Wetsho-Otsile Seremane
Personal History
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s decision not to hold public hearings on human rights violations by some African National Congress members in Quatro and other camps (“TRC ducks Quatro”, June 26 to July 2) is shocking, to say the the least.
It is a slap in the face for those families who have lost their dear ones and yet know very little of the fate of their flesh and blood, lying perhaps in shallow graves in Angola and elsewhere in the world.
The statement that “public hearings in Quatro and other camps will not fit into the commission’s calendar” is no salve to heal the hurt of those who do not know the truth about their dear ones mouldering in the graves of those camps.
The truth commission is an institution many people would like to respect and have confidence in, but when it seems to want to act like “his master’s voice” and is inclined to approach issues selectively (depending on who it is dealing with), we have a credibility problem on our hands. Will the call for reconciliation ring true for some of us?
Let me reiterate for the umpteenth time, I have no axe to grind with the ANC per se, save only to call on it to furnish the information sought about my late brother, chief Timothy Seremane. The kind of gloating “newspeak” responses I keep getting smack of a deliberate pattern of concealing truth and evading scrutiny and disclosure.
My family does not want to make political mileage of the issue. They just want to know the whole truth, not a one-sided account by the responsible party – the ANC at Quatro camp.
The fact that the ANC maintains my brother was a spy should not detract from the truth we seek. Memories are not so short that it can be forgotten that many have been killed under trumped-up charges of being a spy or a sell-out by fanatic elements in our struggle for liberation.
We are told that the commission has gathered “more than enough information on the ANC, more than … on the South African Defence Force”. I don’t intend disputing that, but I do find it strange that the commission can’t furnish or solicit the little bit of information I have respectfully requested from the ANC through the commission.
Why has it failed to respond to my letter dated December 15 1997, addressing the unconvincing edited version said to be the ANC response to my requests?
My basic questions and demands during my appearance at the hearing last year were (and still are):
l Return the remains of my brother – where precisely is he buried?
l Allow me access to the records of his trial and all related detail in the light of the Geneva Convention.
l Who were the interrogators, prosecutors and executioners? Let all be honourable, own up and disclose fully, and let us make peace.
l Why is it that the other side of this sordid story, as told by my informants, is not made public to allow the public to make up their minds about the “spy” charges?
In my letter to the commission after my appearance, I posed a series of questions which have not been answered, nor have I received acknowledgement of them. They are:
l Why were my informants not subpoenaed to give first-hand information on Timothy Seremane’s Quatro camp detention, torture and ultimate execution? Is the truth commission aware these informants are survivors of Quatro camp and witnessed his plight and suffering?
l Why has the commission not probed the issues and met the requests I respectfully placed before it?
l Will the truth commission or the government facilitate pursuance of this matter at international institutions such as the International Court of Justice or the United Nations Human Rights Commission, or similar bodies, because the commission feels “incompetent to probe atrocities perpetrated in foreign sovereign countries”?
l How does the commission expect me, my family and relatives (and many other similar families) to forgive and reconcile with all these glaring omissions and this unfinished business at the commission?
l Why are we denied the remains of my brother?
I repeat what I said in the M&G in November 19 to 25 1993: “You owe us a lot; not monetary compensation, but our bones buried in shallow graves in Angola and heaven knows where else. Where is your African decency and Botho-uBuntu?”
Need I also remind all and sundry of Langston Hughes’s The Minstrel Man?
Because my mouth
Is wide with laughter
And my throat deep with song,
You do not think
I suffer, after I have held
My pain so long
Wetsho-Otsile (Joe) Seremane is chief land claims commissioner