Hello and thank you for downloading this witness podcast with me Rebecca Kesby and today we go back to some of the darkest days of the apartheid state in South Africa as the white regime's grip on power began to slip, its efforts to maintain control became ever more brutal.

It's the middle of 1985 and South Africa's white minority government of

P. W. Bota has declared a state of emergency.

The emergency regulations give the police and army sweeping powers to round up activists,

curb rioters, the security forces have the right to search any premises,

and no claim for damages can be made against them.

One could say that the 1980s presented both the greatest most determined challenge against the apartheid system,

but also the greatest repression from the government that we have seen.

Reverend Dr Alan Bursack was a pastor in a so-called colored community in Cape Town.

Once the state of emergency was declared,

the role of the police as an oppressive and suppressive force became much more prominent then.

The government also could make use much more of the army besieging townships and that made life much much more difficult.

By the mid-1980s the apartheid state that disenfranchised 80% of the population which which was black or mixed race, in favour of 20% which was white,

was coming under intense pressure, and international sanctions were beginning to squeeze the economy.

I myself will continue to fight this government at every single level that I can.

South Africa cannot any longer afford a government like this.

The day the white domination are over.

Alan Borsack was one of the founders of the United Democratic Front,

a new resistance organization joining students, groups, unions and churches together and the townships became the

battlegrounds for a racist regime increasingly desperate to keep power for itself.

The children had begun attacking the police armored vehicles.

Tier gas and rubber bullets would disperse them for a while,

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