THURSDAY, 3.30PM
THE Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Thursday publicly released the confidential annexure to the African National Congress’s second submission to the commission, but the names of suspected police spies were deleted to comply with an Appellate Division ruling that alleged perpetrators be given 21 days warning before being exposed.
Stressing the commission’s commitment to transparency, TRC chairman Archbishop Desmond Tutu said: “We are publishing as much as the law allows.”
The documents released include the so-called Shishita report on “subversive activities of police agents in our movement”; a list of agents executed; a memorandum on the transfer of Camp 32 (Quatro detention camp); and a report on the investigation into the deaths of three inmates of Camp 32.
Not yet released are the lists of Umkhonto we Sizwe cadres executed for major breaches of discipline and those who “died as a result of excessively harsh treatment after committing breaches of discipline”; the real names of the last group of 32 prisoners released by the ANC; the identities of those killed during and executed after the May 1984 Pango mutiny; and documents relating to the ANC investigation into the death of MK commander Thami Zulu. Tutu said the circumstances surrounding Zulu’s death are still the subject of a TRC investigation.
The documents released on Thursday contained no bombshells and, contrary to news reports, no senior ANC members were exposed as being former apartheid spies. Tutu invited journalists to look at unexpurgated copies of the documents to satisfy themselves there was no “hanky-panky” involved in the commission’s decision to censor some of the names.