OWN CORRESPONDENT and AFP, Johannesburg | Sunday 9.00pm.
FORMER president FW De Klerk is engaged in a last-ditch attempt to prevent the Truth and Reconciliation Commission from publishing an interim report which implicates him in apartheid-era bombings, the Sunday Times reports.
De Klerk will apply for an interdict in the Cape High Court to stop the commission publishing its finding that he was “an accessory after the fact” to the bombing in the 1980s of Cosatu House and Khotso House.
The publishing of the report will open the way for the prosecution of De Klerk, who has not applied for amnesty in connection with the bombings.
Both buildings housed anti-apartheid organisations. Former Vlakplaas commander Eugene de Kock and other applicants for amnesty in connection with the bombings told the amnesty committee at a hearing in Pretoria in June that the government believed the buildings harboured anti-apartheid spies and terrorists.
In the report to be released on Thursday, the Truth Commission is, according to the newspaper, to say that although De Klerk did not order the bombings, he came to know about the involvement of former Law and Order Minister Adriaan Vlok and former police commissioner Johan van der Merwe in the blasts.
De Klerk’s lawyers met Truth Commission representatives in Cape Town last week to try to persuade them to drop the finding from the report, but were unsuccessful.
De Klerk is among 200 high profile figures who have been notified by the commission that the report contains damaging allegations against them.
De Klerk, 64, was the last apartheid president and has denied any involvement in assassinations, torture and other abuses committed by the previous government’s security forces.
Vlok, 60, has applied for amnesty for his role in the blasts. He said at the June hearing that De Klerk and his cabinet knew of these and other covert bombing operations.
The 3,000-page TRC report, which lists the commission’s findings after two years of investigating gross human rights violations under apartheid, is also expected to make “devastating” findings against other prominent South Africans, including Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, former wife of President Nelson Mandela, former Defence Minister Magnus Malan and current Deputy Defence Minister Ronnie Kasrils.
Three opposition parties have indicated that they will reject the report when it is released. The National Party, Inkatha Freedom Party and the white right-wing Freedom Front are unlikely to accept the report, SABC radio news reported.