SAR, Vol 14 No 4, August 1999 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE REGION BY JOHN
DANIEL John Daniel, who until recently, was a Senior Researcher
with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, is currently in
the Department of Political Science at the University of Durban-
Westville. Rene Dumont, the noted French anthropologist,
recently described the twentieth century as `one of massacres
and wars.' Nobel Laureate William Golding called it `the most
violent century in human history.' No doubt, they had the
nuclear and other horrors of World Wars I and II in mind, and
the genocidal slaughters of the Armenians of Turkey, Jews of
Europe, the Indians of Central and Latin America and the Tutsis
of Rwanda. Almost certainly they will not have included
apartheid South Africa's 30-year war on its neighbours amongst
the century's great crimes. The primary reason is because that
onslaught was largely hidden and portrayed in mainstream Western
political opinion as a legitimate counter to an imagined Soviet
offensive. Worst violations outs