Interview Segment

Colin De Souza interviewed by Joshua Ogada
May 26, 2005 Cape Town, South Africa.
"We sacrificed our youth, our education, for the liberation of a bigger people, and the government never rewarded us respectably." [3:39]

Colin deSouza, who fought underground with the ANC in Cape Town as a teenager, talks about the limits of reparations that came after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Colin De Souza grew up in Bonteheuwel, a Coloured community outside Cape Town. He remembers his parents keeping him indoors when he heard shots during the student uprising in 1976. He was in high school himself in 1985, the first year of a student uprising in Bonteheuwel. He was recruited by the African National Congress and joined the Bonteheuwel Military Wing during a time of intense conflict in the townships with the security police. DeSouza was detained and tortured, about which he testified before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He has criticized the inadequacy of the reparations granted to victims of human rights abuses.

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