Peta Thornycroft
Glen Goosen, former director of investigations at the truth commission, has formally complained about a programme broadcast on SAfm last week which contained an interview with his former boss, Dumisa Ntsebeza.
In the programme, TRC in Review, Ntsebeza accused Goosen of being part of an incompetent investigation and suggested race played a part in the conflict between the two of them.
The interview with Ntsebza, conducted by award-winning SABC journalist Antjie Samuel, was broadcast following the upheavals at the truth commission after allegations and counter-allegations by a Cape Town gardener about commissioner Ntsebeza.
The gardener, Bennett Sibaya, told the police four years ago and the commission this year that he had seen a car which belonged to Ntsebeza being loaded with weapons after the December 1993 massacre at the popular Heidelberg Tavern in the Cape in which four people were shot dead.
Two weeks ago Sibaya told the commission he had been tortured by the police into making the original statement.
A Cape Town policeman, John Lubbe, who investigated the statement for the commission earlier this year, made a recommendation that the matter should be probed further by an independent body.
The commission has said it now regrets it did not act on Lubbe’s recommendation.
Ntsebeza, a courageous human rights lawyer whose face has become increasingly familiar to followers of the events at the truth commission, has been outraged by Sibaya’s allegations, and also called Lubbe’s investigation incompetent.
Goosen resigned last month after growing tension between him and Ntsebeza against the background of the Sibaya allegations.
Several key people at the commission admit they are profoundly troubled by the Sibaya matter and the ensuing tensions in the investigations units around the country.
In addition to sending an official complaint to the Broadcasting Complaints Commission, Goosen has written a comprehensive letter to the chair of the truth commission, Desmond Tutu, and to Constitutional Court Judge Richard Goldstone, who will head an investigation into Sibaya’s allegations and how they were handled by the commission.