The TRC’s back-room fighter
Ferial Haffajee
Back-room boys become that way because they shy away from profiles like this one. Hanif Vally (42) is foremost among them.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s national legal officer doesn’t want to be profiled. “I’m not interested in that kind of thing,” he says.
But his bounteous frame has filled too many television screens here and abroad to be ignored. He has meticulously questioned Thabo Mbeki (during the commission’s political party hearings) and the Bar Council (at legal sector hearings), and he led evidence at the special hearings into the Mandela United Football Club. All contracts entered into by the truth commission, all legal cases against it and all subpoenas issued by its investigators are vetted by Vally.
“Tenacious”, “tough” and “thorough” are some of the epithets thrown his way by those who have watched him in action. But they also add that he is “too sweet” and that “he needs to go for the jugular sometimes”.
The burly, bearded and bespectacled attorney did just that this week. Jerry Richardson, the Mandela United Football Club’s former coach, buckled under his questioning; the four key leaders of the Mandela Crisis Committee were riled. Ironically, he spent 10 months in detention with some of the same people he cross- examined in the past fortnight’s hearings. Much that was murky became a lot clearer under Vally’s microscope.
But the price of clarity is high: working days that stretch long into the night; working weeks that melt into the weekend; and many hours spent preparing witnesses and investigating every allegation made.
Mbeki, representing the African National Congress at the political party hearings earlier this year, got quite a grilling from Vally. And the legal grapevine says he gave the highest legal authorities in the land a private roasting for not being forthcoming enough during the hearings into the legal profession under apartheid.
That didn’t deter lawyers from praising this week.
The president of the Constitutional Court, Arthur Chaskalson, recalled Vally’s commitment to human rights. It dated right back to the period when Vally was his student. He often got up in lecture halls and challenged his teacher then, and he didn’t stop when he worked under Chaskalson as director of the Legal Resources Centre in Pretoria.
“His work at the truth commission is an extension of what he’s done all his life,” said Chaskalson. Something of a people’s lawyer, Vally served his articles at the firm of Priscilla Jana, who is now a member of Parliament.
Vally spent those days running the gauntlet of civic movement battles in the streets, or negotiating for the fledgling trade unions. Then it was on to a stint at the Delmas Treason Trial and other political trials. Chief Justice Ismail Mahomed calls Vally a “conscientious lawyer with an attractive dose of idealism”.
His work at the truth commission has been a run-in with realism. “Everything is a compromise,” he says. “We’re looking at a 30-year period in two years. Everyone’s got a bone to pick. They ask, `Why are you gunning for Winnie and not for PW?'”
Vally’s political teeth were cut in the black consciousness tradition, and he served as president of the Black Students’ Society in the Seventies. Never one for the politics of ethnicity, he disagreed with members of the Transvaal Indian Congress.
It is ironic then that this long-time player in the politics of black consciousness should have been the frontline defender of the truth commission when Ntsiki Biko, the widow of Steve Biko – the father of black consciousness – challenged the commission.
“One can understand their anger – anger at their loss and the lack of punishment – but amnesty is a compromise. It’s a foundation stone of our democracy that there will be no impunity and no Nuremberg trials,” says Vally.
But those close to him point out that he is no liberal. They say he does not easily equate the human rights abuses of those who fought to overthrow apartheid and those who worked in the shadows to keep it running.
If anything, the truth commission has been Vally’s lesson in diplomacy, strategy and reconciliation – though those instincts were first tested when he had to assist a police officer who had tortured him in detention with a pension application while serving at the Legal Resources Centre.
The truth commission’s back-room boys have honed the ways of truth-telling and their skills are in demand. The commission is being viewed as a model in Africa and beyond; some even suggest that Northern Ireland may want to use it as a draft.
One rule of thumb guides Vally’s work: “People must be questioned boldly, but everyone must be treated impartially and fairly.”
For commissioner Fazel Randera, Vally is “a gentle giant who has brought a wealth of legal and personal experience to the commission”.
Vital Statistics
Born: December 29 1955, in Fordsburg, Johannesburg, a stone’s throw from John Vorster Square, where he was later detained
Also known as: “H”
Passions: Toy shops, ostensibly stocking up for daughter Tazmin, who is eight years old (and a primary passion)
Ambitions: None. Asked about his post-truth commission plans, he cites “unemployment” as a very real possibility, .but a stint at the African Court on Human and Peoples Rights would be better
Hobbies: Fishing. Walks near Table Mountain. And, believe it or not, he’s very happy having long discussions about … the truth commisssion