Eddie Koch and Marion Edmunds
A SINGLE incident is missing from the ANC’s submission to the truth commission and it speaks volumes about why both the African National Congress and the National Party this week failed, essentially, to take moral responsibility for the abuses committed by their members in the apartheid years.
In July 1988 a car bomb exploded outside Ellis Park killing two civilians and injuring 38. The ANC has never denied responsibility for this attack and, because of the sophisticated technology involved, it would have been carried out by the organisation’s Special Operations group.
This unit of Umkhonto weSizwe was, according to the ANC’s submission, formed with the mandate of undertaking high profile attacks on targets such as the Sasolburg oil refinery, Koeberg and Voortrekkerhoogte — and it reported via a separate chain of command directly to ANC president Oliver Tambo.
And that chain of command could, according to research published by the Institute of Defence Studies, have included at least two people who now sit in the Government of National Unity: Defence Minister Joe Modise and his deputy Ronnie Kasrils – — senior officials in the Umkhonto weSizwe hierarchy at the time.
Deputy President Thabo Mbeki indicated ANC military leaders would provide the commission with information on the lines of command governing former MK operatives.
And he said the ANC was encouraging individuals to seek amnesty where necessary.
The amnesty committee can, if requested, hear submissions in camera. Publication of the details of the application will only be made if amnesty is granted.
If everyone who was compromised by past abuse came clean at the truth commission — which, at least in the initial arguments for the establishment of the organisation, was seen as a prerequisite for coming to terms with the past — some members of the Cabinet would have to apply for amnesty without the prospect of automatically receiving this.
There is little doubt that the ANC’s report to the truth commission is, both in its moral and academic integrity, far superior to that of the NP. It is a thorough 90-page document which effectively summarises the history of those turbulent years under apartheid.
It also includes a thick set of appendices — one of which comes refreshingly close to the kind of frankness that was expected of the political parties appearing at the truth commission: 34 names of people who were executed in the ANC’s camps after being “found guilty” of being spies.
Tom Lodge, politics professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, sums up the key difference between the ANC’s conduct and that of the NP and its supporters during the apartheid period.
“In comparative terms — with reference to the general conduct of liberation wars in other parts of the world — the ANC fought a clean war. And if armed rebellions are justifiable, the ANC’s decision to take up arms was certainly defensible.”
There is little doubt that most ANC members, including key leadership figures, would pass the proportionality test — that the extent of violence for political purposes was in proportion to the objective of the act — which the truth commission must take into account before granting amnesty to perpetrators of human rights abuse.
Instead of using this ethical, and strategic, high ground to produce a frankness that was expected of the truth process, Lodge says the document “takes such pains to `contextualise’ every abuse and violation of human rights committed by the organisation — that at times this effort comes close to excusing the inexcusable. As a consequence the moral weight of this document is diminished.”
The NP’s 35-pager contains none of the complex mix of honesty and defensiveness that defines the ANC report. Reading like a matric history textbook written in the 1980s, it is devoted to a justification of the former government’s actions in terms of the historical context for apartheid — with former state president FW de Klerk’s apology for human rights abuse at the time limited to a small paragraph on page 28.
De Klerk’s defining quote came early on: “In dealing with the unconventional strategies from the side of the government, I want to make it clear from the outset that, within my knowledge and experience, they never included the authorisation of assassination, murder, torture, rape, assault or the like… The above statement is also a reflection of the viewpoint of my colleagues.”
He made no mention of the suffering and loss of people who were resettled by apartheid, nor those who were detained, banished or exiled. The explanation for apartheid was kept vague: broad sweeps of policy which appeared to create a framework for executive decision-making.
It was as though De Klerk had surrendered his adult powers of judgment to the forces of time and history: “We are all the children of our times, and the product of the cultural and political circumstances into which we were born and with which we grew up.”
Jannie Gagiano, political scientist at the University of Stellenbosch, says it was not possible for the members of the former government’s executive not to know what was going on at the time. “[Frederik] van Zyl Slabbert, the leader of the then opposition, used to tell me stories when he was in Parliament, stories which were floating around. If somebody like Van Zyl Slabbert knew what was happening in Mozambique and Angola, why did the minister of defence not know? People like him and De Klerk must have known what was going on … and if you knew you can hardly say I did not give instructions … It is like when Uli Schmidt is known to kick in the scrum but is still considered a bit of a hero and you hear them saying: `You can’t be an angel if you play in the scrum’.”
Says Craig Williamson, former NP politician and senior adviser to the State Security Council, “You can’t just stand in a cesspool and wipe your hands quickly and say `I am clean’. The NP does not yet understand what its policy does and what it did, and until it does, I can’t see this thing coming to rest.”
The problem for the truth commission is that the ANC, with its mix of honesty and omission, has missed the opportunity to provide the kind of collective catharsis that the organisation was expected to promote.