TUESDAY, 5:30PM:
JUSTICE Minister Dullah Omar has come out in support of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, due to appear next week before a truth commission hearing on the murders and other human rights violations allegedly commited by her late-1980s bodyguards, the Mandela United Football Club.
His staunch defence of Madikizela-Mandela came nine months after his ringing defence of former United Democratic Front leader Allan Boesak, whose trial for alleged misappropriation of donors’ funds is set for February next year. Omar said, when he lent Boesak his support, that he was speaking not as minister of justice but as an ANC leader.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Omar made no such distinction. He told reporters that claims of murder against Madikizela-Mandela cannot be compared with the crimes of apartheid ”in their nature, scale or quantity”.
Moreover, he said, the African National Congress accepted that in the course of the liberation struggle violations of human rights were committed, and the international community regarded the struggle as justified.
The ANC did recognise that the violation of human rights was wrong but ”you cannot equate the violations that took place within the justified struggle, with apartheid crimes.”