We all have things in our pasts we would rather not be reminded of, that we hope the rest of the world could forget, or never become aware of.
In the case of the apartheid government, despite the many revelations at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of atrocities committed by the old security police and army, there are several other skeletons still in the cupboard that people would rather have stay there than come tumbling out.
Of course the apartheid apparatus is not alone in wanting to keep secrets; there are also many accounts of suspected spies being tortured by the ANC at its bases in other African countries, including Quatro in Angola.
But skeletons are nasty, slippery creatures eager to announce themselves to the world, even years after being locked away.
The death of Ahmed Timol at the old John Vorster Square is a case in point. Fifty years after Timol supposedly jumped to his death while being interrogated, a policeman involved in his suspected murder may yet get his comeuppance.
And today we report on an apartheid massacre which few know about, and apparently few want to talk about.
Happening eight years earlier than the Sharpeville massacre, the 1952 Duncan Village massacre claimed nearly three times as many lives at the hands of police, but the victims have not been honoured. The massacre coming at the height of the ANC’s defiance campaign, the Duncan Village victims deserve recognition in the same way that victims of other apartheid-era horrors have had their names etched in stone.
The subsequent murder of a nun ‒ and the ANC’s need to preserve its heroic telling of the freedom struggle ‒ should not prevent the truth from being told and 200 murdered souls being remembered.
The Independent on Saturday