Mail & Guardian Reporter
FORMER chief justice Michael Corbett’s fan club is unlikely to be gatecrashed by the truth commission after his swansong Appellate Division decision this week that perpetrators hauled before the commission be given ample warning they are to be named.
Still reeling from its latest legal blow, the truth commission said it would release a press statement this Friday after pondering the judgment. Corbett, who has been succeeded as chief justice by Ismail Mahomed, ruled in favour of two retired policemen who have applied for amnesty for the murder of student leader Siphiwe Mtimkulu. They claimed they had not been given reasonable notice that Mtimkulu’s widow, Joyce, would finger them.
The commission now has to give “timeous and reasonable” notice to perpetrators who are to be named – a requirement which will inevitably retard its work. The commission is not bound by the rules of court process, to allow it to effect a broad expos of apartheid atrocities relatively swiftly.
The decision follows the recent Cape Supreme Court ruling that a person cannot be prosecuted for an offence which occurred more than 20 years in the past. Cape Attorney General Frank Kahn said it would be “devastating if this judgment is used as an argument before the truth commission”.