/ 20 December 1996

Jailbirds lead rush for amnesty

While a detailed breakdown of amnesty requests is not yet available, it seems the majority have come from those already behind bars, reports Eddie Koch

Although hundreds of guerrillas, policemen and some government ministers have made a late rush to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the great majority of requests for amnesty for human rights abuse have come from perpetrators who are already behind bars.

With boxes of amnesty applications still streaming into the commission’s headquarters in Cape Town ‘ including a new one from Transport Minister Mac Maharaj ‘ officials say they are not yet able to provide a detailed breakdown of the types of people who applied for amnesty this year.

But initial indications are that up to 4000 people who think they committed human rights offences during the apartheid era have asked for indemnity from prosecution in return for confessing details of their actions.

By far the biggest number of these applications, possibly as many as 3000, have come from convicts whose only way out of jail is to tell all.

‘The trickle of applications from former security force members turned into a flood last week but appears to be slowing down since the deadline was extended,’ said one ‘official.

No exact figures were available for the number of security force applications although by far the largest number came from members of the security police and also various murder and robbery squads of the South African Police.

Only a handful of applications had been received from military men ‘ even though many of the police applicants have said their abuses included joint operations with the special forces of defence force.

It appears the small South African Defence Force (SADF) group that is co-operating with the commission comes mainly from within military intelligence. There are no indications that anyone from the Civilian Co-operation Bureau, the main special forces unit of the SADF responsible for dirty tricks, has yet applied.

Commission officials were not able to give a breakdown of the security force officials applications by rank and are not allowed by law to make the names of applicants public. ‘It seems there is a mix of ranks with lower officers applying for individual deeds while more senior officers are applying for actions that involved implementing state policy,’ said one official.

The absence of military co-operation with the truth process stems primarily from the fact that the prosecution failed to prove that General Magnus Malan and his co-accused were responsible for the KwaMakutha massacre in KwaZulu-Natal. There have also been no other criminal cases involving military personnel to prod these people into seeking amnesty.

This could change early next year when the families of people who were murdered lodge civil proceedings against the Malan group for damages they suffered.

The onus of proof in civil cases will not be as stringent and the families will be able to choose lawyers willing to mount a more combative case against the military men. This could force some of the accused to seek amnesty as this will indemnify them from liability for such claims ‘ and any admissions they make will have a domino effect into the military’s ranks.

The Mail & Guardian is also aware that scores of soldiers from 32 Battalion ‘ the ‘mercenary’ unit of the SADF ‘ are talking to the truth commission about indemnity in return for details about train attacks and other civilian terror campaigns they are reported to have committed in the early ’90s.

No formal amnesty applications for this group have yet been registered, but these are likely in the new year and will inevitably implicate senior military officers.

The African National Congress has so far submitted 150 applications, mainly from members of its guerrilla wing, and has indicated it will be processing less than another 100 forms early in the new year.

In a public sign of commitment to the truth process, at least five ANC ministers have applied for amnesty. These are Defence Minister Joe Modise, Deputy Defence Minister Ronnie Kasrils, Safety and Security Minister Sydney Mufamadi, Telecommunications Minister Jay Naidoo and Transport Minister Mac Maharaj.

Modise and Kasrils will be dealing with actions they participated in as senior officers in the command structure of Umkhonto weSizwe ‘ and will probably include orders given to attack civilian targets during the struggle against apartheid. The application from Maharaj will probably detail aspects of Operation Vula, including efforts to smuggle weapons into the country during the early 1990s.

Mufamadi and Naidoo have applied for a relatively minor incident relating to the abduction of a suspected police spy at the Congress of South African Trade Unions offices.

The only Cabinet minister from the old National Party government who has said in public that he will apply is former police minister Adrian Vlok.

Although the Pan Africanist Congress indicated it would submit applications from the entire high command of its guerrilla wing, it handed in about 300 applications on Saturday and many of these will have to be reprocessed as they were not filled in correctly.

The Inkatha Freedom Party has not applied as a group although a handful of individuals have applied in their individual capacities. Moves are also afoot to provide amnesty for warlords who participated in the KwaZulu-Natal civil war in the 1980s and early 1990s.

An official says there have been ‘quite a lot’ of applications from the ANC’s self-defence units. It is expected there will be a major increase in applications from this quarter since the period in terms of which people can qualify for amnesty has been expanded to 10 May 1994.

Most self-defence unit members were involved in battles with Inkatha during the early part of 1994 before the April elections.