President Nelson Mandela, in an interview published on Sunday, categorically ruled out a blanket amnesty for human right crimes committed during the apartheid era.
“There is no question of a general amnesty and I will resist that with every power that I have,” Mandela told a correspondent for the Sunday Independent here.
He said debate on the issue is “futile” as the cabinet had already debated and dismissed it.
Mandela’s rejection of amnesty is in line with a recommendation of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which in its final report handed to Mandela in October said the granting of a general amnesty should be avoided “in order to avoid a culture of impunity and to entrench the rule of law.”
The TRC recommended that perpetrators be prosecuted unless they applied for amnesty.
Press reports this week claimed moves were afoot to grant a general amnesty to all perpetrators of human rights abuses in KwaZulu-Natal province, where political violence has claimed around 20000 lives in the past 11 years.
Members of Mandela’s African National Congress in KwaZulu-Natal are known to favour a general amnesty to help boost the fragile peace between it and the Inkatha Freedom Party.
It has been suggested such an amnesty would be the carrot offered the IFP in plans to it into a national coalition government after elections next year.
IFP leader Mangosuthu Buthlezi was sharply criticised by the TRC, which said that, as head of the movement, he is morally responsible for more than 9,000 human rights violations. Mandela, in the interview, said he was also vehemently opposed to the death penalty because it was a “reflection of the animal instinct still in human beings.”
“There is no evidence anywhere that the death penalty anywhere has brought down the level of crime,” he said.