For the forty odd years, South Africa was subjected to the most severe censorship together with the propaganda that successful censorship makes so easy.

Believe me. I grew up under this oppressive system - and I thought that the rest of the world was persecuting us innocent South Africans. Was I wrong !!

Those outside South Africa knew what was going on all the time, but the truth was kept from us. The odd atrocity which partly surfaced was conveniently written off as an isolated incident precipitated by communist terrorists. Like Hitler, our leaders had identified the threat to the continuance of a decent life for hard working, god fearing citizens: communist terrorists were the most fearful, evil, godless, rapists and plunderers one could imagine.

Most thinking people did realize that there were cracks in the reasoning and propaganda stories, but in the absence of balanced (or opposing) news, we believed in the basic good of humanity.

After all, such evil people couldn't look so normal ... could they?