Forty Years of the 1985 Botswana Massacre: The Victims were Very ‘Soft’ Targets
(Adapted from an Article by a Sechaba Special Correspondent, August 1985).
On the night of 14 June 1985, just two days before the 9th anniversary of the Soweto uprisings, and only two days before the opening of the African National Congress (ANC) Second National Consultative Conference, the apartheid terrorist threats became a reality. The Pretoria racist regime was, once again, telling the people in action that the only way to stop the bloodletting was to go to war. Stationing tanks at the Botswana border for back-up if required, Pretoria’s dogs of war came to Gaborone to kill.
Ten “ANC targets’, widely scattered, were attacked simultaneously with heavy artillery, machine guns and grenades. After the attacks, buildings were demolished with explosives; cars were burnt; every effort was made to ensure there were no survivors. Using loud-hailers, speaking in Afrikaans, English and Sotho, the apartheid South African forces of death instructed the people of Gaborone to stay indoors, keep their curtains drawn, and to switch their lights off. They then proceeded to carry out their bloody tasks.
General Constand Viljoen, Chief of the apartheid Army, declared the following morning: “We destroyed ten ANC military bases. I want to state clearly that the operation was not directed at the government of Botswana or its people, but at clearly identified ANC terrorists … The attack was
