Hamas Kills 6 Suspected Israel Collaborators: Witnesses (GRAPHIC PHOTO)

[David__77]

51. There were trials and there were "trials."

The ANC itself recognizes this. One can wave one's hand and say "these things happen in war," but is this necessarily so? The attack in Gaza could be very much analogous to the quite common annihilation of accused informers by ANC supporters during the 1980s.

http://www.anc.org.za/show.php?id=2639

On a number of occasions both the ANC and UDF/MDM leadership condemned violations of human rights which occurred as a result of "peoples` courts", "necklacing", and other unacceptable practices, whilst recognising the context in which such actions took place. The most cursory research of the 1980s press and the archives of the UDF will confirm this fact.

In its attempts to suppress the mass uprising, the state relied on an extensive network of secret informers, and constantly attempted to turn activists into a fifth column within the mass democratic movement. In some cases these attempts were successful; such recruits passed on information on activists to their handlers in the security forces: this resulted in lengthy detentions, the smashing of organisations, and many murders of respected leadership figures and other activists. Other informers became state witnesses, schooled to give false evidence needed to convict activists of treason, terrorism and sedition under the Internal Security Act. Yet others were recruited into death squads, or deployed as agents provocateurs who incited or perpetrated violence and then claimed to have been instructed by the UDF and /or the ANC to do so.

In yet other cases, young activists who wanted to serve the cause of liberation by participating in the armed struggle were lured into fatal traps by agents of the regime posing as members of MK or the ANC, who gave them arms and ammunition and wrong instructions on how to use them, or booby-trapped grenades which killed or grossly maimed the users. These cynical killings were then attributed to the ANC`s armed wing. These and other heart-rending experiences gave rise to a culture of extreme intolerance among the youth in particular for informers and those suspected of being agents provocateurs. In a situation where the forces of law and order were deployed to attack rather than defend the people, it is not remotely surprising that activists turned towards meting out summary justice against suspected agents, and those who openly sided with the apartheid system, including members of the hated security forces.