Mail & Guardian Reporter
SERVING judges who dotted South Africa’s law books with inane judgments in the name of apartheid might not be out of the woods as far as the truth commission is concerned.
Desmond Tutu’s spokesman said this week that although the commission does not have a hit list of apartheid judges, he had discussed access to the judiciary with the chief justice.
In its submission to the commission, the African National Congress homed in on the judiciary as having actively enforced apartheid. “What chance,” it wrote, “would a black person have of acquittal if he appeared before Justice HHW de Villiers?”
De Villiers retired in 1961 and wrote a book on the Rivonia trial in which he opined: “The primitive Bantu is still a killer. The Zulu war cry ‘bulala’ can still stir them into a frenzy of uncontrolled aggression and murder. One must always remember we have to do [sic] with a primitive people; even higher education does not eradicate their superstitious beliefs in a generation or two.”