MONDAY, 4.00PM
NATIONAL Intelligence Agency operative and former Umkhonto we Sizwe cadre Gabriel Mthembu, accused of torturing detainees in the ANC’s notorious Quatro detention camp, is willing to co-operate with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the ANC said on Monday.
Mthembu was accused in a TRC hearing last week of torturing Chief Timothy Seremane — the brother of chief land claims commissioner Joe Seremane — who was executed by the ANC in its Angolan detention camp in 1984.
ANC spokesman Ronnie Mamoepa on Monday reiterated the findings of the ANC-appointed Motsuenyane Commission of Inquiry into conditions in its camps in exile. The commission had found no evidence of a pattern of systematic abuse or a policy of violations, although the ANC accepted its findings that periodic abuses had occurred.
Mthembu had been assigned to security and intelligence duties while in exile, Mamoepa said. He added that the ANC’s former security personnel had performed outstanding work in protecting the movement, its leaders and personnel, both within and outside South Africa, under “very trying circumstances”.
Joe Seremane last week asked the TRC to find out the truth about his brother’s trial and execution. In a previous submission to the TRC, the ANC claimed that Timothy Seremane was an apartheid spy. “The doors of the ANC remain open for discussions with the TRC on the issue of the death of Chief Timothy Seremane,” added Mamoepa