St James Church massacre: Unholy massacre or military mission?
A commemoration of the 1993 slaying of congregants in a Cape Town church by Apla guerrillas was held this week. For some, it was a time to try and make sense of the bloodshed, which stunned SA
On Wednesday night, more than a thousand people filed into the St James Anglican Church in Kenilworth, Cape Town, to commemorate an event etched into the minds of many South Africans.
Under an unseasonably warm sky, they entered through the church's several doors, which open onto quiet streets.
Exactly 25 years ago, this church was a scene of such horror that some will never forget the red lights of the ambulances splintered by the pouring rain as 11 bodies were taken out of the church, dismembered limbs were removed from the floor, and 58 seriously injured people were rushed away.
Earlier on Wednesday, Mark Seymour entered the church for the first time in 25 years, when nobody else was there.
As he opened the door, he stepped inside a memory he has kept firmly locked behind the screen of the past.
In 1993, aged 25, he and fellow engineering student Adrian Stone attended the evening service on Sunday July 25.
"We were not part of the congregation," he says, "we were still exploring."
Just a few years earlier, aged 17, he was conscripted into the army and trained as a medic...
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