DEREK GROOTBOOM
The general political call to us at that time was to make the country ungovernable.   In Dysselsdorp the youth were involved in running battles with the police.  The police without provocation would stop us from going to the shops or being in the street, hitting us with shamboks and batons, they terrorised us.  There was furthermore to us no division between the police and the Town Council, members of our Youth Organisation who was evicted with their families from their houses, the Town Council used the police to enforce this.  Many of our members would leave for school from the street and returned from the school to the street, opposite their empty houses.  In DYO our organisation at the time, we in line with the general political climate took the decision to attack government and State institutions in our contribution to help to make the country ungovernable.  To us apartheid could not be transformed and it had to be destroyed.   This was also the political understanding in the UDF which we followed as our leading organisation then.