Apartheid's Ward 22: body parts, mind control and gay conversion therapy.

I've just completed reading a novel titled "Moffie" by Andre Carl van der Merwe. "Moffie" is an Afrikaans word for "sissy", or "faggot". The novel is set during the CIA-inspired Angolan War, during the late 1970s to roughly 1989. This war, based on unclear and illogical premises caused a heavy militarization of white apartheid society. The war was often referred to as "South Africa's Vietnam".
The novel is partly autobiographical and focuses on the experience of a gay white male who is drafted into the South African National Defence Force.
The author focuses on homophobia, and the notion that the two initial years of forced military service would somehow "make a man" out of "boys". Of course, behind the facade of Christian anti-communism a lot of hidden and evil things were going on, including human medical experiments.
The SADF claimed to "cure" gay men at the infamous psychiatric Wards 22 and 36. These "cures" included everything from drugs, lobotomies, hormone treatments and even bizarre group masturbations.
The author manages to briefly enter Ward 22, where a hysterical patient claims:
"They put us in a mortuary with body parts. It's like a cool room: dark,very,very dark. One at a time. Everywhere you look there are just bodies or pieces of dead people."
The author first thinks this is the "drugs" that the patient is under talking, but a medic friend later backs up the story:
"They make those medics and gaurds do dreadful things to the patients so that they are kind of part of it. He made me promise not to tell anybody. He told me they put the guys in the mortuary for two days and two nights, with body parts all over the place - people who died on the border, pieces lying open on trays, everywhere, man." ("Moffie" 2006, Van der Merwe, Penstock Publishers: pp. 284-285.)
Could anyone else confirm or expand on confinement with dismembered corpses as a part of mind control operations?

[edit on 21-12-2009 by halfoldman]

reply to post by halfoldman


I love that one... Group masturbation as a cure for gay men being gay? What's the follow up session, oily naked Twister?

Damn, that book is so death metal.

reply to post by factbeforefiction

Sexual abuse in conversion therapy world-wide is well documented. I mean what kind of people does this cult-like role over helpless young men attract anyway? Sadly, the exhaustive studies by R. Sinclair on the SADF and gay experiments are now largely blocked from public view.
Particularly the forced masturbation to "Hustler" magazine (then banned in SA) are linked to a Doctor Aubrey Levin (now in Canada - scott free and oh-so-innocent).
Perhaps this irony of masturbating for heterosexuality (a bit like making war for peace is like f##king for virginity) is the most amusing aspect.
But much else is NOT amusing: www.thegully.com...
The scandals are in no way limited to Levin, and they doubtlessly formed part of wider experiments to "turn" political dissidents. (As such they may well be linked to Vlakplaas and the infamous apartheid death squads run mainly by black "askaris", or turned ANC members).


[edit on 21-12-2009 by halfoldman]

Originally posted by Whine Flu
Damn, that book is so death metal.

Isn't it strange that when urban legends about rampant satanism turn youth subcultures into suspect pariahs, the establishment is busy with the most evil, nefarious and shady of activities.
It's like state secrecy makes everyone know something is going on subconsciously, yet it is easier displaced onto a softer target - like unconventional youth.
I suppose people don't like the idea of paying taxes to torturers, so they go into denial.

[edit on 21-12-2009 by halfoldman]

reply to post by halfoldman

This reminds me of the program that sparked so much of the "Satanic panic" of the late 1980s: Giraldo Rivera 1988:

"Geraldo's program lasted through two hours of prime time, and reached an enormous TV audience. He discussed Satanism, which was described as "this force that exalts evil and darkness." The episode included discussions of: butchered infants, breeding of babies for later sacrifice during Satanic rituals, ritual sexual abuse of children, mutilation of infants, drinking of blood, dismembered corpses, cannibal cults and sex orgies. There were "gruesome rituals," and "gruesome memories," and "gruesome allegations," and "brutally violent, horrible crimes," and acts "so incredibly outrageous, so incredibly unbelievable," that he was reluctant to describe them. "The most gruesome scenes are left out," Rivera commented." www.religioustolerance.org...

It is quite strange how the youth were demonized, particularly Heavy Metal fans, yet governments that allowed at least some of this (dismembered corpses) in their "anti-communist" wars are now not accountable. After all, nasty things happen during war, and every one just did as they were told. And these things were not only happening in South Africa at that time, but also in the CIA's anti-democratic, "counter-revolutionary wars" in Latin America. In war it's regrettable, in society it's Satanic.
Were there perhaps truly satanic people in the hidden echelons of governments who did commit such acts?
I do think so.
The similarities between torture methodologies in alleged "satanic" cults and military experiments are too overwhelming to dismiss.
But with the flood of fake hysteria and religious mumbo jumbo they got away with it.