Ernest Thusini used to be a religious leader. But it was the brutal murder of five of his children at KwaMakhutha on January 21 1987 that brought him into politics.
“I think the attack motivated me to go into politics because I believed I had to do something to help enable these changes to take place. Once there was change it would give me the self-fulfillment that my children did not die for nothing,” the African National Congress Durban Metropolitan councillor said this week.
Thusini and his wife Faith were among five survivors of the gruesome massacre, saved by a wardrobe which hid them from the attackers’ view. His sons Sanele (4), Mbusa (6), Vikile (7), and Phumzile (8), and daughter Nomfundo (10), were less fortunate.
Lashing out at attempts this week by Deputy President FW de Klerk and Freedom Front leader Constand Viljoen to have the arrests of former defence minister Magnus Malan and 10 former military officials quashed, Thusini says: “Without truth, there can be no reconcilation.”
“In no way will I accept it if those guys just sweep it under the carpet. There has to be truth and it has to be the real truth. It’s not even proper for them to ask for a blanket amnesty because morally, as a human being, you cannot escape letting the country know what it needs to know. It would be cynical and hypocritical for them to try to use some route to escape,” he said.
Thusini argued that if Malan and company were able to escape “the rule of law”, it would mean nothing had changed in South Africa: “You don’t change by voting; change has to come from within.”
While Thusini feels that “if there is concrete evidence, people should have to face trial before seeking amnesty”, he supports the truth and reconcilation process — even for the men who caused him the “devastating” loss of his children.
“It was something that was agreed by all the parties in order to heal the wounds of the past. We need to know what happened. I believe that even though my children won’t come back, if the truth can come out it will help to heal the whole country.”