Night of the long knives – myth or fact?
The Record investigates the rumour.
The rumour of the Night of the long knives, the racial Armageddon when Madiba passes away, has done the rounds in one form or another since the eighties but with the sad illness of Nelson Mandela the Record wanted to know what the public thinks.
The Record’s investigative team (Riaan van Zyl, Mathilde Myburgh and Clinton Botha) visited various neighbourhoods and settlements in order to include a fair amount of demographics. The exercise took almost a full day and Editor Tihan van der Walt was frantically
editing footage as it was dropped off at the office.
The areas visited were Rand Leases informal settlement, Witpoortjie, Davidsonville, Wilro Park and Princess informal settlement.
Of the people who were interviewed (not everyone is in the video) not one person of colour said that he or she believed this rumour.
The strangest response of the day came from a man who claimed that “Madiba is an alien who will never die”.
Of the white people approximately 70 per cent also did not believe the rumour. Between 80 and 90 per cent of the people interviewed across the racial and social spectrum shot it down as a myth. The Record takes no stance on the rumour.
