`Peace’ initiators are said to be holding peace to ransom, reports Ann Eveleth
THE decision by the KwaZulu-Natal government to sit on a damning report linking key politicians in the province to hit-squad activity has raised fresh concerns about the region’s embryonic peace drive.
A South African National Defence Force (SANDF) report leaked last week on hit- squad allegations named African National Congress MP Sifiso Nkabinde and his KwaZulu-Natal Midlands Inkatha Freedom Party counterpart David Ntombela – both warlords and self-proclaimed exponents of the peace initiative.
But the delay in releasing the report – the province’s parliamentary sub-committee hashad a copy since November – suggest the warlords may be holding the peace process to ransom, violence monitors and some African National Congress members claim.
“The report has been around for four months and similar allegations have been around for years,” said one ANC MP from the province.
“But political leaders are being held to ransom by the prospect that these warlords who have ingratiated themselves into the peace process could renew their paramilitary activity.”
Nkabinde and Ntombela declared themselves “peacelords” last year after peace talks, led by ANC chairman Jacob Zuma and IFP public works MEC Celani Mtetwa, got under way.
The two warlords have addressed joint rallies in disputed strongholds and have become central in efforts to win the support of their constituencies for the peace effort. The peace talks include a “special amnesty” provision which may allow for secret disclosures of crimes.
ANC MPP Dumisane Makhaye this week slammed IFP MPP Arthur Konigkramer’s “selective” leak of the report last week, saying the disclosure had “destroyed” the prospects for legal action against those implicated by the report.
But observers suggest there may be more to the growing culture of secrecy in the province. Network of Independent Monitors director Jenni Irish said related investigations had been under way for some time.
She said the SANDF should have been handed its report directly to the National Investigation Task Unit responsible for the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands probes, rather than handing it to politicians.
“If the concern is for the safety of the investigation, it should not have been given to political parties, but if the purpose of the report was to deal with the problem of `no-go’ areas, then that should be a transparent process,” she said.
The provincial parliamentary sub-committee given the report was appointed last year to investigate claims that Nkabinde and his supporters had turned his Richmond stronghold into a “no-go” area for the security forces and political opponents.
The report – compiled by the army’s controversial Group Nine and signed by its equally controversial then leader Colonel Jan Hougaard – said Richmond was not a “no- go” area but an “activated” area which could become a potential flashpoint or high-risk area “in a matter of seconds”.
The report did, however, link Nkabinde and his supporters to plans to murder IFP leaders, gun-running from the former Transkei homeland and the formation of a “private army” in the Midlands. The report also levelled allegations against IFP MPP Phillip Powell and Traditional Affairs MEC Chief Nyanga Ngubane.
Nkabinde has denied the allegations and challenged the officials behind them to lay charges against him. Fellow ANC MPP John Jeffreys echoed this concern at Wednesday’s parliamentary safety and security portfolio committee where he described the allegations as “hearsay” and Natal Violence monitor Mary de Haas said probes by the now-disbanded Investigation Task Unit and its successor, the National Investigation Task Unit, had run into trouble after the death of witnesses. “It’s one thing to have allegations, but another to prove them, especially when key witnesses are dying,” she said.
The Mail & Guardian understands that there are “huge” concerns within the ANC about Nkabinde and the damage the allegations could cause to the peace talks. But the party has still to determine how to rein him in. Efforts by the ANC’s national leadership to bar Nkabinde from election to the party’s provincial executive committee last November failed when he defied the order and rallied his supporters.
“Nkabinde controls a large support base in the Midlands, and this could be dangerous if he is outside the party, and without him we would face a leadership vacuum in the area which could lead to greater conflict with the IFP,” said one senior party member.
He added that the party believed the problem could be dealt with more effectively by the national leadership, but this had been complicated by the IFP’s call for a provincial commission to probe the allegations.
Irish said the question was further complicated by intertwined interests of warlords on both sides: “You can’t look at one warlord, without looking at the others, so a probe into Nkabinde will open up questions about Ntombela, Powell and others named in the report,” she said.
“It is understandable that certain aspects of negotiations will be held in secret, but the danger of the entire peace process happening in private is warlords can then exploit the process to entrench their division of the province into respective strongholds.”
The parliamentary portfolio committee postponed its decision on the matter to allow its members to study the report.