Ann Eveleth
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC)final report has found Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi responsible for all the gross human rights violations committed under his leadership of the party, the KwaZulu government and the KwaZulu police.
“Chief MG Buthelezi served simultaneously as president of the IFP and as the chief minister of the KwaZulu government and was the only serving minister of police in the KwaZulu government during the entire 13-year existence of the KwaZulu police. Where these three agencies are found to have been responsible for the commission of gross human rights [sic], Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi is held by this commission to be accountable in his representative capacity as the leader, head or responsible minister of the parties concerned,” the report says.
The TRC said the “most devastating indictment” of the IFP’s role in political violence was found in the commission’s statistics, which “established the IFP as the foremost perpetrator of gross human rights violations in KwaZulu and Natal between 1990 and 1994. IFP violations represented nearly 50% of all violations reported to the commission’s Durban office … and more than one-third of the total number of … violations committed during the 34-year period of the commission’s mandate.”
The TRC said its database showed that the IFP was responsible for some 3 800 killings in the KwaZulu and Natal areas during the TRC’s mandated period for investigation, compared with about 1 100 attributed to the African National Congress and 700 to the South African Police (SAP).
The report added that the IFP remained a major perpetrator of killings, allegedly responsible for more than 4 500 killings, compared with 2 700 attributed to the SAP and 1 300 to the ANC. The TRC pointed out, however, that these figures were influenced by the IFP’s initial decision to discourage its members from testifying.
The report on the IFP allocates specific individual responsibility for three well-known instances of human rights violations in KwaZulu-Natal. These are the killings, attempted killings and incidences of severe ill- treatment resulting from the deployment of the paramilitary unit trained in the Caprivi Strip during 1986 by the South African Defence Force (SADF); the creation of a hit- squad in Esikhawini during 1990; and the training, in 1993 and 1994, of between 5 000 and 8 000 IFP self- protection unit (SPU) members at the Mlaba training camp. The report specifically holds Buthelezi – with several other senior IFP and KwaZulu officials – responsible for human rights violations associated with the Caprivi and Mlaba training projects.
Buthelezi was not prosecuted in 1996 in the trial of former defence minister Magnus Malan and 19 others for the 1987 KwaMakhuta massacre of 13 friends and relatives of United Democratic Front activist Victor Ntuli. All 20 accused were acquitted, but Judge Jan Hugo found that Caprivi trainees had carried out the massacre. Buthelezi’s name resonated through that trial. Now the TRC has effectively held him responsible for the murders.
“The SADF conspired with Inkatha to provide the latter with a covert, offensive paramilitary unit (or hit- squad) to be deployed illegally against persons and organisations perceived to be opposed to both the South African government and Inkatha,” the report says.
The TRC found former state president PW Botha, former defence minster Magnus Malan, Buthelezi’s then personal assistant Melchizedec “MZ” Khumalo, and security force members Pieter Groenewald, then vice-admiral Andries Putter, Louis Botha, Cornelius van Niekerk and Mike van den Berg accountable for violations resulting from this deployment.
It was findings like these that led the TRC to describe the IFP as an ally of the apartheid state. This finding has reportedly angered the ANC, which now believes that this description – first applied by the ANC itself – runs counter to the current dtente between the two parties.
But the report says this description “derives largely from the covert collaboration of senior Inkatha/IFP office bearers with senior members of the SAP security branch and SADF military intelligence … At a time when it portrayed itself nationally and abroad as a liberation movement, the IFP, through the intervention of its senior members, was receiving direct financial and logistical assistance from the highest echelons of the apartheid state’s security apparatus.”
The TRC also held Buthelezi responsible for training at the Mlaba camp. The TRC found that the purpose of this training was to furnish the party with the military capacity to prevent the 1994 elections. “The SPU project constituted a gross violation of human rights in as far as it entailed deliberate planning on the part of the IFP and members of the then KwaZulu government and police force.”
IFP MP Phillip Powell, former KwaZulu police deputy commissioner General Sipho Mathe, former KwaZulu police VIP unit head Captain Leonard Langeni and other KwaZulu government members who supported the project are also held accountable.
The TRC also found the IFP responsible for violations in the former Transvaal, Natal and KwaZulu, against people preceived to be leaders, members or supporters of the UDF, ANC, South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions as well as persons who were identified as posing a threat to the IFP and members and supporters of the IFP whose loyalty was doubted.
The commission found that little evidence existed of a centrally directed, coherent and formally constituted third force. However, it found that “a network of security and ex-security force operatives, often acting in conjunction with right-wing elements and/or sectors of the IFP, fomented, initiated, facilitated and engaged in violence which resulted in gross violations of human rights, including random and targeted killings”.