UPS: - VOICER - These two people have every reason to hate each other.
He is a black, atheist and a former freedom fighter. She is a white Christian whose only daughter was killed on his orders. Today they are friends and are working together to heal others. Even though these are the memories he created as a result of the attacks he ordered.
PRE-TITLE
UPS: - GINN FOURIE - when you have given up your need for revenge you can then start seeing the value.
TITLE: Spear Cleansing
UPS: - LETLAPA MPALELE - I was appointed into Apla high command in 1987 and early 1991 I became Director of Operations, during my spell I ordered the killing of white civilians I thought that would bomb them out of their cocoons of indifference to the countries reality.
UPS: - VOICER - This is where Letlapa Mphalele was born. His mother remembers when he was just seventeen years old Driven by what her son saw as the unjust inequalities between races. He followed his burning desire to go into exile to learn how to fight the white people. Something he did not tell his mother at the time.
UPS: - LYDIA NKONI MPHALELE, his mother - it was is pain day and night asking where is my child.
UPS: - VOICER - Trapped by the apartheid system, Letlapas family was constantly harassed by the South Africa police. They wanted to know where he was.
UPS: - RADIKUBU MPHALELE, his father - the SA people were looking for him high and low and we didnt know that he was still alive.
UPS: - VOICER - He was alive, living in exile and training as a soldier in the Pan Africanist Congresss army. Fifteen years later, Letlapa crossed the boarder back into South Africa as its director of operations. And after 1991, when negotiations were taking place to end apartheid he ordered numerous attacks on white civilians.
UPS: - LETLAPA MPHALELE - a lot of Africans were being massacred in the townships and public transport, like taxis and trains that I felt the white people had to taste their own medicine so I gave orders on attacks on different civilian targets, among them Heidelberg Tavern, St James Church, Queenstown State Restaurant and Kind Williamstown Golf Club.
UPS: - VOICER - Brian Madasi was one of the foot soldiers responsible for the attack on the Heidelberg Tavern that night. This is the grenade he threw, if it had gone off then many more people would have died. But for him, the operation was a success because they killed four people and all of his men survived.
UPS: - BRIAN MADASI, an Apla EX-Combatant - there was a feeling that our orders that we were given had been fulfilled. So there was that honor that we did what we did and also we were not ashamed of what we had done.
UPS: - VOICER - The attack was part of Aplas Operation Desert Storm. It was a war campaign aimed at killing white people and shocking them out of injustice. Such as the South African Defense Force attack on a house in Umtata on the 8th of October 1993.
UPS: - LETLAPA MPHALELE - Some school children were massacred in Umtata for being Apla members and it is not true and of course there was little out cry because of course they were African people.
UPS: - VOICER - Which is why Letlapa refused to apologise for attacks like the one on the Heidelberg Tavern.
UPS: - LETLAPA MPHALELE - That show of capacity to retaliate in a way sent a clear message to the architects of Umtata massacre that no more were we going to be killed and massacred with impunity.
UPS: - VOICER - But for those who lost loved ones it is impossible to understand. Roland Palm feels he was not responsible for apartheid, He was there that night and lost his only daughter. Since then he has had a nervous breakdown. And lives like a hermit in a caravan park outside Cape Town.
UPS: - ROLAND PALM - Even up to day if I see him now if I have something on him I will destroy him because he left me with nothing, they left me with basically nothing. He got a heroes welcome when they walked out of the TRC and what did it leave us bitter, totally bitter.
UPS: - VOICER - Johan and Ginn Fourie also lost their only daughter that night.
UPS: - GINN FOURIE - Lyndi was 23, tall, dark, beautiful as the mothers eyes see. She was just finishing her civil engineering degree when she was killed.
UPS: - JOHAN FOURIE - It is actually quite heart sore you know.
UPS: - VOICER - For Johan no explanation will ever justify her brutal death.
UPS: - JOHAN FOURIE - I dont know what went through these peoples minds but those responsible for these attacks, all of them, on civilians they are all guilt of murder kant and klaar.
UPS: - VOICER - They are a family divided something neither of them want to talk about because For his wife, Ginn, it is different. She heard the young men that killed her daughter. Saw their remorse and chose to forgive them.
UPS: - GINN FOURIE - they thanked me you know it was that response already that restoration of their humanity was happening for them.
UPS: - VOICER -Looking back at the tragedy, one wonders why Ginn could forgive what many others found impossible? Is it because she is a Christian? Or that she has grappled with her own role in this countries history? Perhaps it is because she has been writing her doctoral thesis on forgiveness? Or is it all of this and the mission statement she wrote two years before her daughter died.
UPS: - GINN FOURIE - In the mission statement I wrote that I had to extend gods grace to everyone I have met I dint know what I was getting myself in for.
USP: - VOICER - One person she found very difficult to forgive was Letlapa.
He had not applied for amnesty for killing her child and had shown no remorse.
UPS: - LETLAPA MPHALELE (28 August 1997) my proudest moment was when I saw whites being killed on the battlefield.
UPS: - VOICER - Two years ago, when Ginn first heard Letlapa on the radio admit to having ordered the attack. She went to his book launch to confront him.
UPS: - GINN FOURIE - says I was quite angry as he had alluded the public prosecutor and had not applied for amnesty and so when I got up and asked him hadnt he trivialised the whole TRC process by not participating he responded in a very positive way he said yes you could see it like that but from his perspective hadnt the TRC trivialised the fact that he was at war.
AD BREAK 1
UPS: - F W de KLERRK, Former President - (26/July/93) evil challenges that which is good in South Africa. Church going people are the backbone of this country.
UPS: - VOICER - But for Letlapa, the spine of apartheid was his target. All he saw people was who had benefited from the international crime against humanity
UPS: - LETLAPA MPHALELE - so it was high time that people that to know that churches were not so holy after all so long as people who attend them are oppressing other fellow human beings.
UPS: - VOICER - People like Charl van Wyk, a former soldier, was there when it happened. He was armed and shot back, wounding one of the attackers. He has also written a book about that day.
UPS: - CHARL van WYK - It is an experience that you will never ever forget about it is so ingrained in your mind to see people that are totally helpless and not able to be able to defend themselves is absolutely horrendous.
UPS: - VOICER - Bassie Mkumbusi lives with the same memories, he was 17 at the time.He watched the white apartheid police beat up people in his community in Khyelitsha. Which is why he took part in the attack.
UPS: - BASSIE MKUMBUSI, an Apla EX-Combatant - it gives me a lot of stress sometime I feel like losing it but I must try just to be happy but I am not ashamed of what I have done.
UPS: - VOICER - Both sides live with the pain and hurt. This is something that Letlapa wants to change. Childhood lessons from his elders taught him that war can only be neutralised by forgiveness.
UPS: - MATSEMELA MPHALELE - fighting is as old as humanity, where there is a human being there is war. And at the same time there is peace and they go together these things but at the end of the struggle, at the end of the war, we have to make peace so that there is co-existence.
UPS: - VOICER - The elders called it Spear Cleansing: a time of healing after pain. And the first person Letlapa started the process with was Charl.
They met at the PAC offices in Parliament.
UPS: - CHARL van WYK - it was quite a nerve wrecking experience but obviously the first time I put out my hand the first thing you said was this is not an ambush and I felt much better.
UPS: - LETLAPA MPHALELE - well my first impression with you was that you possessed those qualities that are very essential in a human being humor and honesty.
UPS: - VOICER - There is almost nothing that these two men have in common or agree on: Whether its gun ownership, land redistribution or religion.
Yet today, Charl donates books to Letlapa who distributes them to rural schools. A relationship that Charl never thought was possible.
UPS: - CHARL van WYK - I really struggled because I didnt want to forgive you people at all and I really had a tough time working through these issues. But at the end of the day if I am the one sitting without forgiveness from the heart one that is feeling sorry for myself and bitter about things and all it does is eat you away.
UPS: - VOICER - But while Charl may have become Letlapas friend,
He still thinks he should face the law after refusing to apply for amnesty from the TRC. For Charl the issues are clear-cut, he and the church-goers were innocent.
UPS:- CHARL van WYK - in an ideal world I would go through that anyone that takes an innocent life would need to go through a judicial process and if they are found guilty of that they would need to be put to death for it.
UPS: - VOICER - But for Letlapa it was a just war and Charl was not innocent.
Charl had been a soldier in the apartheid army. And for Letlapa there was no reason to apply for amnesty or apologise for the attack.
UPS: - LETLAPA MPHALELE - I did not think that it was a good president for freedom fighters to ask for forgiveness for fighting for freedom otherwise what message are we relaying to the prosperity if people who rise against oppression
UPS: - VOICER - Ginn also agreed to meet Letlapa at the PAC offices. She listened to him, placed herself in his shoes. And finally understood why he could not say sorry for the pain he had caused.
UPS: - LETLAPA MPHALELE - she understood me other people were wincing with couldnt understand these terrorists still being unapologetic, still talking not in glowing words on TRC but Ginn said she understood me and she detected that this person is remorseful
UPS: - GINN FOURIE - I saw the remorse in his eyes and in his body language you cant describe that he describes it as a restoration of his humanity.
UPS: - LETLAPA MPHALELE - I had defied TRC, I had defied the courts and they withdrew the charges, but I did not feel anything inside me. It was only when people extended gifts of forgiveness that the roots of my hearts were shaken and something was restored inside me.
AD BREAK 2
UPS: - VOICER - Even with this tragic past The spears had been cleansed for Letlapa and Ginn because they finally understood each other. And anyone that can do that is a hero to Letlapa.
UPS: - LETLAPA MPHALELE - they should be taken as icons of reconciliation more than the one who has been forgiven.
UPS: - VOICER - Which is why Letlapa invited Ginn to his homecoming ceremony in his rural village.
UPS: - GINN FOURIE - the people really accepted me and gave me the salutation name of Piladi and called me a mother of Africa.
UPS: - LETLAPA MPHALELE - she delivered the most moving speech of the day and she got the loudest applause louder than I got after nearly two decades in exile.
UPS: - LETLAPA MPHALELE - she stood up and asked for forgiveness from the people on behalf of her ancestors.
UPS: - VOICER - Ginn realised that she had to stop the cycle. That humiliation and loss of human dignity breads violence And that one generation after another has been doing it to each other in South Africa.
UPS: -GINN FOURIE - you know in a sense we are all victims and that is the case with any victim and perpetrator has always been a victim so it is a vicious circle of victim and perpetrator back and forth It goes and I think what I have discovered one can move out of victim hood and become a survivor and being a survivor you can move into being a wounded healer.
UPS: - VOICER - As wounded healers they started a Foundation Ginn suggested that it be called the No Fat Cats Foundation.
UPS: - GINN FOURIE - he said excellent concept but not a good name. So I said what would be a good name? And he said the Lyndi Fourie Foundation and I said why and he said that when people say who was Lyndi Fourie the story would be told and retold and her name forever be associated with conciliation.
UPS: - VOICER - Her daughters name is now being used for cultural diversity workshops in the work place. Rural empowerment projects in Letlapas village. Where they have just donated wheel chairs that have allowed people to leave their homes after many years. They also do healing and empowerment work with x-combatants like Brian Who has planted a tree in the name of those he killed, like Ginns daughter. And who breeds pigeons as a symbol of peace.
UPS: - BRIAN MADASI an Apla X-Combatant - by holding this somewhere along the line it is representing the victims of those that were killed by the bullets of Apla so this is the signal that their blood has not just been fallen away we still have that sorrow around us.
UPS: - VOICER - He is one of hundreds, if not thousands, of x-combatants that need to be heard. And that need to go through their own form of spear cleansing.
UPS: - JOHAN des VROS, an MK X-Combatant - those ones who were the soldiers were supposed to be the first priority even to skip exile wasnt easy, to go to prison wasnt easy.
UPS: - FEROZA CADER, an MK X-Combatant - we fought one struggle and we fought for freedom for all our people. We were 11 or 12 at that time and today we gave up our education and we gave up our youth.
UPS: - LINDICEKILE NGQISHA, an Apla X-Combatant - it is about so called politicians who do not right now care about people who were involved in the struggle
UPS: - NELSON NKOMANA, an Apla X-Combatant - MK and Apla we are still concerned with the people and the majority of our people in the country are still suffering.
UPS: - LINDICEKILE NGQISHA, an Apla X-Combatant - my concern was those freedom fighters who are still in prison, what makes me to be angry is for Nonchisa who is serving 18 years of prison after fighting for the liberation of this country.
UPS: - VOICER - There is a great need for government to listen to their please. And to hopefully partner the foundation to create projects that cleanse and heal. Something that many South Africans need, and could do with some help. Like Roland who cant come to terms with his daughters death.
UPS: - ROLAND PALM - I have basically lost everything, my, I have lost I dont have the zest to live anymore I am just living existing
UPS: - VOICER - Ginns husband Johan is determined to see justice take its course, he believes that will heal the wounds. And then there are those that are sending Ginn hate mail. Some of the pictures show bullet holes in their foreheads.
UPS: - GINN FOURIE - Thousands of South Africans at home and abroad are dumb struck by the love and respect you to the black barbaric sub-human swines who committed all those atrocities. You have betrayed your daughter and if your spirit is in heaven she will not have any love for you.
UPS: - GINN FOURIE - there is still a lot of hate and a lack of understanding that they fought together for unity in order for people of all colours to be able to associate peacefully and happily together that is what they fought for not because they are innate killers and it is so sad when it is not happening and their dreams have been frustrated and then to be called barbaric sub human it is just terribly sad.
UPS: - VOICER - Neither Ginn, nor Letlapa judge those that cant forgive, they know how hard it is.And they know it is something each person has to first decide to do on their own.
UPS: - LETLAPA MPHALELE - those who are still trapped in the past of revenge may see the light that is being possessed by the past, being revengeful may not help because the there is only one person that can heal the wounded is the wounded themselves.
UPS: - VOICER - Ginn and Letlapas hope is to inspire and help people to start walking in each others shoes in order to understand. So that the message of spear cleansing and forgiveness spreads. It is also something that Letlapa calls being an activist for building bridges between people.
UPS: - LETLAPA MPHALELE - the same energies we used to fight this time we have to use them to build bridges that means the struggle continues for bridge building
UPS: - VOICER - Ginn is reminded of the value and importance of this journey each time she visits her daughters grave.
UPS: - GINN FOURIE - I go to her grave every weekend to water the rose, and the wind whispers: GO MOKS, Go! You are doing it!
UPS: - VOICER - How should ex-combatants who didnt apply for amnesty from the TRC be dealt with?
He is a black, atheist and a former freedom fighter. She is a white Christian whose only daughter was killed on his orders. Today they are friends and are working together to heal others. Even though these are the memories he created as a result of the attacks he ordered.
PRE-TITLE
UPS: - GINN FOURIE - when you have given up your need for revenge you can then start seeing the value.
TITLE: Spear Cleansing
UPS: - LETLAPA MPALELE - I was appointed into Apla high command in 1987 and early 1991 I became Director of Operations, during my spell I ordered the killing of white civilians I thought that would bomb them out of their cocoons of indifference to the countries reality.
UPS: - VOICER - This is where Letlapa Mphalele was born. His mother remembers when he was just seventeen years old Driven by what her son saw as the unjust inequalities between races. He followed his burning desire to go into exile to learn how to fight the white people. Something he did not tell his mother at the time.
UPS: - LYDIA NKONI MPHALELE, his mother - it was is pain day and night asking where is my child.
UPS: - VOICER - Trapped by the apartheid system, Letlapas family was constantly harassed by the South Africa police. They wanted to know where he was.
UPS: - RADIKUBU MPHALELE, his father - the SA people were looking for him high and low and we didnt know that he was still alive.
UPS: - VOICER - He was alive, living in exile and training as a soldier in the Pan Africanist Congresss army. Fifteen years later, Letlapa crossed the boarder back into South Africa as its director of operations. And after 1991, when negotiations were taking place to end apartheid he ordered numerous attacks on white civilians.
UPS: - LETLAPA MPHALELE - a lot of Africans were being massacred in the townships and public transport, like taxis and trains that I felt the white people had to taste their own medicine so I gave orders on attacks on different civilian targets, among them Heidelberg Tavern, St James Church, Queenstown State Restaurant and Kind Williamstown Golf Club.
UPS: - VOICER - Brian Madasi was one of the foot soldiers responsible for the attack on the Heidelberg Tavern that night. This is the grenade he threw, if it had gone off then many more people would have died. But for him, the operation was a success because they killed four people and all of his men survived.
UPS: - BRIAN MADASI, an Apla EX-Combatant - there was a feeling that our orders that we were given had been fulfilled. So there was that honor that we did what we did and also we were not ashamed of what we had done.
UPS: - VOICER - The attack was part of Aplas Operation Desert Storm. It was a war campaign aimed at killing white people and shocking them out of injustice. Such as the South African Defense Force attack on a house in Umtata on the 8th of October 1993.
UPS: - LETLAPA MPHALELE - Some school children were massacred in Umtata for being Apla members and it is not true and of course there was little out cry because of course they were African people.
UPS: - VOICER - Which is why Letlapa refused to apologise for attacks like the one on the Heidelberg Tavern.
UPS: - LETLAPA MPHALELE - That show of capacity to retaliate in a way sent a clear message to the architects of Umtata massacre that no more were we going to be killed and massacred with impunity.
UPS: - VOICER - But for those who lost loved ones it is impossible to understand. Roland Palm feels he was not responsible for apartheid, He was there that night and lost his only daughter. Since then he has had a nervous breakdown. And lives like a hermit in a caravan park outside Cape Town.
UPS: - ROLAND PALM - Even up to day if I see him now if I have something on him I will destroy him because he left me with nothing, they left me with basically nothing. He got a heroes welcome when they walked out of the TRC and what did it leave us bitter, totally bitter.
UPS: - VOICER - Johan and Ginn Fourie also lost their only daughter that night.
UPS: - GINN FOURIE - Lyndi was 23, tall, dark, beautiful as the mothers eyes see. She was just finishing her civil engineering degree when she was killed.
UPS: - JOHAN FOURIE - It is actually quite heart sore you know.
UPS: - VOICER - For Johan no explanation will ever justify her brutal death.
UPS: - JOHAN FOURIE - I dont know what went through these peoples minds but those responsible for these attacks, all of them, on civilians they are all guilt of murder kant and klaar.
UPS: - VOICER - They are a family divided something neither of them want to talk about because For his wife, Ginn, it is different. She heard the young men that killed her daughter. Saw their remorse and chose to forgive them.
UPS: - GINN FOURIE - they thanked me you know it was that response already that restoration of their humanity was happening for them.
UPS: - VOICER -Looking back at the tragedy, one wonders why Ginn could forgive what many others found impossible? Is it because she is a Christian? Or that she has grappled with her own role in this countries history? Perhaps it is because she has been writing her doctoral thesis on forgiveness? Or is it all of this and the mission statement she wrote two years before her daughter died.
UPS: - GINN FOURIE - In the mission statement I wrote that I had to extend gods grace to everyone I have met I dint know what I was getting myself in for.
USP: - VOICER - One person she found very difficult to forgive was Letlapa.
He had not applied for amnesty for killing her child and had shown no remorse.
UPS: - LETLAPA MPHALELE (28 August 1997) my proudest moment was when I saw whites being killed on the battlefield.
UPS: - VOICER - Two years ago, when Ginn first heard Letlapa on the radio admit to having ordered the attack. She went to his book launch to confront him.
UPS: - GINN FOURIE - says I was quite angry as he had alluded the public prosecutor and had not applied for amnesty and so when I got up and asked him hadnt he trivialised the whole TRC process by not participating he responded in a very positive way he said yes you could see it like that but from his perspective hadnt the TRC trivialised the fact that he was at war.
AD BREAK 1
UPS: - F W de KLERRK, Former President - (26/July/93) evil challenges that which is good in South Africa. Church going people are the backbone of this country.
UPS: - VOICER - But for Letlapa, the spine of apartheid was his target. All he saw people was who had benefited from the international crime against humanity
UPS: - LETLAPA MPHALELE - so it was high time that people that to know that churches were not so holy after all so long as people who attend them are oppressing other fellow human beings.
UPS: - VOICER - People like Charl van Wyk, a former soldier, was there when it happened. He was armed and shot back, wounding one of the attackers. He has also written a book about that day.
UPS: - CHARL van WYK - It is an experience that you will never ever forget about it is so ingrained in your mind to see people that are totally helpless and not able to be able to defend themselves is absolutely horrendous.
UPS: - VOICER - Bassie Mkumbusi lives with the same memories, he was 17 at the time.He watched the white apartheid police beat up people in his community in Khyelitsha. Which is why he took part in the attack.
UPS: - BASSIE MKUMBUSI, an Apla EX-Combatant - it gives me a lot of stress sometime I feel like losing it but I must try just to be happy but I am not ashamed of what I have done.
UPS: - VOICER - Both sides live with the pain and hurt. This is something that Letlapa wants to change. Childhood lessons from his elders taught him that war can only be neutralised by forgiveness.
UPS: - MATSEMELA MPHALELE - fighting is as old as humanity, where there is a human being there is war. And at the same time there is peace and they go together these things but at the end of the struggle, at the end of the war, we have to make peace so that there is co-existence.
UPS: - VOICER - The elders called it Spear Cleansing: a time of healing after pain. And the first person Letlapa started the process with was Charl.
They met at the PAC offices in Parliament.
UPS: - CHARL van WYK - it was quite a nerve wrecking experience but obviously the first time I put out my hand the first thing you said was this is not an ambush and I felt much better.
UPS: - LETLAPA MPHALELE - well my first impression with you was that you possessed those qualities that are very essential in a human being humor and honesty.
UPS: - VOICER - There is almost nothing that these two men have in common or agree on: Whether its gun ownership, land redistribution or religion.
Yet today, Charl donates books to Letlapa who distributes them to rural schools. A relationship that Charl never thought was possible.
UPS: - CHARL van WYK - I really struggled because I didnt want to forgive you people at all and I really had a tough time working through these issues. But at the end of the day if I am the one sitting without forgiveness from the heart one that is feeling sorry for myself and bitter about things and all it does is eat you away.
UPS: - VOICER - But while Charl may have become Letlapas friend,
He still thinks he should face the law after refusing to apply for amnesty from the TRC. For Charl the issues are clear-cut, he and the church-goers were innocent.
UPS:- CHARL van WYK - in an ideal world I would go through that anyone that takes an innocent life would need to go through a judicial process and if they are found guilty of that they would need to be put to death for it.
UPS: - VOICER - But for Letlapa it was a just war and Charl was not innocent.
Charl had been a soldier in the apartheid army. And for Letlapa there was no reason to apply for amnesty or apologise for the attack.
UPS: - LETLAPA MPHALELE - I did not think that it was a good president for freedom fighters to ask for forgiveness for fighting for freedom otherwise what message are we relaying to the prosperity if people who rise against oppression
UPS: - VOICER - Ginn also agreed to meet Letlapa at the PAC offices. She listened to him, placed herself in his shoes. And finally understood why he could not say sorry for the pain he had caused.
UPS: - LETLAPA MPHALELE - she understood me other people were wincing with couldnt understand these terrorists still being unapologetic, still talking not in glowing words on TRC but Ginn said she understood me and she detected that this person is remorseful
UPS: - GINN FOURIE - I saw the remorse in his eyes and in his body language you cant describe that he describes it as a restoration of his humanity.
UPS: - LETLAPA MPHALELE - I had defied TRC, I had defied the courts and they withdrew the charges, but I did not feel anything inside me. It was only when people extended gifts of forgiveness that the roots of my hearts were shaken and something was restored inside me.
AD BREAK 2
UPS: - VOICER - Even with this tragic past The spears had been cleansed for Letlapa and Ginn because they finally understood each other. And anyone that can do that is a hero to Letlapa.
UPS: - LETLAPA MPHALELE - they should be taken as icons of reconciliation more than the one who has been forgiven.
UPS: - VOICER - Which is why Letlapa invited Ginn to his homecoming ceremony in his rural village.
UPS: - GINN FOURIE - the people really accepted me and gave me the salutation name of Piladi and called me a mother of Africa.
UPS: - LETLAPA MPHALELE - she delivered the most moving speech of the day and she got the loudest applause louder than I got after nearly two decades in exile.
UPS: - LETLAPA MPHALELE - she stood up and asked for forgiveness from the people on behalf of her ancestors.
UPS: - VOICER - Ginn realised that she had to stop the cycle. That humiliation and loss of human dignity breads violence And that one generation after another has been doing it to each other in South Africa.
UPS: -GINN FOURIE - you know in a sense we are all victims and that is the case with any victim and perpetrator has always been a victim so it is a vicious circle of victim and perpetrator back and forth It goes and I think what I have discovered one can move out of victim hood and become a survivor and being a survivor you can move into being a wounded healer.
UPS: - VOICER - As wounded healers they started a Foundation Ginn suggested that it be called the No Fat Cats Foundation.
UPS: - GINN FOURIE - he said excellent concept but not a good name. So I said what would be a good name? And he said the Lyndi Fourie Foundation and I said why and he said that when people say who was Lyndi Fourie the story would be told and retold and her name forever be associated with conciliation.
UPS: - VOICER - Her daughters name is now being used for cultural diversity workshops in the work place. Rural empowerment projects in Letlapas village. Where they have just donated wheel chairs that have allowed people to leave their homes after many years. They also do healing and empowerment work with x-combatants like Brian Who has planted a tree in the name of those he killed, like Ginns daughter. And who breeds pigeons as a symbol of peace.
UPS: - BRIAN MADASI an Apla X-Combatant - by holding this somewhere along the line it is representing the victims of those that were killed by the bullets of Apla so this is the signal that their blood has not just been fallen away we still have that sorrow around us.
UPS: - VOICER - He is one of hundreds, if not thousands, of x-combatants that need to be heard. And that need to go through their own form of spear cleansing.
UPS: - JOHAN des VROS, an MK X-Combatant - those ones who were the soldiers were supposed to be the first priority even to skip exile wasnt easy, to go to prison wasnt easy.
UPS: - FEROZA CADER, an MK X-Combatant - we fought one struggle and we fought for freedom for all our people. We were 11 or 12 at that time and today we gave up our education and we gave up our youth.
UPS: - LINDICEKILE NGQISHA, an Apla X-Combatant - it is about so called politicians who do not right now care about people who were involved in the struggle
UPS: - NELSON NKOMANA, an Apla X-Combatant - MK and Apla we are still concerned with the people and the majority of our people in the country are still suffering.
UPS: - LINDICEKILE NGQISHA, an Apla X-Combatant - my concern was those freedom fighters who are still in prison, what makes me to be angry is for Nonchisa who is serving 18 years of prison after fighting for the liberation of this country.
UPS: - VOICER - There is a great need for government to listen to their please. And to hopefully partner the foundation to create projects that cleanse and heal. Something that many South Africans need, and could do with some help. Like Roland who cant come to terms with his daughters death.
UPS: - ROLAND PALM - I have basically lost everything, my, I have lost I dont have the zest to live anymore I am just living existing
UPS: - VOICER - Ginns husband Johan is determined to see justice take its course, he believes that will heal the wounds. And then there are those that are sending Ginn hate mail. Some of the pictures show bullet holes in their foreheads.
UPS: - GINN FOURIE - Thousands of South Africans at home and abroad are dumb struck by the love and respect you to the black barbaric sub-human swines who committed all those atrocities. You have betrayed your daughter and if your spirit is in heaven she will not have any love for you.
UPS: - GINN FOURIE - there is still a lot of hate and a lack of understanding that they fought together for unity in order for people of all colours to be able to associate peacefully and happily together that is what they fought for not because they are innate killers and it is so sad when it is not happening and their dreams have been frustrated and then to be called barbaric sub human it is just terribly sad.
UPS: - VOICER - Neither Ginn, nor Letlapa judge those that cant forgive, they know how hard it is.And they know it is something each person has to first decide to do on their own.
UPS: - LETLAPA MPHALELE - those who are still trapped in the past of revenge may see the light that is being possessed by the past, being revengeful may not help because the there is only one person that can heal the wounded is the wounded themselves.
UPS: - VOICER - Ginn and Letlapas hope is to inspire and help people to start walking in each others shoes in order to understand. So that the message of spear cleansing and forgiveness spreads. It is also something that Letlapa calls being an activist for building bridges between people.
UPS: - LETLAPA MPHALELE - the same energies we used to fight this time we have to use them to build bridges that means the struggle continues for bridge building
UPS: - VOICER - Ginn is reminded of the value and importance of this journey each time she visits her daughters grave.
UPS: - GINN FOURIE - I go to her grave every weekend to water the rose, and the wind whispers: GO MOKS, Go! You are doing it!
UPS: - VOICER - How should ex-combatants who didnt apply for amnesty from the TRC be dealt with?