The AfriForum group on Tuesday laid wreaths in Pretoria for the victims of the Church Street bomb blast during the apartheid era.
AfriForum CEO Kallie Kriel said the group and relatives laid wreaths to mark the 25th anniversary the May 20 1983 incident.
”AfriForum and relatives of the victims of the Church Street bomb today [Tuesday] held a wreath-laying ceremony at the scene of the car-bomb explosion in memory of those who had died or were injured in this African National Congress terror attack,” said Kriel.
Nineteen people, including 10 civilians and the two bombers, died in the explosion.
”Of the 200 people injured, 114 were civilians. The fact that the majority of the victims had been civilians means that the incident cannot be regarded as a military operation, but rather as an act of terror,” said AfriForum.
Kriel said the incident should be remembered in order to expel the myth that those who partook in the struggle were ”irreproachable heroes, while the rest are all portrayed as evil”.
”The Church Street bomb was a cowardly act of terror, which definitely is not more acceptable than any other human rights violation of the past,” he said.
Kriel said he was dissatisfied that efforts were still being made to abuse the international community’s abhorrence of apartheid to try to justify what he claimed was the ANC’s human rights violations of the 1980s. — Sapa