proceeding to subpoena him to appear before it, was not in the house.
The IFP member in his place implicated Truth Commissioner Khoza Mgojo
in gun running in Kwazulu-Natal and thus dismissed the report in its
entirety.  The PAC complained that the ANC's history had become the
only liberation history.

Subsequent to the Truth Commission process, the debate among Afrikaner
politicians has changed.  They no longer bemoan the national budget's
prioritizing of rural health and education for the poor.  They no
longer defend Apartheid.  Interestingly, the key words used by the
white speakers on that day were fear, humiliation and
incomprehension.

Leader of the (New) National Party Marthinus van Schalkwyk began by
defining the Afrikaner in a way that no Afrikaner politician has done
before.  The biggest battle the Afrikaner fought was however not a
physical one against somebody else, it was a psychological battle with
itself.  Apartheid was the Afrikaner's self-imposed concentration camp
of the mind.  The Afrikaner's biggest battle with itself was the
referendum of 1992.  That referendum showed that the vast majority of
whites and Afrikaners chose a new dispensation and so freed themselves
from the self imposed psychological imprisonment."

The leader of the right wing party, Constand Viljoen, reiterated that
no reconciliation could be expected if the Afrikaner was humiliated and
portrayed as worse than he was.  We are a product of our own history,
our aspirations have been real and legitimate.  So also our obsession
to be in control of our own destiny.  I am not asking for sympathy.  4
Nor am I suggesting that we don't have some liability for the past. We,
all South Africans, must in honesty consider what went wrong, what went
right .. . We Afrikaners are indigenous.  We are here to stay.  We are
not perfect, but we are genuine and honest."

The debate lasted for nearly seven hours and deep into the night.  One
of the last speakers was National Party member Jacko Maree.  A member
of the Justice Committee that drafted the TRC legislation, Maree has
consistently attacked the TRC for being biased.  His arguments over the
years have become so familiar that few people were listening when he
started to speak after the supper break.

But it was a different Maree who stood at the podium.  Addressing
himself to Mbeki, he said, I have a prepared speech, Mr.  Deputy
President, but I want to speak to you about what is in my heart." Maree
dropped all the formal phrasing he is usually so fond of points of
order', Madam Speaker', the honourable member', and so on.  I first
want to say I have the wrong credentials I am middle aged, I am white
and I am Afrikaans and I am a man... you made a speech that shocked
me... it gave me shivers down my spine and I thoght ... for a terrible
moment I saw in this chamber the jost of Mugabe..."

Finance 1viister Trevor Manual: Is the honourable member preplred to
take a breathalyser test?"

Maree: I feel perturbed and I cannot understand why the Deputy
President quotes what Jan van Riebeeck said about the Khoi and what
white people said about blacks three hundred years ago (it) is of no
relevance today but to create tension.."  why, when we talk of
reconciliation, do you pitch white against black?  I think of my
future..  . I think of my children's future and I wonder about their
future if the next president of the country makes these kinds of
remarks which I don't understand."  The noise' in the chamber became
overwhelming.  Maree seemed to be swaying.  Welfare Minister Geraldine
Fraser Moleketi rose' to ask the Speaker to stop him.  He had a speech,
she said, but he was seeing double and therefore could not read it.
This is no joke, honourable Speaker, you must help this man!"  Whether
Maree was tipsy or not is beside the point.  Mbeki's casting of the TRC
in race had obviously induced a feeling of helplessness in him.  To
Maree, Mbeki became a Mugabe, for white South Africans the epitome of
black hatred toward whites, holding' whites' accountable for all that
is wrong, yet is himself accountable to no one.  As always when South
Africa's past is the theme, the debates in Parliament are highly
charged with emotion, anger, bitterness, and accusations and low on
positive, re conciliatory comments.

Mbeki spelt out the problems the ANC had with the findings of the TRC
report.  The ANC feels that whatever went wrong happened within the
context of a just war against a racist dispensation and should be
treated as such; On the basis of the Geneva Conventions and Protocols
the ANC rejected the findings of the TRC that it was guilty of gross
violations of human rights.  But from reading the TRC report Volume One
proper understanding of the Geneva Conventions and Protocols.  Or that
it deliberately forwarded a very un nuanced formulation for reasons
only known to itself.

Current human rights approaches are indeed arguing to enlarge the
protected group and to decrease those who have a right to kill.  This
means that all decision making should always favour the defenceless. In
order to achieve this, the Geneva Convention makes three
classifications.  Combatant against combatant, combatant against
protected persons' (meaning prisoners of war, ex-soldiers, soldiers off
duty,!  defectors, wounded soldiers etc.), combatant against civiliar1s
(meaning all those who are not combatants).

A combatant killing another combatant does not constitute a gross human
rights violation.  A combatant killing a civilian is a gross human
rights violation.  It is therefore a grave mistake to call on the
Geneva Convention to justify the.  of civilians.  Mbeki has reasoned
that One of the c matters at issue was and remains the erroneous de
term of various actions of our liberation movement as gross rights
violations, including the general implication that and all military
activity which result in the loss of civilian constitutes a gross
violation of human rights."  This is precli what the Geneva Convention
4, art 47; protocol 1 articles 48SO stipulates.  But it goes further by
stating that the wounded, sick and shipwrecked members of armed forces
and civilians, prisoners of war; civilians including those interred and
those on the territory of the enemy... including those who have laid
down arms and those placed outside combat by sickness, wounds or
detention.."  should be treated humanely, may not be murdered,
mutilated, tortured or receive cruel treatment, humiliated with
degrading treatment or be executed without previous judgement."

These phrases, formulated in part by the ANC itself, thus condemn the
ANC for the killing of civilians AND for the torture in its camps, the
killing of informers and neck lacing

But who is talking about gross human rights violations in Kosovo where
civilians are daily being bombed," ask some ANC members in defence. But
that is hardly the point.  If the ANC disagres with the Geneva
protocols regarding protected perss and civilians, then it should say
so.

The AN(IIs un nuanced response to the final report and the fact that
mast of the political parties rejected the TRC was a severe blow to the
process.  Consequently there is no debate not on accountability, not on
how to prevent future abuses, not on how much of the past is already
happening in the present, not on collective guilt.  What is worse is
the absence of a debate on compensation, on the participation of the
guilty, on the relationship between the beneficiaries and the
exploited.

Mbeki initially said that the white rich nation should make up to the
black poor one, but during the TRC debate he stressed the contrary
people did not go into the liberation struggle for money and they were
not expecting compensation.  A closer reading seems to show that Mbeki
does not want those identified by the TRC as victims (and all victims
were treated equally and came from all groups and were violated by all
groups) to expect or receive compensation.  He would prefer that all
blacks, because they are the black poor nation, should receive from the
white, rich nation.  The difference therefore does not lie in the
ability to exercise.  moral choices in difficult circumstances, or to
reward those who upheld human rights, or to sympathise with all of
those whose rights were violated.  The difference, between the past and
the present appears, rather, to lie solely in skin colour.

With the main TRC infrastructure gone, the Amnesty Committee was
struggling to stay afloat on a choppy political sea.  In its own clumsy
way it tried to manipulate the public effects of its rulings.  First it
released a statement saying that the killers of Steve Biko were refused
amnesty.  On its heels followed a statement to say that 27 high profile
ANC activists (among them Thabo Mbeki, Joe Modise, Mac Maharaj and
others) were also refused amnesty.  In one of the later paragraphs the
Committee says it could not give amnesty because no violation had taken
place.  I phoned them this media statement was wrong.  You were not
refusing amnesty, the official decision said you could not give it
because according to the applications the ANC did nothing wrong.  So
what's the difference?"  I am asked.  The difference is that you make
it sound as if the Amnesty Committee is consistent it refuses amnesty
to both ANC and former regime perpetrators."  Then amnesty was given to
those who killFd the American exchange student, Amy Biehl.  I

Two weeks after this news the Amnesty Corpmittee announced that it had
refused amnesty to 79 other AIIC activists among them the rest of the
ministers, premiers dANG leadership.  The next day saw publication of
tLc statement that the Committee had also refused amnestthe killers of
Chris Hani Clive Derby Levis and Janus WaWz.

I remember how the ANC brought in their Exe of amnesty applications on
the deadline day.  They werlc*ried on shoulders along Adderley Street
accompanie by photographers and roving television cameras.  It was
hfled as an example of transparency and accountability.  w we learn
there was nothing on those application forms.  ey had not been
completed.  We also know that the Amnesty Committee actually granted
amnesty that was subsequently overturned at Court.

We have been cheated and made ridiculous," one of the footsoldiers
hissed through his teeth at a hearing.  This is a farce those with the
political power and access to Bizos, they walk free.  We sit because we
are nothing.  Those who killed Biko, those who killed Hani they are not
ordinary murderers, they killed within a political context.  But it
suits those in power to take away our political context to project us
as ordinary murderous criminals."

The TRC process was a deal between the Africans and the Afrikaners,"
someone in the President's office sighed, but it was hijacked by too
many white legal liberals and turned into an arrogantly moral,
self-righteous spectacle."

In theimeantime a National Prosecutor has been appointed who turn put
together a special task team to look into prosejiting those who either
did not apply for amnesty or had their amnesty applications refused.
Bulelani Ncuka has promised that he will sue perpetrators if there is
sufficient evidence and if it was in the interest of national
reconciliation to do so

How successful was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission?"  is the
question most often asked.  The answer is both complex and simple.

If one regards the TRC as a mere vehicle to grant amnesty, it succeeded
reasonably.  A lot of amnesty applications were dealt with, albeit
unfairly on occasion.  It has also left the country with a large number
of white generals and IFP warlords as well as some ANC politicians
without amnesty.  This means that the State and the ANC are vulnerable
to claims from victims.  A government that must deal with the enormous
challenges of development simply does not have the resources to pay out
endless claims or to fund costly legal battles launched by victims
against former perpetrators.  General amnesty is not an option,
promised both Mandela and Mbeki.  But what else?  Mbeki and former
Justice Minister DuIlah Omar have both said that it is an oversight in
the TRC Act that individuals can obtain amnesty that indemnifies them
from claims, while the State has to take responsibility for the
Apartheid perpetrators as well as for the liberation movements. 
Government is currently exploring ways to indemnify the State without
undermining the TRC process it is said.  Whether or not this is
possible, and whether amnesty to organizations is not general amnesty,
South Africans will have to wait to see.

Most people, however, seem to be so thoroughly sick and tired of the
TRC process that they simply would not care if a general amnesty were
declared.  I don't care," a police brigadier confessed to me, as long
as we can get this over and done with."

If the TRC is regarded as an effort to create a forum for victims to
bring some form of balance to the political ideal of amnesty, then the
Commission succeeded in a most remarkable way.  The experiences of
victims did indeed become part of the national psyche and part of our
country's acknowledged history for the very first time.  But, in terms
of repairing and healing the trauma of the victims, the TRC itself was
the first to declare that this was, singularly, its biggest failure.

If the TRC was seen as a body to establish the trutl, it also succeeded
fairly well in establishing factual truth, in determining what
happened'.  It was far less succssful in convincing South Africans of
the moral truth, who , was responsible'.

If the- idea of a TRC process in South Africa was to, prent violations
of human rights from ever happening a$a4, the Commission has failed.
There is no debate or discuso4jn its recommendations whatsoever and the
nation is so b#sicked by crime that it is desperately seeking ways to
pin h the criminals.

The biggest question, however, is whether or not die TRC process
achieved reconciliation.  Few people belies that it has.  Surveys have
found that people are further at than before.  It has also become
fashionable among some academics to trash the TRC seldom pointing out
that the first casualty of conflict is identity and that redefining
identity is a fundamental step towards reconciliation.  Blacks are
redefining themselves with the African renaissance; Afrikaners are
redefining themselves with the Anglo-Boer War.  A group that neglects
this essential stage is likely to become frozen in a permanent quest
for identity that often expresses itself in rigid and aggressive forms
of etlinicism or nationalism.

But what is indeed not visible in South Africa is reconciliation as a
mysterious Judaeo-Christian process.  What we do see daily is
reconciliation as one of the most basic skills applied in order to
survive conflict.  Scientists have found that monkeys, apes and humans
all engage in reconciliation behaviour, which tends to indicate that
reconciliation did not originate in the minds of humans and it cannot,
therefore, be apprpriated by an ideology or a religion.  The essence of
reccciiation is survival.  Its key negotiation.  Survival forms part of
our genetic make-up and the ability to reconcile vi negotiations is the
reason why some of us are still around.

Peculiarly, the word reconciliation' still resounds in the land.  It
carries within it the full variety of survival strategies among them
choice, flight, amnesia, rituals, clemency, debate, negotiation,
brinkmanship and national consensus.  The goal is not to avoid pain or
reality, but to deal with the never ending quest of self-definition and
negotiation required to transform differences into assets.
Reconciliation is not only a process.  It is a cycle that will be
repeated many times.

A multitude of ordinary lives in our land continually find new pathways
toward each other amidst the fragility of South Africa's new realities.
In many ways, we are remarkably well reconciled.  All the political
parties that participated in the June 1999 election have, at some
stage, rejected the TRC or its final report Politicians of every ilk
have, nonetheless, been fundamentally challenged by these ordinary
lives.  The reconciled diversity of our land forced each politician in
search of votes particularly those who assumed a mantle of leadership
to traverse our roads, to eat our foods, embrace all our children and
suddenly, almost, to speak all our languages.

That, in this country, is surely a wondrous thing?  The
End............