The End of Apartheid - South Africa’s Human Spirit

This documentary transports the listener through raw sound to the unprecedented public hearings at which survivors - victims, perpetrators and others – testified about gross human rights abuses since 1960. It contains award-winning stories with lots of gripping and contextual sound. Well-known musicians, storytellers, poets, former political prisoners, exiles and most of the Truth Commissioners thread the story of South Africa's past with music, song, poetry and commentary. This oral record aims to preserve for posterity the rich gamut of viewpoints, memories and emotions of South Africa's history - apartheid and democracy.

The first week of Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings in East London was an exceptional one in South Africa. Nothing like the miracle election of April 1994. Nothing like the Government of National Unity. And nothing like South Africa’s unifying sport victories. Mid-April 1996 was a week in which the country and its people came face to face with their past for the first time. Darren Taylor and Zola Ntutu reflect on the dominant themes that surfaced in the first four days of the Truth Commission’s probe into gross human rights abuses during the apartheid era.

The next Truth Commission hearing into gross human rights abuses at Athlone in Cape Town was also filled with protracted pain. But it was a week flavoured and characterised by the undertones of the Western Cape, where tensions were still entrenched within communities. The victims of the 1993 St James Church massacre echoed the forgiveness of the Cradock Four widows in East London. But the Lubowskis, whose son and brother Anton was assassinated in Windhoek in September 1989, mirrored the lust for justice of Steve Biko’s family. Angie Kapelianis and Darren Taylor look back at that mind-blowing week.

The Truth Commission’s symbolic hearings into gross human rights abuses moved from Cape Town to Johannesburg between April and May 1996. Again a number of themes were raised under the ceiling and the cross of the Central Methodist Church, where the hearing was held. For the first time an ordinary apartheid policeman came across as being sympathetic towards the comrades and opposed to the free rein of the notorious Security Branch. South Africans of Indian origin were finally recognised for their role in the liberation struggle. But some of these shifts in the Truth Commission script were lost on all but those paying the most undivided attention as the pain first experienced in East London resurfaced. Darren Taylor and Antjie Samuel return to the Johannesburg testimonies.

The Truth Commission wrapped up its symbolic round of public hearings into gross human rights abuses in Durban on the 10th of May 1996. Evidence heard at the Jewish Club provided some insight into the violence that was still ravaging KwaZulu-Natal long after South Africa’s first democratic elections had brought peace to most of the country. Many ANC members and supporters blamed the Inkatha Freedom Party in absentia for abuses they had suffered. A glaring gap was that the experiences of IFP members went untold in the same week that South Africa’s democratic Constitution was adopted. And in the same week that the National Party walked out of the Government of National Unity. Kenneth Makatees and Darren Taylor bring to mind what happened in Durban.

"Last will and testament" - Ariel Dorfman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Truth Commission's first public amnesty hearing was held in the relatively obscure village of Phokeng near Rustenburg in May 1996. The applicants were two convicts serving time for murdering Glad Mokgatle on the 29th of December 1990. They were 35-year-old Boy Diale and 53-year-old Christopher Makgale. Their amnesty hearing revealed a dramatic story layered with subtext. About a killing, a tribe, resources and, ultimately, power. But it also introduced a new scene in the Truth Commission play, with different actors and different lines. Antjie Samuel, Andries Sathekge and Angie Kapelianis report.

The Amnesty Committee's first public hearing of convicted white Afrikaans perpetrators was also its first rejection of amnesty. Forty-seven-year-old Hennie Gerber and 42-year-old Johan van Eyk appeared before the amnesty panel in Pretoria in July 1996. Gerber and Van Eyk were former policemen and ex-investigators with the cash-in-transit company Fidelity Guards. On the 21st of May 1991, they interrogated, tortured, shot dead and burnt their colleague Samuel Kganakga. They had suspected him of being involved in an armed robbery of about R4 million and the theft of R60 000. Angie Kapelianis and Darren Taylor report.

The first apartheid security force member to testify in public and be granted amnesty was police captain Brian Mitchell of New Hanover in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands. Mitchell appeared before the Amnesty Committee in Pietermaritzburg in October 1996. His 30-year prison sentence was expunged within two months, on the eve of the initial deadline for amnesty applications. Mitchell wasted no time in revisiting the village that he and his special constables had destroyed in December 1988, when he ordered them to kill ANC supporters on behalf of the Inkatha Freedom Party. And when, instead, they killed 11 people, mainly women and children, at a night vigil in Trust Feed. Dumisani Shange, Angie Kapelianis and Darren Taylor report.

They became known as the Five Cops: Jack Cronje, Jacques Hechter, Paul van Vuuren, Wouter Mentz and Roelf Venter. Between them, they committed more than 60 gross violations of human rights while attached to Vlakplaas and the Northern Transvaal Security Branch in the late eighties. These included the murders of Dr Fabian and Florence Ribeiro in Mamelodi, Richard and Irene Motasi in Hammanskraal, as well as the killing of activists known as the KwaNdebele Nine and the Nietverdiend Ten. The public amnesty hearing of the Five Cops was one of the longest, stretching from October 1996 to March 1997. It was held in three cities and at six different venues, one of which was destroyed by fire. This hearing also presented the Amnesty Committee with a unique dilemma: Can amnesty be granted for amnesia and memory loss, such as in the abduction, interrogation, torture and killing of three men: Jackson Maake, Andrew Makupe and Harold Sefolo?

He was unknown to the Security Police at Vlakplaas near Pretoria until they were told to "make a plan" with him. Several banning orders, long days in detention and a spell on Robben Island had failed to break his spirit and crush his fight against apartheid. He was Griffiths Mxenge, the human rights lawyer who vigorously defended ANC comrades. So they abducted, stabbed and hammered him to death at Umlazi, south of Durban, in November 1981. Fifteen years later, in October 1996, three of Mxengeís awaiting-trial murderers appeared before the Amnesty Committee in Durban. They were Dirk Coetzee, Almond Nofemela and David Tshikalanga. Although they had already broken their oath of silence on the apartheid governmentís death-squads seven years earlier, they had never buried their skeletons. Angie Kapelianis and Dumisani Shange report.

The murder of Sizwe Kondile - Dirk Coetzee

One of South Africa's most sacrilegious violations of human rights was the July 1993 rifle and grenade attack on the St James Church in Cape Town. Eleven parishioners were killed and about 60 others seriously injured or maimed for life. Three of the men responsible for the Sunday massacre were Apla cadres: Khaya Makoma, Bassie Mkhumbuzi and Thobela Mlambisa. In July 1997, they publicly told the Amnesty Committee that they had simply been following orders. Their attack was meant to shock and force the white government into returning the land to the Africans. After the Amnesty Committee reconciled their side of the story with the law, they were granted amnesty in June 1998. But a rare and unforgettable moment in that story was written by an unlikely protagonist, who decided to make reconciliation a public reality. Zola Ntutu, Darren Taylor and Angie Kapelianis report.

Surviving victims of gross human rights abuses continued to steer the Truth Commission's Amnesty Committee into uncharted territory in mid-July 1997. Until then, the amnesty script was predominantly couched in legalities, with only judges and lawyers jogging the memories of both perpetrator and victim. But all this changed during the amnesty hearing of former Western Cape security policeman Captain Jeff Benzien, the man whose name sent shivers down the spines of young freedom fighters, and whose name became synonymous with the "wet bag" and sadistic torture. Antjie Samuel and Kenneth Makatees report.

One incident that pushed South Africa to the brink of anarchy was the assassination of Communist Party leader Chris Hani. Millions loved him for his role in the ANC's armed wing, his militant speeches against white supremacy and his promise to uplift the poor. For these same reasons, apartheid supporters detested him. And on the 10th of April 1993, he was dead. Polish right-winger Janusz Walus and Conservative Party member Clive Derby-Lewis were sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment, for murdering Chris Hani. When Derby-Lewis and Walus testified for amnesty in June and August 1997, they were forced to explain why they had gunned down the man who called for peace only four days before his death. Angie Kapelianis, Darren Taylor and Antjie Samuel report on the amnesty hearing that could become a test case for reconciliation.

The Truth Commission was a bitter pill to swallow for the family of black consciousness leader Steve Bantu Biko. But it was even harder for them to accept when five former security policemen applied for amnesty in 1997 for "causing" Biko's death 20 years earlier. It seemed as if Biko's killers would finally tell the truth about how he suffered brain damage and died in detention. But when they appeared before the Amnesty Committee in September and December 1997, they again denied "killing" Biko. Harold Snyman, Daantjie Siebert, Rubin Marx, Johan Beneke and Gideon Nieuwoudt maintained that Biko's death was an "accident" for which he had been partly responsible. Darren Taylor and Zola Ntutu report.

They became known as the Cradock Four: Matthew Goniwe, Fort Calata, Sparrow Mkhonto and Sicelo Mhlauli. On the 27th of June 1985, these four men left the small Eastern Cape town of Cradock for a meeting of the United Democratic Front in Port Elizabeth. A few days later, their mutilated and charred bodies were found in the bush outside the city. Convicted Vlakplaas commander Colonel Eugene de Kock recalled that Goniwe's death was "the beginning of the end of apartheid". "Who killed Matthew Goniwe?" was a constant refrain for 13 years until February 1998, when a group of former security policemen finally stepped forward and said: "We killed the Cradock Four." Zola Ntutu, Darren Taylor and Thapelo Mokushane report.

The ANC and its military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, bombed various places in South Africa in the 1980s. The late ANC president, Oliver Tambo, better known as "OR", had formed the Special Operations Unit to take the liberation struggle to the white areas of the country. The apartheid government seized on these explosions as proof of the ANC's "terrorist" campaign to maim and murder innocent white civilians. These, it believed, were in a different league from Defence Force raids into the frontline states that often killed black women and children. In May 1998, former MK [Umkhonto we Sizwe] Commissar Aboobaker Ismail and some of his cadres sought amnesty for bombings that had killed 30 people and injured 350 others. Andries Sathekge and Darren Taylor report.

The media painted him as the arch-villain of the apartheid era and labelled him "Prime Evil". The Truth Commission singled him out as the man who broke the code of silence and forced security policemen to seek amnesty. He was Eugene de Kock, former commander of the Vlakplaas death squad, convicted murderer serving two life sentences and 212 years in jail for apartheid crimes, and amnesty applicant who helped convict former president PW Botha for contempt of the Truth Commission. Eugene de Kock waged war against liberation movements in Namibia, Zimbabwe and Angola in the seventies and eighties. When he returned home to fight the ANC, he said: "My war is only just starting." At Vlakplaas, the colonel led his men from the front. At various amnesty hearings, the prisoner still refused to abandon them. But for his former masters, the politicians and the generals, Eugene de Kock had only bitter venom.

By February 1999, not one single woman in South Africa had publicly appeared before the Amnesty Committee. The Truth Commission's final report said only 56 of the estimated 7 000 amnesty applicants were known to be women. Also absent from the amnesty hearings were the voices of the mothers, wives, partners and daughters of the men who perpetrated gross human rights violations. In mid-1997, we received a letter from a woman wishing to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals and threats. She simply identified herself as "Helena, from the southern Lowveld of Mpumalanga". Angie Kapelianis turned her letter into a radio story with the help of Alet Joubert, Judith Lubbe and Danny Booysen.

Two of the most intriguing characters to appear before the Truth Commission were an idol of the liberation struggle and a killer of the apartheid state: Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Joe Mamasela. She was a victim of gross human rights abuses. The apartheid government and its policemen harassed her, banished her to Brandfort in the Free State in 1977 for eight years and jailed her husband, Nelson Mandela, for a generation. Joe Mamasela, on the other hand, was a victim of both the ANC and the Security Police. His liberation movement accused him of being a police informer in 1979 and burnt his brother to death. The Security Police captured him at an ANC safe house near Pretoria, tortured him and tamed him as their "terrorist". But at separate and highly emotional hearings, both Madikizela-Mandela and Mamasela stood accused of perpetrating gross violations of human rights: abducting, assaulting and murdering fellow black South Africans. She denied the allegations. He admitted to them. Both refused to seek amnesty.

As a young man in Soweto in the seventies, Joe Mamasela was an activist following the teachings of Steve Biko and Malcolm X. But he ended up as a member of the Vlakplaas death squad, maiming and murdering his own people. Mamasela was an askari, an ANC freedom fighter that the Security Police "rehabilitated" into their own lethal weapon. An askari with a passion for gospel and soul music who killed about 40 anti-apartheid activists.

From soul to gospel. From murderer to born-again Christian. Joe Mamasela was a big man, who walked in expensive suits and drove a red BMW. He was a strange apartheid killer. He was black. And he used the Truth Commission not to plead for forgiveness, but to challenge the authorities. "I'm not applying for amnesty. So prosecute me," he said. He remained an enigma. Victim and perpetrator. Loving father and murderer of children. He was also regarded as the "cleanest killer of them all". Zola Ntutu reports.

As Joe Mamasela detailed the most brutal killings, the people who filled the amnesty hall were silent. Unlike when Advocate Cobus Booyens questioned amnesty applicant Major Gert Lotz. Zola Ntutu and Darren Taylor highlight how Joe Mamasela played to the crowd.

"I am a victim. Victim. Victim." These words resonated throughout Joe Mamasela's public testimony. And the amnesty audience acknowledged his blackness by cheering him on. Mamasela insisted that he was a double victim of the ANC and the apartheid police. This is what he told the Amnesty Committee: "The ANC murdered my brother. I had to identify his charred and semi-decomposed remains. And then I knew, I had to avenge his death." But in front of the audience with ANC supporters, Joe Mamasela did not elaborate. Darren Taylor reports.

Officially, it was called the hearing into the Mandela United Football Club. Unofficially, everyone referred to it as the Winnie hearing. For nine days between November and December 1997, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela faced a battery of journalists in Johannesburg at the Truth Commissionís special hearing. "She created her own vigilante gang" out of the Football Club, said one of her fellow top ANC members. But Madikizela-Mandela, one of the most potent symbols of apartheid resistance, appeared unfazed. Throughout the hearing, she was dressed elegantly, wearing her trademark sunglasses and flashy gold rings. Antjie Samuel and Kenneth Makatees report.

But it was in connection with the killing of 14-year-old activist Stompie Seipei that Winnie Madikizela-Mandela would forever be linked. In 1991, she was found guilty of kidnapping Stompie from the Methodist manse in Soweto and sentenced to six years in jail. Following an appeal, she paid a fine and never served a day. Darren Taylor and Angie Kapelianis report.

In the same vein, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela denied everything, saying the Truth Commission witnesses were "hallucinating" and were either "senile" or "lunatics". She also insisted that the Football Club members were not her personal bodyguards and that she never had any control over them while they were staying at her house. "If they committed crimes on my premises, I never knew about it," she said. Zola Ntutu and Thapelo Mokushane report.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its final report to President Nelson Mandela in Pretoria on the 29th of October 1998. This was the commission’s primary finding: The apartheid state committed the most gross violations of human rights through its security and law-enforcement agencies. The National Party government became involved in criminal activities when it knowingly planned, undertook, condoned and covered up unlawful acts inside and outside South Africa. It also colluded with certain political groupings, most notably the Inkatha Freedom Party. In turn, the Truth Commission found the ANC morally and politically accountable for gross human rights abuses committed during the liberation struggle. Its security department was found to have routinely tortured and severely ill-treated detainees in exile to extract confessions. Darren Taylor reports on the day that the ANC went to court to try to stop the Truth Commission from releasing its findings.

The defining moment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission varies from person to person. For some it will always be the moment the Truth Commission opened the floodgates of human suffering in East London in 1996. Or those rare moments of reconciliation, intimacy and even destruction between victim and perpetrator. For others, it is the pall of brutality and senselessness that has been exhumed with plastic-sealed skeletons and shattered bones from unmarked graves. Then there is the so-called "triumph of the truth" – the day that the architect of the Truth Commission, the ANC, failed in court to stop the release of the TRC’s findings. Angie Kapelianis asked the men and women tasked with exposing the truth and promoting reconciliation what defined the Truth Commission for them.

There is no roadmap for setting up a truth commission or a path to guaranteed success. That’s the view of Priscilla Hayner who has researched several truth commissions around the world. So how does one gauge the success of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission? Journalists who have covered the beat from day one will probably say that the commission’s greatest success is the face and voice it has put to apartheid. The public space and recognition it has given to the scarred faces and broken voices of victim, perpetrator and ultimately survivor. Angie Kapelianis asked the truth commissioners what they regarded as their greatest achievement.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has taken a bold step in its final report by acknowledging some of its own failings and shortcomings. The Truth Commission admits that it failed to call certain key actors, especially IFP leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi. It failed to make significant inroads into the post-1990 violence. It also failed to establish the complicity of local governments, universities, state-funded research bodies and former homelands like Venda, Lebowa and Bophuthatswana. The Truth Commission says its investigations into Military Intelligence and special forces were conducted too late for adequate follow-up. But it was also severely restricted from accessing military archives and classified records with the creation of the Defence Force nodal point. The truth commissioners shared some of these and other feelings of failure and regret with Angie Kapelianis.

Is there life after the TRC? This question has repeatedly been asked of those intimately involved in translating the story of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission since 1996. From the men and women who have shuttled between all the country’s major languages to interpret thousands of emotional stories and conflicting perspectives of the apartheid era. From the journalists who have criss-crossed the country almost every single week to reflect those personal accounts in words, pictures, voices and sounds. And from the truth commissioners who have had to keep the process glued together and make sense of it for everyone. Angie Kapelianis asked the truth commissioners what they planned to do with their lives after South Africa’s history of gross human rights abuses had been chronicled.