Police have reacted to the amnesty issue with a threat to release damaging information on cabinet members an politicians reports Gaye Davis
POLICE have put a loaded gun to the head of the government of national unity (GNU), threatening to release evidence linking cabinet ministers and politicians in the National Party, ANC and other parties to gross human rights violations if they fail to shoulder joint responsibility for apartheid crimes.
The ultimatum is in a police memorandum on the Truth Commission submitted this week to the parliamentary portfolio committee on justice. It comes as non- governmental organisations gear up for a head-on confrontation with the government over a cabinet compromise allowing for amnesty hearings to be secret.
The “documentary and other evidence” the police are threatening to release could blow the lid off State Security Council decisions and the involvement of present and past cabinet ministers in operations where security force members were — according to the memorandum — left to their “own devices”.
It would include information gathered covertly during “total onslaught” years from prominent members of society, including academics, senior public service staffers, informers, agents, security force members — and members of parliament and provincial legislatures.
The Weekly Mail & Guardian also established this week that Freedom Front leader General Constand Viljoen was last month allowed to appear before a specially established cabinet committee to propose that he uncover details of security force crimes of the apartheid era, including who ordered them. It would then be left to the cabinet to decide what to do with the information.
Viljoen confirmed that President Nelson Mandela agreed at a breakfast meeting last month that he appear before the full cabinet to put his offer but that this was vetoed by deputy president FW de Klerk. De Klerk however agreed to chair a cabinet sub-committee to hear the general. The Freedom Front leader said he appeared before the committee “about a month ago” and put his arguments. “Then I never heard of it again — what I said must have been unacceptable.”
General Viljoen warned “a national haemorrhage” would ensue if the government pursued its present proposals for the Truth Commission. “Emotions are running very high on the ground.
“There is fear that this will not be an even-handed exercise, that the whole effort is to revive the old apartheid issue and regenerate hatred for the purposes of the local government elections,” he said.
The memorandum demands that the NP, ANC and other organisations such as the Pan Africanist Congress and Inkatha accept “collective responsibility” for actions “committed by the state or such organisations through individuals”. Failure to do so could mean the release of “wide-ranging and comprehensive evidence” — at risk of destroying the credibility of the GNU and erasing any possibility of reconciliation.
A submission by police commissioner General Johan van der Merwe sets out a list of changes the South African Police Services wants made to the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Bill — already at the centre of a row between government and organisations for allowing secret amnesty hearings and likely to spark an internal row within the ANC.
Van der Merwe’s submission also bargains for temporary immunity for past and present security force members — of the kind granted ANC national executive members to allow them to enter the country for talks. If immunity was extended to ANC members only (the relevant act falls away when the bill is enacted) the SAPS would “be obliged” to submit case dockets implicating ANC members to attorneys-general for possible prosecution.
If the police were legally obliged to give evidence to the commission the SAPS “will be burdened with the responsibility to submit evidence against various members of the cabinet”.
The bill covered only subordinates acting in the scope of their duties and did not cover political or administrative superiors. Nor was it “morally justifiable” to distinguish between crimes by security forces and those of liberation movements.
The police memorandum refers to the “Simonstown Deliberations” of 1979 which spawned a counter- revolutionary operation involving the army, the National Intelligence Service (NIS) and the police — “where the emphasis was placed on abnormal intelligence-gathering methodology and not according to international norms and practices”.
In subsequent years decisions were taken by the government of the day along with security force heads, NIS, the SSC and the Co-ordinating Intelligence Committee. “These structures gave orders concerning counter-revolutionary actions on a continuous basis whether by direct or implied authority. The SADF was responsible for the foreign dimension, SAP for internal while NIS and Department of Foreign Affairs supported both with intelligence back-up.
An example was the “Teenrewolusionere Inligtingstaakspan” (Trewits) — charged with identifying structures and individuals in the armed struggle. Another was the Division for Strategic Communications (Stratcomm), a sub-structure of the SSC administered by NIS but of which the army was the primary functionary. “These structures were fully sanctioned by the Nationalist government and senior members of the cabinet were briefed on a continuous and structured basis.”
A close relationships existed between the Nationalist government and foreign intelligence agencies. If these agents were exposed by the Truth Commission, future co- operation would be seriously impeded.
* A day-long summit of non-governmental organisations in Johannesburg on Monday is expected to come up with a plan of action — including a possible concerted Constitutional Court challenge — to the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Bill as it now stands.
The WM&G learned this week that NGOs are also seeking an urgent meeting with Minister of Justice Dulla Omar. “The bill as it now stands bears no relation to the transparency and openness the minister promised at various meetings around the country,” a source said.
Another source said: “This is the issue which will show whether the government of national unity will stand or fall on principle.”
It is possible that if the bill is enacted as it stands that NGOs will embark on a parallel process.