10 Nov 00

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Why I don't have a TV

Someone I know posted this story to a mailing list I belong to. I just don't know what to make of it. Write me if you do. This seemed important enough to tell here.

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I don't have a TV at home, partly because I don't want to be flooded with the garbage that passes for informed comment.  I get my news by reading, often far outside the parameters of the mainstream topic-mouthpieces, and by research.  I'm lucky in that I'm trained to conduct research and trained to assess material and analyse and construct arguments.

That's the pro-forma reason I don't have a TV.  There is another, far more emotional reason.  I live in South Africa.

I'm looking at an article, a story that was broken on TV last night.

Six white policemen have been suspended for using black suspected illegal immigrants as live bait for their attack dogs.  They were videotaped by a friend of theirs at mine-dumps east of Johannesburg, in uniform, apparently as a 'training video'.

The video shows the dogs eating their stomachs, arms and biting into their faces while they scream and try to fend them off.  As they touch the dogs, the policemen kick them in the face and punch them.

The audio picks the police up saying:

"Wat is jy ?  Jy's 'n kaffir, ne ?  Se jy's 'n kaffir?" (What are you?  You're kaffir, aren't you?  Say you're a kaffir)

The dogs are encouraged to be more violent.  This goes on for an hour on the tape. The tape then ends.  You have to see the look on the policeman's face, in the still photograph published in the newspaper.

I quote from the article:

"The officers stamped on the men's necks and faces as the animals tore into their flesh.  In one section it appeared that a piece of a dog's tooth had come loose and was embedded on the flesh of one of the victims...(the dogs) attacked the men with such ferocity...that that were able to lift one of the men from his crouching position in the veld.  The dogs were also able to drag the men across the ground...the man was then hit across the side of his head...punched to the ground...stamped on his face...laughing in the background..."

All this took place in January 1998.

The ringleader was since promoted to Head of the Dog Unit, and I've been sitting here crying all morning, and now I'm violently angry.

In 1989, during the final explosion of civil and state-mediated violence, immediately prior to the release of Nelson Mandela, I was an unwilling conscript in the white-run South African Defence Force (SADF). What I saw then, and subsequently, mediated who I am.

We were no longer being sent to neighbouring states on behalf of the United States government to battle communism (read independent black governments) and blow up civilians.  That had been declared unfashionable, and the erstwhile white government had been asked by its handlers to refrain.  Consequently, there were conscripts and nowhere to send them.  We were seconded to the South African Police force, as manpower, tasked with aiding them in their quest to 'maintain order during civil unrest'.  And I hated it.

We were the most variously trained National Service unit ever.  I started on MRL's (Multiple Rocket Launchers), and apprenticed then on G2 cannons (80-pounders, I think), as a training exercise.  Along with others I applied for Parabat training (parachute battalion), which necessitated a transfer within Artillery to 120mm mortars, as these are the only field-pieces that could be dropped out a plane along with us. Training began again.

As part of the build-up to the selection process, we underwent 3 months devoted solely to Physical Training, from 05h00 to 17h00, non fucking stop.  We ran, climbed walls, carried rocks, did callisthenics, and conducted full-kit forced marches.  Then we did Infantry training - what the SADF called KKW (Klein Kaliber Wapens, or Small Calibre Weaponry), which meant LMG (Light Machine Gun – the point men on a walking patrol, who lay down crossed fields of fire ahead of the advancing body of the strung patrol), Patmore (60mm mortars), RPG's (Rocket Propelled Grenades), and various assault rifles, from the R1 (7.65mm hunting rifle with an automatic feed), R4 (smaller calibre bush weapon, derivative of the Israeli Galil), R5 (same calibre, shorter muzzle, longer flash-breaker, reduced effective range - most effective as a street-clearing weapon, in that you point and spray) to the various Khalashnikov's.

We were first seconded to the Air Force as a ground based counter-insurgency unit, to ensure area security while they conducted exercises on, and in, the Mozambique border.  Then we were seconded to the cops.  In order to assist them ,we were re-trained.  We got formal urban coin-ops training (counter-insurgency/urban warfare), as well as crowd control training Official spokesmen have been saying for the last 4 years that all is well, and the racist barbarity that is so deep-ingrained a feature of Afrikaner culture has been largely eradicated in state services. This despite the repeated occurrence of events such as this one, both in the police forces and the Defence Force.  There has never been national expiation and no real sorrow at what was done.  I understand why they would want to say that there is no longer a problem of pervasive racism, but I don't think so.  Aimed at teaching us to manage what the government of the day called 'civil unrest' - in actuality, the justifiable outrage of a majority of the population subjected to extremes of degradation, brutality and violence, finally coming to the fore.  (It needs to be defined: there are still people who don't understand that).

This meant new formations on patrol, crowd-clearance, area-clearing (how to secure urban areas, what to look for, what anti-personnel mines were in common use, and how they were concealed), the use of Snot-Neuse (dinky little plastic guns that are fed by a drum magazine, and fire tear-gas canisters and 'rubber bullets' - rubber bullets by the way, are hard as rock and the size of a standard torch battery - at 30 feet they will cripple, and at 10 they will kill. The next time you read that rubber bullets were fired, give that some thought) - and Water Cannons.  We were issued shotguns and 9mm parabellums.  All this 'vir land and volk' (for land and country).

You need to understand the South African Police.

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