Louise Flanagan
A group of former Ciskei soldiers fighting for reinstatement four years after they were fired for blowing the whistle on illegal military activities may finally be compensated.
“The indications are that it is a matter of working out quantum,” a spokesman for the ministry of defence, Dr Das Herbst, said this week.
The expected payouts mark a turnaround in the ministry’s attitude towards a Bisho Supreme Court case in which former Ciskei soldiers are suing for reinstatement, including back-pay.
When the hearings started this Monday, the state was opposing on both a legal technicality and on the grounds that the officers had tried to overthrow then Ciskei military ruler Brigadier Oupa Gqozo, whose government was at the time actively opposed to the ANC.
The officers claiming reinstatement are former Ciskei Defence Force Military Intelligence chief Lieutenant- Colonel Zanomzi Zantsi, Lieutenant-Colonel Lalela Naka, Lieutenant-Colonel Gabula Mteti and nine other officers and troops.
The officers exposed the International Researchers- Ciskei Intelligence Services (IR-CIS) unit which was a clandestine South African Defence Force (SADF) unit operating in Ciskei. The unit was accused of involvement in the abortive 1990 coup attempt against the Transkei military government and of carrying out hit-squad style murders.
The unit was eventually closed down by the SADF after further publicity. The soldiers were charged with treason but the cases were dropped. They were all fired in March and April 1991.
The ANC supported the exposures and many of the soldiers subsequently joined the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) as Umkhonto weSizwe members.
Despite the background to the cases, the Ministry of Defence continued opposing the cases on the grounds that the soldiers had been part of an attempt to overthrow Gqozo. The ANC itself ran a long campaign calling for an end to that government, until it collapsed shortly before last April’s elections.
In an ironic twist, the state was represented by the lawyers who had represented many of the soldiers themselves when they first brought their claims against the previous government.
In August 1993, the advocate now representing the government, Deva Pillay, flatly denied in another case that the soldiers, then his clients, had ever been involved in a coup attempt.