We must break the spiral of reprisal and counter-reprisal… I said to them in Kigali "unless you move beyond justice in the form of a tribunal, there is no hope for Rwanda". Confession, forgiveness and reconciliation in the lives of nations are not just airy-fairy religious and spiritual things, nebulous and unrealistic. They are the stuff of practical politics.

[The Commission] has given the opportunity for people to tell their story, stories which [could] never be told before... There were so many unhealed wounds before the [Truth and Reconciliation Commission] began its work. The evidence of those who have given witness [is] that, by telling their story, they have shared a burden and found a new sense of peace. This is very obvious from the sheer look of some of them as they walk out of the meetings of the Commission. Archbishop Tutu has said truth will ultimately come out; it cannot be concealed forever. It is in its very nature to reveal, to throw light, to clarify what is hidden. There are ways and ways of telling our stories and we are not encouraging people to relive and retell their stories endlessly and promiscuously – never moving forward, never leaving the past behind.

We retell our painful stories so that we shall remember the years that lie behind with all their struggles and terror as the way that led to new life…

I feel that what has been making me sick all the time is the fact that I couldn’t tell my story. But now it feels like I got my sight back by coming here and telling you the story.

The [Commission] has deeply affected my life in a short space of time that has elapsed since I first came to their offices here in Cape Town and told my story to one of the investigators. It has begun a healing process in all sorts of relationships in my family and has enabled me to begin on my own road to inner healing. Having gone to the [Commission] with my story, it is almost as if it is all right to talk about it now. Slowly things are changing. As if I’ve been freed from a prison in which I have been for eighteen years. It is also as if my family has been freed.

My brother, who worked for Armscor [manufacturing military equipment for the apartheid state] for five or six years in the 1980s, is all of a sudden much softer, more human and more able to talk to me … It is almost as if the silence is ending, as if we are waking up from a long bad nightmare.

We, as the Khulumani Support Group, the group that is mainly composed of victims based in the Vaal Triangle, would like to thank the Centre for Study of Violence for having considered the people of Vaal and, in that sense, having helped us to form this group that is existing today with a membership of more than 200 victims. I should say the Khulumani Support Group is very much aware of the objective of the [Commission], which is to promote healing, reconciliation and rehabilitation. We needed to consider the fear that was within the people in the Vaal Triangle of coming forward to tell of their experiences concerning the events and the incidents of the apartheid era. The [Commission] helped many of our people to break the shells of their griefs and fear that they had lived with in the past many years.

It’s the intervention of the [Commission] that brought about the dignity of the people that was lost during the political era in our country. People had no one to listen to their griefs or pay attention to some of those griefs until the establishment of [Commission] came into being. Then many of the victims came forward and started, for the first time, to talk about their past griefs… [edited]

Ma’am, I am not here to get any compensation, I am just – I feel very hurtful for my shot son. It is the Commission that will see what it can do, but I am not here to tell the Commission what to do. I am not here to gain anything about that. I just feel very sore inside. My heart is broken. There is nothing else I am going to say now.

I know, Chairperson, that the Truth Commission has got a programme of therapy, but I hope it can be sustained, because my own experience in the few months has been that some of the women whose wounds you opened – we did not pay enough time or give them enough opportunity to heal once they left these halls.

I have been to Cape Town where there were hearings, Chairperson. I have been to Port Elizabeth. I have been to King William’s Town. There are wounds that have been left gaping. It may not be the duty of the [Commission] alone; it may be the duty of the public, of all of us; but those wounds, they need to be addressed, Chairperson. You cannot open them in this hall and leave them gaping. Somebody has got to take responsibility.

We found that many parents are not aware whether their children died as heroes because at that time you couldn’t go home and tell your parents what you were involved in. You did not want them to expect you to be shot and to be in jail. I think this is one of the important things in this Commission, that old people like you, at last, would find out the truth, the truth about the struggle of their children, because they did not tell them what was happening.

What is important to me is that maybe the Commission will give out a report that will help you to go to your children’s graves, to talk to your children – that you were not aware that they were fighting for their country – so that you can salute them.

On the 25th of February 1980, I was sentenced by a military court in Pretoria to twelve months in military prison for refusing to be conscripted into the SADF. Although that day was scary because I knew that by nightfall I would be in prison, it was also one of the most powerful days in my life. On that day, I publicly and practically said ‘no’ to the whole system of apartheid and military conscription, both of which were anathema to my principles.

I can say that today, the 23rd of July 1997, is one of the most powerful days of my life as well, when I have the opportunity to publicly celebrate my survival through that year in prison and to say ‘yes’ to a society based on truth and reconciliation.

I wanted to say this when Miss Mhlawuli was here – but perhaps I should speak and you will tell her. I said after Ms Mazwai that I was deeply proud of the fact that I was black and that we had people of her calibre. We are proud to have people like you and your husbands, and the reason why we won the struggle is not because we had guns; we won the struggle because of people like you: people of incredible strength. And this country is fortunate to have people like you… We have a tremendous country, which has tremendous people, and you are one example of why we make it in this country. And that she, your daughter, should say, "I want to forgive, we want to forgive", after what she has experienced and seen what happened to her mother and to her father, and she says, "we want to forgive, but we want to know who to forgive". We give thanks to God for you, and thank you for your contribution to our struggle, and thank you, even if it was reluctant in a sense, rightly, thank you for sacrificing your husbands.

Coming from the apartheid era at my age, forty-three, I was never a supporter – an active supporter – of apartheid. But it’s something that you grew up with, and things changed quite fast in the last couple of years. All of a sudden you start hearing from the blacks how they’ve been ill-treated, exploited, all kinds of words, and all of a sudden you start seeing the bad side of it, and I think the media ran away with it. I think the media, from the one extreme, they went to the other extreme where we were hearing this on a constant basis. At first, it was an eye-opener to hear of it then, after a while, my feeling was, gee! when are they going to stop moaning? We’re just hearing the same type of thing all the time. It’s just sort of the names [that] change, but it’s the same thing all the time and was it really that bad?

You know, coming from a background where everything was fine for all these years, now all of a sudden the picture [is] changing, that the police were the ‘baddies’.

I don’t have a lot of contact with blacks myself in every day life, so your perceptions aren’t always a hundred per cent correct, and you tend to believe what the media tells you. And all of a sudden, the media turns around and [makes] the white guy, the police … the bad guy.

I started questioning the whole [Commission process], I think the role of the media – I think they went overboard and that created the impression that they just want to keep on highlighting that side of things. Yes, I think that’s why I called it a circus; that’s why I wasn’t keen on going at first. But then, because of my personal involvement, I thought, "no, let me just see".

And I think it was a sort of initial resistance that came about, which I think if I think of my friends and so on, it’s a fairly natural reaction.

In our organisation, there are a couple of thousand of young men. More than 50 per cent of them were national servicemen; the rest were too young. In my work in the JRB, I see most of these people during the year and we talk to each other.

I don’t want to blame the [Commission] – the media is inclined to look at these atrocities. But the same names, the same police are repeatedly referred to, while there is no mention made of the majority of people who were in the police and the Defence Force who weren’t involved in the atrocities.

They provided a service for the country, because they loved the country. This is still the case at present and they would probably do it again.

We represent IFP prisoners in reconciliation with ANC prisoners… There are a lot of people who are in prison who are responsible for actions similar to ours. But organisations today are not interested in those people. They are speaking about peace processes, but are not concerned about the foot soldiers who carried out these activities…

We need counselling because this affects you mentally, psychologically. Nobody has come forth to suggest how we can get this counselling; how the element of criminality can be rooted out; how we can become human again.

After that, this man Kroeter was like harassing my mother; he was screaming and yelling at her, asking whose belongings are these, why does she say everything belongs to my father? And my mother said, "because the stuff does belong to him", and he doesn’t necessarily do what he does with her, because he was like barking, like talking to a dog. My mother said, "I’m a human being, so are you, so you don’t need to speak the way you do."

This man said, "The truth will come out one day", and that was very ironic because here we are today in the Truth Commission talking about this truth. And I mean I never expected him to say that because the truth that is coming out is based on him now, not us. We’re the victims. He’s the one that committed all this pain to us, you know. And after that my mother said, "I agree with you very much, I strongly agree with you. The truth is definitely coming out one day." And this man sat down, and for once ever since he entered the door, he sat down, and he asked my mother if he could smoke. My mother said, "Okay fine", he could smoke. He lit a cigarette and he sat down and smoked. He looked quite withdrawn after that. And they had arrived at our house around about twelve midnight, and now it was around about six in the morning.

Then I would take up a position in the small of the person’s back, put my feet through between his arms to maintain my balance and then pull the bag over the person’s head and twist it closed around the neck in that way, cutting off the air supply to the person.

I want to understand really why, what happened? I am not talking now about the politics or your family. I am talking about the man behind the wet bag? When you do those things, what happens to you as a human being? What goes through your head, your mind? You know, what effect does that torture activity done to you as a human being?

I had the fortune or misfortune of growing up in a white environment in Cape Town. I did not, either through my own stupidity or ignorance, as long as I was one of the whites, the privileged whites who had an education, who had a house, I couldn’t see it being taken away. If you ask me what type of person is it that can do that, I ask myself the same question.

I hated him for five years. I even wanted to stab him to death … stab him because he had hurt me, and he implicated me, and said I was there in that meeting. And he said I was … we were hiding. There was a lamp that was hidden under a table, and this is an indication that this was a real lie.

I saw him in King Williams Town in 1972, and I was with my children. And my children were not succeeding at school, so I decided to send them to King William’s Town because I was working then. I took them to King William’s Town and that is where things went better for them, even in Somerset.

That is where I met Willie Manene who was working in a showroom where they sell cars. And one of my children pointed him and said there he is. So I asked for my knife, I opened it, I put it into my pocket … I went close to Willie Manene. This is God’s work because His works are wonderful.

I had intentions to stab him. I opened the door, and I saw a white man who asked me whether I wanted a car. Then I said, no. I had last seen Willie in 1968, in court. At the time, he was wiping the car, and he saw me as I was moving slowly towards him. In fact, a person who was guilty will always spot you, and you know this is the truth.

So I went and greeted him, and I asked him how he was, and I asked him to go out with me. We went outside, and he stood there, and he had some difficulty to talk. And I was surprised [and wondered] what was wrong with him, and I looked at him and I could see there was real change in him. He had gone through a lot of suffering, I could see. It showed on his face. And I asked: "why are you like this? Do your people know that you are like this?" Then he said, "no".

I asked him about Frans Manene, Samuel Manene. Then I asked him if I could see Samuel to give him some messages. Then he … said he was suffering from high blood pressure, he had pains on his hip and his son too was ill-treating and beating him. I could see he was finished, I then called my wife and even that one who was born when I was detained. I called all them – all of them – and I said Willie: "here are your children", because we had the same clan name. So, he greeted them.

Then I said: "these are your children, you can see they are old". Then he said: "Are you still going on with this?" Then I said to my wife: "Look at this person, how he looks like". And I asked my wife to take out one pound and give it to this man so that he could buy food for himself. And that was the last I saw of him. He never went back to his house. He never went to see his family. He went to hospital and that was the end of his life. So, when he asked me how I had come there, I said I had come in a car...

This is the man who was trying to drown me and, as I was driving [away] … he lifted his hand, trying to wave. And I also waved back … I kept on waving for a long time, hooting, and then I drove off to Mdantsane. That was the last I saw of him, because he died thereafter. So, even the hatred I had just faded away. So that’s why I say, God is there and God is with us – we are parents but things may not do – people may not do bad things to others because we’ve got children. We have got children who we are bringing up.

So today, you have allowed me to say everything to you, and everything that has been locked in within my heart now, you have allowed me to have a clean breast of – so I am not even embarrassed today. You can go to my house. You will be surprised because God is like those old bottles of wine that used to be closed with a cork. And if you were to fill … a bucket with water and then you take that cork and put it into that water, it will not sink, it will float. Thank you. I thank you for all you have done for me.

This had a traumatic effect on the entire family. I will briefly relate the effect it had on me, because it symbolises what – the same kind of effect it had on other members of the family. I became bitter towards white people, and the fact that the majority of them voted for the National Party election after election. I could never understand how they could sleep with an easy conscience at night, knowing that black children were dying in the homelands, when black people were given the most menial jobs, and that the Government they voted for used every conceivable kind of dirty trick and brutality to suppress the legitimate resistance of black people against the oppression of apartheid.

In short, I became anti-white, and this attitude was reinforced by an incident I also had when I was travelling in a train to Durban. I had accidentally walked into a white compartment, and the white conductor came and swore at me, called me a ‘coolie’, and told me as soon as the train stops at the next station I must get into the next coach, which I had to do.

I taught at an all-Indian school and had no white friends. I became ecstatic whenever a black boxer knocked a white boxer down, or when the South African rugby team lost its rebel tour matches. This anti-white obsession grew, and I would dream about burning down white businesses and farms, but it was sheer fear that prevented me from doing these things. I then began to fantasise and, while this may seem laughable, I sincerely prayed to God to make me invisible for just one day so that I could do the things I dreamed of, and when God did not comply, I reduced the time to one hour, and in that one hour I was determined to go to Parliament and shoot every one cabinet minister.

So, I changed my philosophy of life. I realised that I could not hate white people. It dawned on me that most white people were to a large extent by-products of apartheid, just as much as the freedom fighters were. I learned also that there were many white people who sincerely hated the obnoxious system of apartheid, and that some of them had lost their lives fighting it. I admired people like Rick Turner, Neil Aggett, Joe Slovo and Beyers Naudé. I also realised that I wasn’t being true to my religion if I hated somebody. Knowing the power of vengeful thoughts, Mahatma Gandhi had said, "Fight without malice". This meant a great deal to me. We have the right to fight injustice without hating the personalities or circumstances involved and, to taste the sweetness of life, one must have the power to forget the past.

We went to see him the following morning, but I didn’t want to believe that it was my son that was lying there. I asked them to take him out of the glass case so that I could see his chin. Under his chin, he had a small little cut which he got when I accidentally dropped him when he was a child. I still really didn’t want to believe it, and my wife and my father had to convince me it was my child.

Then after that, we came up to Pretoria. We buried him in Pretoria. I told newspapers that I thought my son was a hero because he died for freedom for people that (I would prefer to speak Afrikaans). He died in the cause of the oppressed people. A lot of people criticised me for this. They thought that I was a traitor, and they condemned me, but I still feel that way today...

We would like to say how much we appreciate what you have done, and I really hope that all the people in this country, and you’ve referred in your statement to this fact, that we must forget about skin colour and that we must not apply reverse racism in the new South Africa. I do hope that our people will heed your appeal.

On behalf of all of us here and also on behalf of the whole nation, I can say there has been so much pain and suffering in this country. On behalf of all of us, I would just like to say thank you very, very much for what you have said here today and for what you have suffered and experienced with your family at a time when nobody would have wanted to believe that such a thing was possible.

We on our side were violated brutally, and we therefore plead with those who were involved in violating our own rights whether they were actively involved or otherwise, to humble themselves and confess to those who suffered in the atrocities of the past. Mr Chairperson, Sir, we are saying we were mostly wronged, but we are prepared to forgive people if they come and tell us what they have done. Surely, this hall here today is full of those people who were mostly sinned against. But where are those people that were involved in the atrocities. If they can come to us and tell us what they have done and start owning up the to process … But instead what we are finding in this country is that those who were involved in the process of violating other people’s human rights are starting to disassociate themselves with the acts of terror. And those people do that publicly because they are political figures, and they say they were not involved. But on the other hand, they call themselves committed Christians who are committed to nation building. We question that.

Coming forward here with a submission as the sinned-against group is an explanation of what type of people we are as black people. We are notoriously forgiving and up against what the missionaries have been saying in statements that are written down in books, implied that we are a non-religious community. I want to say that we are more religious than many a nation. It is because we are notoriously religious that we are notoriously forgiving. So said Dr Weli Mazamisa.

In conclusion, I want to say again that we are more than just religious. We are a peace-loving people and, if the Bible says, "blessed are the peacemakers", we might have had so many blessings if and only if these people will come forward. The people we want to make peace with are not coming to tell us what they have done so that at least we can forgive them. Please people, we need to be blessed by God for the peace, but they are deciding to run away. They are not just running away with themselves, but they are running away with our long overdue blessings. We want our blessing please. People we urge you to bring back our blessings. I thank you Mr Chairman.

I would like to apologise before God … if ever I was to be employed, I was going to poison the white man’s children. The way they killed my son hitting him against a rock, and we found him with a swollen head. They killed him in a tragic manner, and I don’t think I will ever forgive in this case, especially to these police who were involved, and who were there …

This Sindani came to me to tell me that he has not finished the killings – they are still going to kill – and Mtebi himself came to say the very same words. They said they are coming to kill all the young kids and the dogs, and they are also coming to kill the leaders. Therefore, I don’t think there will be any reconciliation or forgiveness because today the police in Alexandra, they promote crime because they eat together with these criminals. They are crooks. They are still doing the very same things that they used to do, and therefore I don’t think I will ever forgive police. [Witness upset] …

What will make me to forgive is if Sindani and Mtebi, these two policemen, come and tell us why he killed these sons of the wars and also ask for forgiveness before the mothers of these children. It is then that I can forgive him. I am so surprised to find out that today that Mtebi is today a reverend and which children is he preaching to and which parents is he preaching to if he killed the children of the wars.

I would like Sindani and Mtebi to come and ask for forgiveness. Thereafter I might consider forgiving them, together with his fellow white people who came to kill our children. They just killed these defenceless children with their machine guns. They brought their dogs and hoses running after young children with machine guns with the aim of killing the black nation, the black race underneath the sun. I will say that I will never forgive because this was my last born. Maybe if he was still alive, he was going to be married by now [and] have some children and a wife. But because they have killed him, I will never rest …

I used to go out and go and sleep on top of his grave because even today I still go there and pray in his grave. I will never forgive them if they don’t come before the Commission…

I would like to say that for me to forgive, and I don’t see the opportunity of me forgiving anyone, I suffered a lot because of this because I didn’t understand why the children were killed. But there is just one important thing I would like to say before the Commission, before our children and the whole country.

I repeat that I have been a soldier, a professional soldier of 35 years’ standing. I do not know how else to express myself than in purely professional terms…

A commander grieves on his own and he grieves quietly. You learn through the years to accept it as such. I apologise if the Commission expected me really to open my heart and to put it out for public display. That, that is my grief, that is my concern that I live with as I have during my professional career and as I will until the end of my days. I am a committed, loyal South African. I feel very, very deeply about everything that has happened in our country, and I have made my contribution where I could. I have done my very best as an officer and as a South African, to promote what is happening in this country today…

I would like to conclude by insisting that I be allowed to grieve the way I grieve, and if, in my professional language of expressing my regret that loved ones have been lost and injured, if that is not sufficient, I apologise for that, but that is how I feel. I am a soldier, and I have been taught to hide my tears, and I have been taught to grieve on my own.

This past week, we met in Burgersdorp to do what we call a reconciliation service where we were going to cleanse ourselves of the past deeds. We’d slaughter a goat and cleanse ourselves with the blood that is shed. In a symbolic sense we’d cleanse ourselves of the wrong deeds, even if they were justifiable... The following were acknowledged. That we as the Inter-Church Youth or the church within the youth have, in one way or the other, killed people or at least were involved in the process of killings. That we were involved in demolishing people’s property... That we informed on others who ended up being tortured severely and who died in the process. We watched hopelessly whilst people were being ‘necklaced’. If we didn’t do the ‘necklacing’, we would have gone to buy petrol, arrange tyres and be part of making petrol bombs etc.

We were part of this as the church youth. One needs to emphasise that this was justifiable for the cause of the liberation of ourselves.

We want to say we believe that 70 to 80 per cent of the young people who died during the period of the struggle, most of them were church going youth or were young people who believed in Christ, or who were baptised in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit as it were. These people were all disappointed by the church. We are here to say that we take full responsibility for any human rights violations committed by our members. To families who perhaps had no idea that ICY members were involved, we are [unqualifiedly] apologising to you all.

We accept political and moral responsibility. We cannot say these people have nothing to do with us. We organised them; we led them. When we were taken into prisons, they were left without leadership and many of them, angry even at our arrest, did things which were irrational.

We were silent on the pain of the mother, the family of Jetta. As someone actively involved in campaigning for the release of the Upington 14 (those sentenced to death), I would like to say to Ms Sethwale and the family of Jetta: please forgive us that we allowed you to suffer in silence amid all the media attention. We were all victims. Forgive us the times when we drove past your house, showing journalists and foreign people where Jetta stayed and telling them our stories, and not inviting them to make some time to listen to your pain.

[We] are not doing this presentation on behalf of the Dutch Reformed Church – only the Synod has this right to do this. But what we are doing here this afternoon is the deepest conviction of the Presbytery of Stellenbosch …

In looking back, we realise that there have been times in the history of Stellenbosch when we as a Presbytery (and also as separate congregations) either failed wholesale or made only the most timid of efforts to fulfil the prophetic responsibility the Lord has given us.

We think especially of the past forty years during which the official policy of apartheid radically impaired the human dignity of people all around us and resulted in gross violations of human rights. Within the borders of our Presbytery, there were those who actively developed and defended the ideological framework by which these violations and actions were justified.

At times, standpoints and decisions taken within this Presbytery itself functioned within this ideological framework.

There were voices among our own ranks and within our church that condemned apartheid and sought to call our church to its senses and who witnessed against injustice within society. However, the testimony and the protest of many of these people were, time and again, suppressed or ignored, also from within our own ranks. Others were maligned and some were even personally wronged…

Various factors contributed to this lack of a strong, unified witness from within our Presbytery. The nationalist ideology deeply influenced the way in which local Christians thought and read the Bible. This made us insensitive to the injustice and suffering inflicted by the policy of apartheid on those living around us. Other factors which aggravated the situation were the privileged position occupied by most members of our church and the fact that apartheid increasingly isolated people from each other’s lives and experiences.

As a result of the growing ecumenical isolation and the lack of meaningful church unity, we became deaf to the protest and the cries for help by many of our brothers and sisters in faith. Many church members and church ministers therefore often uncritically accepted that, because many of them were also members of our church, political leaders could be trusted to do what is right. This further reinforced the widespread belief that apartheid or separate development was truly in the best interest of all groups in the country. Misinformation and a lack of exposure to other people’s suffering are other factors that contributed to this omission.

We cannot and do not want to deny that behind such factors there often was a large measure of selfishness and an unwillingness to listen sincerely to God’s word and to fellow Christians. The result has been that we in Stellenbosch did not speak out enough against injustice in our society: did not speak out enough against racist attitudes among our church members; did not speak out enough against the violation of people’s rights and human dignity.

During the Soweto riots of 1976 and the countrywide unrest that followed, general decisions were taken concerning the situation in the country, but very little protest was made against the gross violations of people’s rights taking place at that time.

When forced removals were carried out in our town, when people were forced to leave their historic neighbourhoods and had to resettle elsewhere, little or no protest was voiced by the Presbytery. These removals constituted a violation of human rights, which invariably went hand in hand with severe personal trauma, financial loss and social disruption. Tragically, as a result of the great separation brought about in South Africa by apartheid, we of the Presbytery often were not even aware of this suffering.

Over many years, people of our town [were] shut out from important decision-making positions simply because of the colour of their skin. More decisions were made about them than with them. Also in the church and amongst individual Christians there was often insensitivity to how grievously people’s human dignity was violated in these and many other ways…

Eventually we did begin to see the error of our ways. And this is why the Lord brought us to these insights. That is why, in a formal resolution adopted in 1985, the Presbytery confessed our guilt for our actions during the apartheid era. Now that the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is confronting us once again with the pain and grief endured by fellow citizens and fellow believers under the previous political dispensation, we feel the need to confess our guilt once again before God and before people. We feel the need to make this confession specifically at this session of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, because it is here that people from our own vicinity are sharing the pain and grief that they have to live through.

We confess that we kept silent at times when we should have spoken out clearly in testimony. We confess that although we did at times try to protest against the unjust treatment of people, we often did so only with great timidity and circumspection. We did at times comment critically, but we often in doing so were not prepared to speak out against the system itself. What is more, we often gave way to the opposition we encountered. At the very times when we should have continued to speak out clearly for the truth and against injustice, we grew tired and gave up protesting.

Today we confess these things anew before the many people of Stellenbosch and vicinity who suffered injustice because of that. We confess these things before the youth and the children of our own church and our own congregations who feel that through our actions we have failed them…

[T]he CPSA acknowledges that there were occasions when, through the silence of its leadership or its parishes, or their actions in acquiescing with apartheid laws, where they believed it to be in the interest of the church, deep wrong was done to those who bore the brunt of the onslaught of apartheid. What aided and abetted this kind of moral lethargy and acquiescence was the fact that, in many respects, our church had developed, over many years, its own pattern of racial inequality and discrimination. It was all too easy to pass resolutions or make lofty pronouncements condemning apartheid. It was all too easy to point a morally superior finger at Afrikaner nationalist prejudice and pride. English pride and prejudice was no less real and it was never very far below the surface of our high sounding moral pronouncements. The Anglican Lord Milner must be as problematic to Afrikaner Christians as DF Malan, the dominee, is to us.

I similarly failed on the Bench, prior to my resignation, by not pursuing the avenues … soon enough, vigorously enough or at all. Of course, my failure to combat racism more vigorously extends beyond my profession and legal career...

I acknowledge and regret these failures. I am deeply saddened by the consequences of these failures on the lives of black people, and I wish to apologise for my role in denying them their full and equal humanity.

Even though the Land Act in the period under review … had the net result of increasing the total area of land held by blacks, the tribal system, which was maintained as part of the policy of separate development, sterilised land as a source of wealth for the individual who is the mainstay in market-driven economy.

Restrictions on trading and commercial activities also prevented blacks from establishing and operating business when they saw opportunities to do so. Latent entrepreneurship, potential skills and hidden talents: none of these assets in the black community could be used.

The practice of job reservation denied the black community access to skills and progress and thus prevented fair competition in the job market. It is also a fact that the mobilisation of the savings of the white [inaudible] produced remarkable results in terms of economic growth empowerment of the white Afrikaans-speaking community.

If we look at [the section in our submission on] … omissions and commissions, it is clear from the submission, if we look back with the benefit of hindsight, that the AHI committed major mistakes.

Firstly, we deal with support for separate development. As explained before, the AHI supported separate development in the belief that it would bring about acceptable results for all in the country. This it didn’t do. Separate development in the end meant social engineering with brutal human costs and enormous wastage of resources.

As a business organisation, we should have appreciated much earlier that moral and economic realities militate conclusively against even the loftiest interpretation of separate development. This failure was without doubt one of the worst mistakes the AHI made.

Then we look at the lack of critical evaluation of policies – another major mistake that was committed and that was one of omissions. No moral and economic objections to apartheid were lodged for many years. At the time, there was sufficient appreciation for the hardship and suffering caused by the policy. Whether those hardships were shacks being demolished in the wet and cold of the Cape winter, or of people being shot whilst protesting or the consequences of bombs which killed civilians in Church Street in Pretoria as part of the struggle against apartheid – all of which was seen on our TV screens – the AHI could not have escaped the impact of these policies.

[Point] 5.3 [of the submission] deals with insensitivity into issues involving human rights, although there were frequent references at AHI conferences to the importance of good labour relations, training, proper wages and productivity.

There was for many years an acceptance of the absence of a proper labour relations law that makes provision for workers’ rights for all and of the lack of training and other discriminatory measures. This is also regrettable. There was support for the later developments under Professor Nic Wiehahn. A similar omission occurred in regard to discrimination against women. The AHI should have helped to remove the barriers for women much earlier.

For its part in these omissions and commissions, the AHI firstly accepts moral responsibility. Secondly, admits that fellow South Africans were gravely wronged by these actions or inaction. Thirdly, we wish to express our sincere regret for these failings and, lastly, we apologise to all of those affected as a consequence hereof.

In doing so, the AHI earnestly wishes to contribute to reconciliation in our country and the building of a South Africa in which we all can grow and prosper.

64 Afterwards, Clarence told reporters that he could not comprehend the full extent of the healing that had taken place at the meeting. I came here today partly out of curiosity and hoping to meet Mr Ismail. I wanted to say I have never felt any bitterness towards him. It was a wonderful experience… Reconciliation does not just come from one side. We were on opposite sides and, in this instance, I came off second best.

The same night I saw a light at night and my cell was opened. I did not see who was opening my cell. I did not look at the person. She said to me, "Ivy, it is me. I am Sergeant Crouse. I have fetched your medicine". She rubbed me. She made me take my medicine. I told her that I could not even hold anything but I can try. I told her I was going to try by all means. She said "It is fine, do not worry yourself. I will help you." So she made me take the medicine and then she massaged me. Then after that I could at least try and sleep.