History disappearing

The ANC’s key statement of principles, the 1955 Freedom Charter, was written by white communists, writes Stephen Ellis. “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the ­present controls the past.” Recent events made me think of these words by George Orwell, the novelist who had such insight into the methods of

Left and right: do you understand these terms?

A centralized system simply means less freedom for people and the state literally becomes a dictatorship or monarchy. ‘One ring to rule them all.’ Just look at our world today and the powerful unelected entities that make decisions and influence our very lives. People often simply use terms that the media teaches them to mimic,

Sometimes just a stare

Formation of the Internal Stability Division

They often speak of ‘exciting times’, but in reality these were often nothing more than terrifying times.

1984 – 1994 Hidden (partially) campaign

We can say that the South African Police was fighting a ‘low level’ war action, coined by the African National Congress (ANC) as ‘The People’s War’. The People’s War campaign was not really a secret war; it was merely hidden from the west by the foreign media and by the South African government itself. The

Hold the line

Imagine being truly honest

This month I had two conversations concerning history and knowledge being lost, or forgotten. We often have to doubt the validity of some of our recorded history, I have seen lies paraded and accepted as truths. We only have to climb on the interwebs and find opposing facts on almost any topic, even on history

Nightshift complaint 1993

I have thought about this complaint from around 1993 many times, and will still do so for many more times. I remember it was a summer’s nightshift in the township when our Ops room (operational room/unit radio room) sent us a complaint originally from 10111 (emergency call); the complaint was a axe attack and the

Betrayed

Many have had to fight a war that the politicians knew the outcome would be to lose; a planned loss that did not include informing those doing the dirty work, a planned loss that included the selling out of those that did the dirty work for them. Most of the members were solid operators who