Archbischop Desmond Tutu, as chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, is recently reported to have issued a decree to commission members to act impartially. Among the commissioners who are reported to have been cautioned are Denzil Potgieter and Khoza Menojo.
Ironically neither of these commissioners were nominated by interested parties according to nomination procedures set out by the president himself. Their names did not appear in the first list of 400 or so, in the shortened list of 45 selected by the panel to be publically interviewed, or in the final list of 25 sent to the president. To this day there has been no explanation from any source (especially for the benefit of the 45 who were subjected to public interviews) why the two were preferred to others who were short-listed.
As I understood the sentiment at the time, transparency and procedural fairness were paramount considerations in the selection process! ‘ ‘Eye of the eagle’, Durban