Mungo Soggot
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission will be in the unnerving position next week of having to delve into the exploits of one of its commissioners at hearings into the legal profession under apartheid.
Chris de Jager, a Pretoria advocate, and now a member of the commission’s amnesty committee, voted against allowing blacks to join the Pretoria Bar in 1978 when it was the only all-white Bar in the country.
De Jager said this week he will not be able to attend the hearings but he will be filing a written submission about the incident. He said he had been frank about his past at his interview for the truth commission appointment, but had not apologised specifically for this incident.
He was formerly a member of the now defunct Volksunie, a small right-wing party, and participated at the Kempton Park constitutional negotiations.
John Allen, spokesman for truth commission chair Desmond Tutu, said President Nelson Mandela had deliberately chosen commissioners who would represent a “cross- section of people”.
De Jager’s role in opposing the motion – which was defeated – appears in a submission to the truth commission by the General Council of the Bar (GCB), which also includes a blanket apology by the Pretoria Bar for its failure to condemn apartheid.
“While other constituent Bars of the GCB voiced their concern, the Pretoria Bar failed to do so, and on more than one occasion refused to join its fellow members in condemning executive excesses that brought the administration of justice into disrepute and prevented the courts from protecting civil liberties,” the submission reads.
It hinges on a critical examination of the legal profession and the judiciary under apartheid, but also includes a string of priceless anecdotes from archives.
It quotes from a letter penned in September 1977 by one of South Africa’s most notorious justice ministers, Jimmy Kruger, on the inquest into the death of Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko, one of the National Party’s most celebrated cover-ups.
Kruger, who earned international notoriety with the words “Biko’s death leaves me cold”, wrote: “A more comprehensive, a more public and a more thorough investigation than the inquest conducted into the death of the late Steve Biko can hardly be visualised … if such an enquiry does not satisfy whatever public disquiet there may be, no commission of enquiry may do so.”
Kruger also expressed concern for “those who must endure the brunt of suspicion whenever a detainee dies in detention”.
The submission includes an apology by the Johannesburg Bar for striking off advocate Bram Fischer in 1965, after he failed to attend his trial for contravening the Suppression of Communism Act.
The Johannesburg Bar Council has apologised to Fischer’s family. The Bar Council not only instructed attorneys to strike off Fischer, but also resolved toinform the Minister of Justice “confidentially” about its decision.
“Why the Bar Council thought it necessary to advise the Minister of Justice confidentially of their decision is surprising and unexplained,” the GCB’s submission notes.