Seven thousand people died during the political violence under apartheid and more than half of them were under twenty-five years old. Tens of thousands of youths did not die but suffered in other ways from the physical and mental persecution meted out by apartheid’s agents. This is the story of a handful of these survivors — a few of the young people who spoke out at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s youth hearings. It is not a pretty story — it is a tale of assault, verbal and physical; of intimidation and rape; of cowardice and valour; corruption and compassion and, ultimately, of the destructiveness of a political ideology gone rampant. It is, however, a story which had to be told — for the people it is concerned with are South Africa’s future.