Former Presidents Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma won’t be able to hide forever, says the writer. Whether or not they succeed in their applications to force former Constitutional Court Judge Sisi Khampepe to step down as Chairperson of the inquiry into the State’s non-prosecution of cases recommended for further investigation by the TRC, former Presidents Mbeki and Zuma won’t be able to hide forever. They must account for the fact that, whether by commission or omission, the work of South Africa’s flagship mechanism to deal with the divisions of the past was effectively shut down under their watch.
They must account to the families of victims who laid down their lives for the democracy over which they held sway as President. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission had several distinct functions, including creating public platforms for the stories of victims of human rights violations to be told, making recommendations to the government on rehabilitating a divided and unequal nation, and providing reparations. But its most important legislative role was the granting of amnesty to qualifying individuals.
In their wisdom, the negotiators of South Africa’s democracy might have chosen to place selected apartheid leaders and their minions on trial, like the Nuremberg Trials after World War 2. Or they could have chosen the route of a general amnesty. Instead, they chose a more complex mechanism of partial accountability with a view to contributing to nation-building by establishing a simple truth.
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The Chair of the Commission, the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, described the offer of amnesty to perpetrators of human rights violations as a “carrot” to encourage them to confess their dastardly deeds. For those who elected to take their chances and ignore the amnesty process, or whose amnesty applications were not considered sufficiently truthful or committed to a political goal, there was also a stick. The TRC’s Amnesty Committee was not made up of theologians, but of judges – including Judge Khampepe.
The trouble that’s arisen is that the commission did not have control over the stick; it made recommendations but depended on the integrity of the National Prosecuting Authority to wield it. Unite for Change Leadership Council member and GOOD member of the Western Cape Provincial Parliament, Brett Herron. The TRC recommended approximately 300 cases for further scrutiny.
Nearly 25 years later, a large proportion of perpetrators have passed away from old age without being held to account, and without offering any sense of closure to surviving family members. These weren’t just any cases, and nor were they cases of unknown soldiers. Many of the cases involved the killing of activists, soldiers, and leaders of the ANC. Among the delayed cases was that of the killing of former ANC President and Africa’s first Nobel Laureate, Albert Luthuli.
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