Truth Commission - Special Report (2024)

Tembisa lies north of Kempton Park. Community leader Tim Mabena says it was established for people who had been removed from Alexandra, Irene, Verwoerdburg and Kempton Park. Tembisa also became a home to many migrant workers who lived in the hostels.

Park station, Johannesburg, the city of gold. It was here that Katiza arrived, as have countless other Zulu migrants. Unsure where to turn he followed a black commuter and bought a ticket for a suburban train. Little did he know it but he would be sucked into the heart of a tragedy concerning South ...

Today the school has 600 pupils and 24 classrooms. It stands a testimony to determination and vision spread out over the various properties the De Kock’s have bought around the original structure. Although Helena’s struggle with the city council continues her submission to the Truth Commission ...

We came back from that funeral and we could see what was happening. We had councillors here in Duncan Village that we didn’t like. They were selling us out to the whites by arranging our removal to Mdantsane. At the same time they kept raising our rents. So when we came back from that funeral we ...

They promised us everything. They promised us a medical assistant. They promised to help us with our financial… something like electricity, rent and other things and they promised us that they are going to look after our children, especially something like education. But they didn’t do anything ...

Number 176 is the first house which was built in Tembisa around 1962, 1963. This is the first shop in Tembisa; it used to be called Verwoerd Wares. The name changed around 1977. This used to be a building where we were, an administration building. We used to pay rent here. These are the result of ...

... was not only a hideout for the notorious Toasters gang. It was built in the late seventies as a labour compound to serve the industries of Kempton Park and the East Rand. In the early nineties it became much more. During a spree of violence residents who were not Zulu and not Inkatha members ...

Dawn Park, Easter Saturday, 1993; Chris Hani, the man who many thought would someday become president of South Africa lies dead in the drive way of his home. The country is plunged into mourning, anger and fear. There are whispers of a race war and a tremor runs through the tenuous negotiation ...

I object to the statement made to this witness that they instigated a crime. When I park my motor vehicle on the street with the radio in it and it gets stolen by a thief who happens to walk in that street, do I instigate the crime by parking my vehicle there? Surely not. And this is in effect what ...

We have a shrine of him here in George, it’s literally a shrine. I mean, if you go in there, they call it the George Museum, it is funded by the rent payers; the upkeep is paid for by the rate payers but it is a shrine. Everything in the Museum is PW’s. I think we need to make a call to George, ...

After being notified Ndoyisile’s father went to Bloemfontein where he found a file and pictures of his son at Park Road police station. // He was naked. I could see his face and I could see his forehead which had a bullet hole in it. And I looked at his whole body. It had so many bullet holes and ...

... tell you that every day of my life at Central was in fear. I cannot remember my … teacher’s name, but I can remember on the corner of 14th and Park street white men trying to turn over a 1954 Chevrolet with an elderly black man in it. The fear to this day, I get chill bumps. I did nothing. I ...

... the answers are not that simple. At that time South Africa was uneasily edging towards a negotiated settlement in the world trade center in Kempton Park. Only a few kilometers away the Vusimuzi hostel served as a springboard for vicious attacks on the community. It was not an isolated case. In ...

This is the Vaal Triangle, home of Eskom, Sasol and many other big industries. Also home to millions of people who work at these industries and their families. They live in grim townships such as Sebokeng, Sharpeville, Bophelong and Boipatong. For some, mostly men from KwaZulu-Natal, this is only a ...

This is the Vaal Triangle, home of Eskom, Sasol and many other big industries. Also home to millions of people who work at these industries and their families. They live in grim townships such as Sebokeng, Sharpeville, Bophelong and Boipatong. For some, mostly men from KwaZulu-Natal, this is only a ...

... I lost a lot of hair. I think it’s one of these sort of stress signs. And I decided in December that I would start swimming and I go to the Ellis Park swimming pool, I swim my 14 laps every day and that has helped me to relax quite a bit. But I am compulsive about reading or looking at things ...

Many of the victims at the Nelspruit hearings this week were teenagers at a time when education was not necessarily academic. And it was difficult to distinguish between a playground and a war zone. In the mid-eighties they embraced the struggle for liberation determinedly regardless of the cost. ...

... 1990 and 1994 the country was nearly plunged into chaos. There were mass killings on trains, buses and taxis, the killings at Boipatong, Phola park, the rightwing threat. APLA, the armed wing of the PAC, was carrying out terror attacks on white civilian soft targets. One such an attack was ...

the mistakes of the past. But how do we in South Africa do this? For instance Vlakplaas, the death squad headquarters, could be turned into a public park or Steven Bantu Biko’s gravesite into a national monument. Robben Island or the place where Hector Pieterson was shot in 1976 in Soweto could ...

... to this list at least three policemen were killed by their own comrades. A whole list of other explosions are also mentioned: Khotso House, Joubert Park, JG Strydom hospital, a community centre in Cape Town and two power stations. What is now emerging is that many acts of terror attributed to the ...