Tangeni Amupadhi
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has decided that people responsible for human rights atrocities in African National Congress detention camps will not have to testify publicly about their deeds.
Dumisa Ntsebeza, head of the commission’s investigative unit, said this week public hearings on Quatro and other camps will not fit into the commission’s calendar. However, enough material has been gathered on Quatro for the commission’s final report. “We have more than enough information on the ANC, more than we have on the South African Defence Force, for instance,” Ntsebeza said.
Ntsebeza said the fact that the ANC had already testified in public eliminated the need for another hearing. He praised the ANC as the only movement to have done a thorough “introspection”.
It is not known how many ANC members responded to a call two years ago for those who believed they committed human rights abuses to approach the commission. Truth commission representative Mdu Lembede said some perpetrators wanted to bare all on condition they were given indemnity, extended to other countries. But the commission’s mandate does not reach beyond our borders.
But the decision may not go down well with relatives and friends of alleged enemy agents who were tortured or murdered.
Land claims commissioner Joseph Seremane, whose brother Chief Timothy Seremane was executed at Quatro, says the commission was never going to have enough time.
“Maybe the government wants to keep the pain as short as possible, but if we are serious about healing the wounds, there are a lot of things that have to come out,” he said.
The ANC told the truth commission that Timothy Seremane was an apartheid spy and referred to his police handler only by rank and initial. Joseph Seremane asked the commission for more information, but he has had no reply.
The ANC’s Ronnie Mamoepa says the decision not to have the public hearings was perhaps “an expression of confidence” in the ANC’s submissions.