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18"x24" Charcoal Drawing                      (1999)

 

Face to Face: Perpetrator I

 

"We interrogated [Harold Sello] Sefolo in the same ways as the previous two [Jackson Maake and Andrew Makupe] .... We used a yellow portable Robin generator to send electric shocks through his body to force him to speak .... There were two wires. One was attached to his foot and the other to his hand. When we put the generator on, his body was shocked stiff .... Sefolo was a very strong man and believed completely ... in what he was doing, that he was right .... After he was interrogated, he admitted to being a senior ANC organizer in Witbank...

 

"He gave us even more information after Joe Mamasela shoved a knife up his nose. He was pleading for his life and asked if he could sing 'Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika' ['God Bless Africa' a hymn popular with supporters of the liberation movements in South Africa and now part of the South African national anthem]. Then he said we might as well kill him. He also said the ANC would rule one day and that apartheid could not survive .... Mamesela covered his body with an ANC flag while Sefolo was singing 'Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika.' We then shocked Makupe to death ....

 

"It was necessary to kill them in order to destroy the entire cell. No one knew what had happened to them. After this we blew them up with a landmine so that it would be impossible to recognize them ...."

 

Testimony to the TRC from Warrant Officer Paul van Vuuren of the former Northern Transvaal Security Branch - dubbed 'the electrician' by his colleagues.

 

Taken from "No Future Without Forgiveness", Reverend Desmond Tutu, 1999. Doubleday.