BONGANI FINCA
I am going to avoid turning this into a party hearing, your party is still coming to the TRC for the second round of questions.  But I would like to acknowledge the fact that what you have done is very profound for the work of the Commission and indeed for the work of reconciliation and nation building in our land.
 We have lived in a country that has been divided and a family that has been torn apart.  Many people in South Africa are saying that the stories, the testimonies that are coming before the Truth Commission, they have never heard about.
 They have been living in this country, we have been sharing this land together, but they have never heard of the CRADOCK HEARING TRC/EASTERN CAPE
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kinds of things that are being shared by the witnesses in our hearings.
 And I believe that they are right.  They have really not heard about it, because they were living on a different part of South Africa, in a country which can be called even physically separated from the country in which the majority of our people have lived.
 The pain is that some even want to deny that those things happened, they call these stories exaggerations.  They call them imaginations, when in fact people are telling about the reality of their experiences which some of our citizens decided to close their eyes on.
 We are indeed grateful and glad that in such a divided society, there were people who were prepared to cross the dividing line.  There were people who were prepared to go and experience what is contained in the testimonies that you are going to be sharing with us through these submissions.
 The tragedy though is that they are very few and far between, the majority of our fellow South Africans, continue even after the transition to where we are, continue to close themselves up and to shut their ears and their eyes to the suffering that continues to take place in our land.
 We are hoping that what you are saying by this submission is that unless we can be able to share the pain of our past together, face it, acknowledge it and say that ugly past is ours together, unless that happens, we are not going to be able to dance the dance of liberation together.  We are going to continue to lose each other at a time when we should be finding each other.
 The testimonies that you are sharing with us, and I have read through one, I've read through the story that
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happened in Port Alfred, I think, where a person was asked to carry the body of a colleague who have been killed, it is amazing, it is a very touching story.   All these stories are going to go into our data base and indeed they are going to help the Commission paint a picture of the ugly past that we have come from with the view of putting a sign post saying, never again must we travel that road again.
 Thank you very much for this submission and please convey our gratitude to all the people who have contributed to this.