Applications for amnesty from the the PAC and ANC are pouring in to the truth commission, and with a likely extension of the cut-off date right-wingers will also be able to apply, writes Eddie Koch
PRESIDENT Nelson Mandela is expected to cap a week of dramatic developments around the truth commission by announcing on Friday that people who took part in election bombings and other acts of violence during the run-up to his 1994 inauguration will now be able to apply for amnesty.
The meeting comes after announcements that former law and order minister Adriaan Vlok has finalised his amnesty application and that guerrillas from the African National Congress and Pan Africanist Congress’s military wings are streaming in to ask for amnesty before the deadline on Saturday. It was also the week in which the first security force officer responsible for a serious massacre – Brian Mitchell – received amnesty.
The outcome of the summit at Mandela’s office in the Union Buildings – due to be attended by Freedom Front leader Constand Viljoen, truth commission deputy chairman Alex Boraine and Justice Minister Dullah Omar – will provide the pivot around which the commission will now begin to take more shape as an active agent for reconciliation.
The truth body, in operation since January, has so far functioned mainly as a forum for victims to express the pain they have suffered as a result of human rights abuse in the apartheid period. The organisation has, until now, had only limited success in terms of its other major function: to flush out the truth from perpetrators in exchange for giving them amnesty.
Members of the commission believe they will have time and opportunity to accomplish a more effective mood of reconciliation than the organisation has achieved so far if there is agreement to amend the truth laws so that more right-wingers can apply for amnesty.
Sources inside the commission say the president will probably announce plans at a midday press conference that will enable right-wing terrorists who disrupted the country’s first non-racial election with a violent car-bomb campaign to apply for amnesty.
That move – along with the dramatic announcement this week that former minister Adriaan Vlok has applied for amnesty, and the decision this week to grant mass killer Brian Mitchell amnesty, is bound to bring the right-wing more into line with the principles of the country’s new Constitution and its stress on the need for national reconciliation.
Vlok was reported to have almost completed his amnesty application while a group of police generals and senior officers under the leadership of former commissioner, General Johan van der Merwe, will submit about 50 applications.
On top of that, the PAC announced this week that the entire high command of its guerrilla wing, the Azanian People’s Liberation Army (Apla), would apply for amnesty. An additional 600 applications from rank-and-file Apla cadres will be made before the deadline at midnight on Saturday.
Amendments to the truth laws, especially an extension of the period for which people involved in political violence can qualify for amnesty, will also benefit Apla guerrillas who carried out terror campaigns in the early part of 1994.
The ANC has also already handed in about 300 applications and is busy processing many more. The organisation has promised to make the names of each applicant public this week, but it is known the list will include Defence Minister Joe Modise, his deputy Ronnie Kasrils, and Rashid Abu Baker, former commander of the Umkhonto weSizwe’s special operations unit, who is now a general in the SANDF.
These late but dramatic moves will effectively shift the truth body firmly away from being a forum for public venting of anger and grief about past atrocities into becoming a more effective instrument for extracting the truth about these events – and then promoting forgiveness on the basis of the disclosures. A staffer told the M&G there was a “polling-booth” atmosphere at the organisation’s head office in Adderley Street, Cape Town as boxes filled with applications streamed in to meet the Saturday deadline.
Mandela is expected to tell journalists on Friday that his Cabinet will recommend to Parliament early next year that it amend its truth commission legislation in order to change the cut-off date for offences that qualify for amnesty from the end of 1993 to May 10 1994, the date of the presidential inauguration.
The deadline for amnesty applications to be handed in by midnight on Saturday December 14 is also likely to be shifted ahead by a few months to enable those who committed human rights abuse in the early months of 1994 to prepare their submissions.
In exchange for this concession, Mandela will probably ask Viljoen to encourage more support from his supporters to back the Constitution and the government of national unity.
The M&G has been informed that there is still considerable debate within the ANC about how the president should handle requests from a range of quarters to amend the amnesty rules. But the fact that Viljoen has been asked to attend the Friday summit indicates Mandela is likely to use the occasion to make one of those statesman-like gestures he has mastered. The timing would also bolster the mood of confidence that has been created by the passing of the new Constitution and would also accord with the spirit of the Christmas season.
And the decision to grant amnesty to Mitchell, a police captain sentenced to 30 years in prison for his role in the massacre of 11 people at Trust Feeds in KwaZulu Natal, has already prompted a flood of new applications for amnesty from perpetrators.
Officials in the commission’s investigative unit said more than 3 500 applications had been submitted late this week and the total was expected to reach 4 000 by the Saturday deadline.
By far the biggest proportion of security force applicants were from the police with relatively few coming from the military. However a small group of former Military Intelligence agents were expected to apply and also a large group from 32 Battalion – the mercenary unit that fought in Angola and is reputed to have carried out train violence during the pre-election period.
ANC spokesman Ronnie Mamoepa said staff were preparing to release a list naming all the organisation’s members asking for amnesty.
The amnesty committee’s decision about Mitchell was the first dealing with a security force officer guilty of a serious offence and, as such, has provided perpetrators and their legal teams with some clear guidelines about what kind of treatment they can expect from the panel of judges on the committee.
During a conference in Stellenbosch last week on legal aspects of the truth commission, lawyers acting for former policemen and military officers expressed outrage that the amnesty committee had not provided clear guidelines for people who were thinking of applying but were still undecided.
The Mitchell judgment does not refer specifically to the way it interpreted the principal of proportionality – that the crime committed should have been commensurate with the political motives of the perpetrator – but the fact that the police captain was indemnified and set free indicates the committee is willing to take a fairly liberal interpretation of the principle.
Commission chair Desmond Tutu said he had been surprised by the decision. At the time the decision was announced he was preparing a reply to an Afrikaner group that had told him they did not believe former security force members would qualify for amnesty. “This was a wonderful coincidence. It pulled the rug from under their feet,” he said.
The ruling provides other guidelines: it notes Mitchell was under the command of the Joint Management Committee System that co- ordinated the National Party government’s counter-offensive against the ANC in the 1980s; he considered it his duty to carry out the strategy; he had no personal motive in planning the massacre; and some of the constables who actually carried out the attack had already received indemnity under earlier legislation.
“I think this ruling was deliberately done to assist requests by legal representatives who were desperately needing more guidelines for the clients to consider while applying for amnesty,” said Antjie Krog, a poet and journalist who specialises in the truth commission. “I think the ruling has helped people who want to talk about the past by giving them some guidance through this slow process of amnesty.”
The NP this week also bolstered amnesty procedures by issuing a statement urging its supporters who have committed crimes and violations of human rights to approach the commission.
The gradual alignment of right-wing parties, including the NP and the Freedom Front, with the objectives of the truth commission is likely to marginalise military figures like former defence minister Magnus Malan who have urged their supporters to risk being prosecuted in court rather than cooperate with the truth body.
There are, however, still some dissenting voices. “This whole TRC has become a circus. The ruling about Brian Mitchell was a scheme in order to get people to come and apply for forgiveness,” said Cyril Ramolo, an attorney acting for families of political activists who were murdered by agents of the state’s death squads in the 1980s. “But if people really want forgiveness they would go voluntarily. These people (perpetrators) are not willing. They are being pushed and manipulated into going.”