The Editor
The Sunday Times
Via email: [email protected]
Dear Sir,
The write-up by Chris Barron of General Magnus Malan as “Vile, venal enemy of the people” (Sunday Times: 23 July 2011) calls for reaction. I address this letter to you as an IFP member and Afrikaner who cannot remain silent.
Barron’s article is based on misrepresentations, malicious gossiping, half truths and blatant lies. It portrays nothing less than a deep hatred for the IFP and of Afrikaners, such as Malan and most of the officers of the SADF. He totally ignores the unspeakable atrocities committed by the ANC which would have afforded the reader the whole picture about the violence in the eighties in KwaZulu-Natal between the ANC and IFP. Without this information the uninformed reader is left with no other option than to see the IFP, Malan and the officers of the SADF as murderers, crooks and “the enemy of the people”.
By being silent about the ANC’s atrocities, in what appears to be intentional, Barron by implication paints the ANC as a party whose innocent members were slaughtered by the IFP and Malan’s soldiers. He makes no mention of the killing of 240 IFP leaders of which particulars were submitted to the TRC. No mention of hundreds of more than 500 innocent black people killed by the most inhumane execution method of the ANC by burning them alive; no mention of the killing of hundreds of policemen; no mention of the killing of more than 8 000 people by the ANC, injuring some 18 000. No mention is made of Goldstone’s report on violence in KwaZulu/Natal in 1992. The Folweni massacre in October 1992, for example, involved gunmen dressed in army-type uniforms who attacked the home of a known IFP supporter. The police testified to the Goldstone commission that Umkhonto combatants had been involved in these massacres. They gave examples of a number of attacks perpetrated by ANC members dressed in security uniforms. The police also testified that the ANC was ‘waging an aggressive war’ on the IFP ‘by military means’ in the region, while the IFP was ‘disadvantaged in its resistance to the ANC’s onslaught [because it] lacked the quantity and sophistication of the weaponry available to the ANC’.
No mention of any criticism of the ANC: a scandalous one sided picture which is nothing less than an obedient cover up of ANC atrocities which makes a mockery of objective and responsible journalism.
Barron claims that “hundreds of millions from the fund (controlled by Malan) went into training and arming Inkatha hit squads to kill those aligned to the ANC and UDF”.
This is a lie. There is no evidence to support this lie. What is true is that some 200 IFP’s were trained by the SADF to protect IFP VIP’s against murder attacks by the ANC. No proof at all that they were trained in order to murder ANC and UDF supporters.
Malan, other generals and six IFP members who were trained by the SADF were charged with the murder of persons killed at KwaMakhuta. They were all found not guilty by the High Court. One of the assessors in that trail was a black man who later became the Judge President of KwaZulu-Natal. He concurred with the judgment. The two key witnesses whose statements led to the trial were at the end of the trial denied indemnity of prosecution in terms of section 204 of the Act, which leaves no doubt as to the falsehood of their testimonies.
Barron’s personal attacks and malicious insults of General Malan and officers of the SADF are shocking and are devoid of any proof
Another scandalous lie is that General Constand Viljoen “despised Malan”. Viljoen spoke at the Memorial for Malan on 27 July and made mince meat of Barron’s lie.
Barron’s lies make it increasingly difficult to defend the media against the onslaughts of those who want to take away its self-regulation freedoms.
KOOS VAN DER MERWE MP
IFP Chief Whip
Longest-serving Member of Parliament
