Anne van Mourik and Thijs Bouwknegt interview historian Kylie Thomas and journalist Michael Schmidt, discussing forced disappearances under Apartheid South Africa.
Michael is the author of Death Flight: Apartheid's secret doctrine of disappearance, which investigates and tells the history of Apartheid’s chilling tactic of throwing people, dead or alive, from airplanes so that their remains cannot be found. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission on human rights violations during the Apartheid years was established in 1995. Kylie Thomas researches and writes about the 2017 reopening of the Apartheid cases.
Who exactly were the people who were targeted for ‘disappearance’? And how come cases of activists who were imprisoned, tortured and murdered, are only now being reinvestigated and reopened?
Websites mentioned in the episode:
Foundation for Human Rights Unfinished Business of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission: https://unfinishedtrc.co.za
Images courtesy of the Ahmed Timol Family Trust: https://www.ahmedtimol.co.za/
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Music: Alastair Douglas