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In his address at the saamtrek, the national conference convened in 2001 to debate values in education, Mandla Langa, the Chair of the Independent Communications Authority said: "The stories of this country's coming to terms with itself...can only liberate ourselves from our ignorance of what makes up this country and its peoples. It is this knowledge...that will help to sustain us in the future and help us grow".

Langa was referring to the significance of history as story-telling with a specific goal, namely to revitalise memory, to make our stories come alive and to make fellow South Africans aware of the many untold stories of our past. He was looking at history from the ethical angle that is basic to Minister Kader Asmal's Manifesto on Values, Education and Democracy, where knowledge of and remembering the untold stories will lead to healing, as we work towards reconciliation of our divided past.

Ten years ago, on 19 March 1991, the last political trial of the apartheid era, the "Yengeni Trial" - so named after Accused No 1, Tony Yengeni - was brought to a sudden halt by a political decree of the then Minister of Justice Kobie Coetsee and not by the High Court as had to be expected. Coetsee was acting upon the conditions of an agreement on indemnity reached between the apartheid government and the African National Congress after the release of former President Mandela. Else Schreiner, whose daughter, Jenny Schreiner, stood accused in terms of Section 29 of the Internal Security Act, movingly captures the story of this trial, also renowned as the "Rainbow Trial" because the fifteen trialists represented the entire rainbow spectrum of our diverse society.

"Interpreted through the heart of an unashamedly biased mother", "TIME STRETCHING FEAR" is a detailed and harrowing account of what the notorious Section 29 meant for the detainees and their families and friends. It shows up the brutality of the representatives of the Apartheid state - the unashamedly vicious Security Police. The book exposes the vindictive and brutal methods employed by the Apartheid state to destroy its opponents. It exposes, too, the collusion of the Judiciary with the Apartheid state in the systemic violation of human rights, as it does the collusion of the Judiciary in the attempted annihilation of resistors and resistance to Apartheid. But more significantly "TIME STRETCHING FEAR" is a tribute to the extraordinary courage of some of the remarkable opponents of Apartheid, who, with very few exceptions, remain unknown to us. These women and men challenged the beast in its own territory, at the price of enormous personal suffering on both sides of the prisons bars. They were tortured, psychologically terrorised, driven to attempted suicide, manhandled, sexually harassed and intimated - in fact the entire gamut of fascist policing methods that served to maintain an illegitimate state. All this horror notwithstanding and personal suffering, Schreiner is compassionate and honest enough not to shy away from documenting the small acts of humanity and risk exercised by ordinary members of the police towards the trialists. These are the moments where history invites reconciliation.

"Interpreted through the heart of an unashamedly biased mother", while true, is only half-true. All Schreiner's stories of Security Police brutality were vindicated when the torturers could apply to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for amnesty as of 1997. When the entire nation watched in horror when (a weeping) Benzien demonstrated his 'wet bag' method of torture. It was, as Schreiner claims in her postscript to her book, a case of the "system exposing itself".

The book will be launched at the National Archives, 24 Hamilton Street, Arcadia on Monday, 10 September 2001 at 17h30 for 18h00.

The book will be on sale at a cost of R94, 95.

Issued by Ministry of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology

6 September 2001