TRC -- The "Pebco Three"
The "Pebco Three" were a trio of community grass roots leaders who were tortured and killed. In this video clip, we hear the testimonies of the killers and witness some reactions to that testimony. This clip is from Facing the Truth, with Bill Moyers.
[As clip begins, we hear the voices of perpetrators as they testify, speaking in their native language.]
"TRANSLATOR (FOR PERPETRATORS 1 & 2): …They were given coffee into which the sleeping drug had been poured, and then the people were taken out of the garage one-by-one and they were eliminated.
NARRATOR (MOYERS): At the TRC’s amnesty hearings, patterns were emerging...
PERPETRATOR 3: The burning of a body to ashes takes about 7 hours. While that happened, we were drinking and even having braii [barbeque] next to the fire.
NARRATOR (MOYERS): …The systematic abduction and murder of resistance leaders.
TRANSLATOR (FOR PERPETRATOR 4): …What I’m saying is that we didn’t kidnap them to interrogate them. We kidnapped them to kill them.
NARRATOR (MOYERS): In the disappearance of the “Pebco Three,” a trio of community grass roots leaders, their widows would learn not only what happened to their husbands, but where. Post Chalmers Farm, owned by the state; a kind of torture, or killing, farm where many eastern cape activists were taken. These so-called “Truth Rooms” were all over the country. The victims were often told by their tormentors, ‘You can shout or cry as loud as you want to. Nobody will hear and nobody will ever know.’
TRANSLATOR (FOR PERPETRATOR 2): The wood was placed in a large pile in the backyard. The people were carried to the wood, put on top of it—all three of them, yes—and it was set alight and diesel was poured over.
[We see a woman leave the courtroom; it is too much to handle. We then see her in the bathroom. She is wailing and some other women are trying to calm her down.]
OTHER WOMAN IN BATHROOM: (To camera, as she tries to comfort the wailing woman) Get out. Just get out, please."


