The proposed special deal for KwaZulu-Natal is a serious threat to the rule of law, says deputy chair Alex Boraine. Ann Eveleth reports
KwaZulu-Natal’s “special amnesty” proposal would undermine the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s current amnesty process, promote a culture of impunity and pose a serious threat to the rule of law, the commission’s deputy chair, Alex Boraine, said this week.
Under the proposal, Kwazulu-Natal’s warlords, foot soldiers and “third force” operatives would not be required to disclose past crimes but would only have to turn in their weapons, reveal and dismantle their hit squads and participate in the peace process.
Speaking in his personal capacity as the proposal mooted by African National Congress chair Jacob Zuma last month had not yet been discussed with the commission, Boraine said he told President Nelson Mandela prior to the recent amnesty cut-off extension that “we as the commission would fiercely resist any further extension because it would promote impunity and undermine the rule of law”.
He added: “I also think this kind of discussion undermines the work of the amnesty committee.”
ANC insiders, however, confirmed Mandela had given his tentative support to Zuma’s “peace package” aimed at ending the province’s 14-year civil war at a holiday meeting with the party’s provincial leadership at his Qunu home.
Zuma announced plans to push for a further extension of the amnesty cut-off date last month, just after Mandela approved the latest extension. The party’s provincial deputy chair, S’bu Ndebele, said the proposal would form part of a broader “peace package” notionally approved by the party’s November provincial conference. “The delegates mandated the leadership to work out the details,” he said.
Ndebele said the package would aim to “lock” all provincial role-players into the peace process initiated in the run-up to the province’s June 1996 local government elections. This would include political parties, traditional leaders and “people whose leadership has depended on violence. It is in the context of asking what to do with the warlords that the question of a special amnesty has arisen. We have to make peace compulsory and irreversible.”
Ndebele said the proposal would see the dislosure function of the truth body’s amnesty process “altered slightly to mean disclosure of military structures, the handing over of weapons and a commitment to peace”. This commitment would be monitored and further violence would face “the rule of law with the appointment of a super attorney-general”.
KwaZulu-Natal truth commissioner Richard Lyster said such a proposal would send “a completely wrong message about what happens when you kill people. It sends a fundamentally bad message about the notion of justice in this province when you have police, magistrates and judges who are pushed aside, and politicians essentially decide whom to prosecute and whom to give amnesty to.”
While Zuma’s proposal is understood to have gained the support of most provincial ANC leaders who have come to believe the province can “no longer afford to worry about the past”, other sectors say they will oppose anything resembling a general amnesty.
ANC national MP and South African Communist Party deputy chairman Blade Nzimande said he would stongly oppose the measure being imposed in areas like the war-torn KwaZulu- Natal Midlands region.
“People who have suffered and who have lost children, wives and husbands to the violence would not be happy to be the only people in the country who don’t know who their murderers are. The widow of [slain Midlands leader] Reggie Hadebe and others in the Midlands would not rest until the truth is known,” he said.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions’s KwaZulu-Natal chair, John Zikhali, said Cosatu was prepared to accept some special arrangements to promote the peace process, but he added: “We are not going to support it at all costs. Our understanding is we are talking about extending the amnesty deadline for the province and perhaps widening the amnesty conditions to reassure the warlords that the truth will set them free, but this must still entail full public disclosure of their crimes.”
There are also signs the proposal will face opposition from the ANC’s grassroots structures, with some members expressing concern this week that Zuma might hope to present them with a fait accompli as Mandela had done in 1990.
“It is being discussed internally, yet no one is saying openly they are talking about a blanket amnesty. The leadership says they have not discussed it with the Inkatha Freedom Party yet, but IFP public works MEC Celani Mtetwa is always close to Zuma. It was he and Zuma who were talking about a merger last year,” said an ANC activist.
Gauteng Attorney General Jan d’Oliveira told the Mail & Guardian this week the amnesty proposal would require “a lot of careful thinking. It can’t be confined to the ANC and IFP, it would have to apply evenly. Obviously the truth commission already interferes with our work, so any extension would have far-reaching implications.”
Network of Independent Monitors director Jenni Irish said the proposal was rooted in “a false sense of success for the current peace process. Violence is continuing, and now they seem to want to rescue it with a special amnesty that is extremely short- sighted. When does it end? Do we now include the Worcester bombing? It misses the key question of whether it will really end violence which revolves around issues of power.”
l IFP leader Mangosuthu Buth-ulezi rejected the terms of the ANC proposal this week: “How can we talk of amnesty while the war is going on full swing … We cannot accept … that those who blindly killed or orchestrated the violence from high-ranking political positions may elude their responsibilities.”