Gut-wrenching stories from the TRC brought to life
the KwaMashu ANC branch.
In 1987, she was kidnapped by the Port Natal Security Branch and interrogated and tortured. Her body was then dumped near her home north of Durban.
It was only 10 years later, during the TRC Amnesty application, that the family were made aware where Khubeka’s bones were buried and they were finally able to give her a funeral and a tombstone.
During the filming of the Bonesof Memory segment, shocking news was revealed which left all those who knew Khubeka and even TRC investigators, in disbelief.
In addition to Ndwandwe and Khubeka’s cases, the series takes a closer look at the murder of Bheki Mlangeni.
The young human rights lawyer was killed in his Soweto home by a booby-trapped Walkman, sent by apartheid security police officer Eugene de Kock, aka “Prime Evil”. It exploded on February 15, 1991, as he began to listen to music. His five-year-old son, Mandla, witnessed the horrific scene.
Today, Mandla now 35 years old, is a jazz musician who uses music and, by extension his trumpet, to heal. His debut album, was dedicated to a father he never knew.
In the episode,
Enver Samuel (right) with Thabang Mabuza, whose mother was murdered when he was five months old, at the Human Rights Festival at Constitutional Hill where his documentary, The Breastfeeding Warrior, was screened. death of Topsy Madaka, a political activist from Port Elizabeth, who was killed in April 1982 by one of the apartheid security police’s most notorious killers, Gideon Nieuwoudt.
Madaka was kidnapped, drugged and executed with a single shot to the head before his body was burnt. It was only in 1997, during the TRC amnesty application of the security police responsible for his death, that it was finally revealed what had happened to him and where his bones were buried, over 300 km from Port Elizabeth.
In the camera lens turns to the lives and deaths of Richard and Irene Motasi. Richard was a police officer, based at the Hammanskraal Police Station. The Northern Transvaal Security Police compiled a file on him which suggested that he was an ANC agent giving sensitive information to the organisation.
On December 1, 1987, a security police hit squad went to their home. Both Richard and Irene were executed. Their five-year-old, son Tshidiso survived by hiding in a cupboard.
The final case in tells
the story of Matthews Mabelane, who died, like many others, in mysterious circumstances while being detained at the notorious John Vorster Square police station in 1977 during the height of apartheid. His brother Lasch Mabelane and his 96-year-old father died without getting the closure they desperately wanted.
All the episodes make use of heart-rending archival footage, including the exhumation of Ndwandwe’s remains, as well as intimate interviews with the families of those murdered, while exploring issues of trauma, reconciliation, accountability and forgiveness in South Africa.
The stories also ask why the NPA failed to rise to the task of investigating and prosecuting those to whom the TRC did not give amnesty or those who did not apply for amnesty.
Asked what prompted him to make
Samuel said: “I decided to make the series about the TRC, following up from my two previous documentaries which looked at unsung heroes and heroines, namely Ahmed Timol and Dulcie September.
“In my research, which involved looking through TRC archive, my memory was jogged by iconic moments from the TRC that resonated then but were forgotten now.
“I just felt that some of these stories needed to be told.”
Choosing just six stories to tell from the more than 20 000 cases that came before the TRC was, however, like searching for a needle in a haystack.
Samuel spent hours looking through the SABC archive and the National Archive in Pretoria, watching footage from the hearings, often compiling hundreds of pages on each story.
“I find discovering rare archival material that ties into the story you are telling, [like] finding golden nuggets. An example was finding the actual police archive of the uncovering of Phila Portia Ndwandwe’ s bones at a grave site with a police sniffer dog digging at the actual spot where her body was hidden by the security police in an unmarked grave,” he explained.
Asked if it had been challenging to get the families to speak to him, Samuel said his vision of how he planned to tell their stories helped a great deal, as had showing them some of his other work.
“In order for the series to work it involved a lot of trust and I believe the families trusted my vision on how the stories would unfold,” Samuel said, adding that he believes it has helped them to get a lot off their shoulders.
“Many families have not discussed the serious issues of transgenerational trauma.
“The TRC never implemented a structured plan of counselling for the victims and their families. In some cases in the series families would talk in depth for the first time. Some would say they felt a relief after having talked about it, and slept better after many years.
“It is vital that these stories be told, especially as we mark 30 years of democracy this year, because of these unsung heroes and heroines we enjoy the democracy that they fought and died for. It is because of them that we can vote today.”
As for his thoughts on the TRC hearings, he believes they were something of a double-edged sword.
“The TRC, according to most of the six families, did not work for them,” Samuel said. “They are still bitter that there have been no prosecutions and realistic compensation to the families.
“As a world model of reconciliation it seemed to do something that the ‘rainbow nation’ was looking for, but it appears to have fallen short due to government interference.
“[But] for some families, like the Ndwandwe’s, if the security police had not come clean via seeking amnesty then they would never have known where her bones were buried.”
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