ABOOBAKER ISMAIL
Mr Chairperson one has got to understand that the struggle was one that was waged between the African National Congress and an apartheid state.  The two are not equated.  One has to understand that there need not have been a struggle had there not been an apartheid state.  What was the cause or the suffering and the bitterness in this country?  It was apartheid.  It was the oppression of the people in this country.  	And if one tries to examine all of these things without reference to that then you begin to ask yourself on what basis are we talking.  We are not talking here of two countries at war.  We are talking here of a country at war with itself.  We are talking of a nation that was broken up on the basis of apartheid, on the basis of a racist ideology which was condemned internationally, where the United Nations itself, the liberation struggle in this country was accepted as a just struggle.
	It is on those basis that we lay the foundations because if we do not examine what we are talking about within a context then we simply talk about killing.  But we ask ourselves, this violence that we talk of, to what end did it come?  
	There are two different opposing things that we talk of.  The one which aimed to entrench privilege of whites which aimed to entrench white supremacy, and another which did exactly the opposite, which fought for liberation, which fought for democracy, which fought for change; which fought for equality.  We cannot simply then say we - all is the same.  
	The Act says that, yes, because today we move towards reconciliation.  We need to ask ourselves all the time when the hundreds and the thousands of black people were being killed in this country what was happening?  When the schoolchildren of Soweto were being killed, what was happening then?