The missing victims of apartheid
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 22 October 2020
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 2005, South Africa set up the Missing Persons Task Team to trace and locate the remains of the hundreds, possibly thousands, who disappeared in "political circumstances" during the brutal years of white minority rule. Many were victims of the state security services. Some were victims of secret death squads which abducted and murdered opponents of the regime. Alex Last talks to the leader of the team, Madeleine Fullard, about her work and how the cases reveal the dark and complicated history of apartheid rule.
Photo: Madeleine Fullard, head of the National Prosecuting Authority's Missing Persons Task Team, at a gravesite in Red Hill on November 15, 2012 in Durban, South Africa. (Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless |
| 0:06.8 | searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the |
| 0:11.8 | telly we share what we've been watching |
| 0:14.0 | Cladie Aide. |
| 0:16.0 | Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming. |
| 0:19.0 | Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige. |
| 0:21.0 | And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less |
| 0:24.9 | searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds. Hello and |
| 0:35.0 | the BBC World Service with me Alex Last. |
| 0:40.0 | And today we look back at the work of the South African Missing Persons Task Team set up in 2005 |
| 0:47.6 | to find the remains of those who disappeared during the brutal decades of apartheid rule. |
| 0:54.0 | It's an enormous privilege to be able to find answers. It's as if we are on a journey and the family's been stuck in one particular place for so long. |
| 1:11.0 | With many of the families we won't get to the end of the road, but we might be able to take |
| 1:15.6 | a few steps further down the road. It has been terribly painful, but the sense of joy and accomplishment on finding someone's child, the remains of someone's child, is beyond description. |
| 1:32.0 | We always say it's like finding the most precious treasure in the world. |
| 1:39.2 | Madeline Fulard has led South Africa's missing person's task team since it was set up in 2005. |
| 1:46.0 | Its mission is to trace and if possible locate the remains of the hundreds, possibly thousands who disappeared in political circumstances during the country's apartheid regime. |
| 1:57.0 | It was set up on the recommendation of the country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, |
| 2:02.0 | which had heard testimony from victims and perpetrators of violence and human rights abuses, where amnesty could be the reward for truth. |
| 2:11.0 | The cases are difficult and often reveal the dark brutal and complicated story of South Africa's apartheid rule and they can take an emotional toll too. |
| 2:22.0 | Really one of the most devastating was working at an old abandoned rural police station |
| 2:29.0 | where members of the East and Cape Security Police had revealed to the Truth and Reconc |
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