AFRIFORUM YOUTH OBSERVES WREATH-LAYING FOR VICTIMS OF ANC TERROR ATTACKS

AfriForum Youth observed a wreath-laying ceremony in Pretoria today to honour the people who had died in the ANC's terror attacks on civilians during the 1980s. The ceremony coincided with the ANC's centenary and washeld at the exact spot where the ANC detonated the so-called Church Street bomb on 20 May 1983. The vast majority of the victims were civilians. 19 people were killed and 114 injured.

Mr Dirk van Eck - whose wife Kobie (34) and two children, Ingatius (2) en Nelmari (9) died in an ANC landmine attack near Musina (called Messina at the time) on 15 December 1985 - also attended today's ceremony and laid a wreath next to photographs of his late wife and children. Van Eck's other son, Erick, had survived the attack as a baby of 18 months.

According to Charl Oberholzer, national chair of AfriForum Youth, it was decided to observe the wreath-laying on the ANC's centenary lest the victims of the party's terrorist attacks and gross human rights violations be forgotten because of the propagandistic way in which the ANC has tried to gloss over the darker side of its past during the festivities. "We as young people feel it is important that we and our descendants not be sold out to the biased and romanticised account of the ANC's history," Oberholzer added. "It is a myth that all the people who took part in the struggle on the side of the ANC were immaculate heroes, while the rest have been shown up as evil."

Oberholzer pointed out that a true picture of the ANC's history should also contain the following facts:

That the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) found that the ANC leadership could be held responsible for "the gross violation of human rights" on account of the landmine attacks and other terrorist attacks;

That, despite the ANC having signed Protocol 1 of the Geneva Convention in 1980 - which expressly banned attacks on civilians and the use of landmines and bombs - 80% of its subsequent terrorist attacks were aimed at civilians. That was the consequence of the ANC's political leaders' decision, taken at their national conference in Kabwe, Zambia, during June 1985, that the "distinction between hard and soft targets" had to disappear;

That some 700 civilians were brutally murdered by the so-called necklace method (burning car tyres around victims' necks), 400 were burnt to death in other ways, and 250 were killed by the ANC and its comrades in bomb and shooting incidents;

That the ANC tasked its military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), to plant landmines as part of "Operation Kletswayo" between the end of 1985 and mid-1987. During that time 25 people ? of whom 24 civilians ? died in 30 landmine explosions which injured another 76 people;

That the victims of ANC terrorist attacks, such as the Church Street bomb, are still awaiting answers from particularly the group of 37 ANC leaders whose amnesty applications were declined by the court because they refused to make full disclosures before the TRC about the terrorist deeds which had arisen from their decisions and instructions.

Statement issued by Charl Oberholzer, National chair, AfriForum Youth, January 8 2012

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