Cathy Jenkins
Craig Williamson’s amnesty application hearing ended in Pretoria this week after a marathon seven days of legal argument – with warring lawyers and evasive witnesses making no attempt to reconcile in the spirit intended by Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
George Bizos, SC, for the families of Ruth First and Jeanette and Katryn Schoon, argued strongly that Williamson’s amnesty application for the letter-bomb murders of the two women and a child should be refused.
Bizos also opposed the amnesty applications of Jerry Raven, who made the letter bombs, and of Brigadier Willem Schoon, who is seeking amnesty for a separate incident involving the attempted murder of the late Marius Schoon in Botswana in 1981 and 1982.
The tense hearing, which last week provoked truth commission amnesty committee chair Judge Andrew Wilson to remark that in his entire life he had “never been at a hearing with so much lack of co-operation and hostility between the legal representatives”.
Raven’s lawyer attempted to discredit a witness by labelling her a communist and suggested to another that he might have been an informer. At one point, Bizos asked in exasperation that the applicants’ lawyers stop referring to political activists as “terrorists”, commenting that “we do not refer to their clients as murderers”.
There was scant indication at this hearing of any progress towards reconciliation or a spirit of understanding transcending the conflicts of the past, all supposed objectives of the amnesty process, nor did the seven weeks of the hearing leave one with the comfortable feeling that the whole truth had at last been exposed.
In order for the applicants to obtain amnesty, the amnesty committee must be satisfied on two principal counts: first, that the applicants have made a full disclosure of all relevant facts; second, that the act for which amnesty is sought was an act “associated with a political objective”.
In relation to the letter bomb murders, Bizos argued that the applicants Williamson and Raven failed on both counts. He contended that the discrepancies between their original written amnesty applications and their oral evidence, as well as the implausibility of their accounts of what took place, indicated clearly that they were not telling the truth and had thus failed to make full disclosure.
Bizos suggested that Williamson and Raven had reached an agreement to lie to the amnesty committee and submitted that it should be sceptical of the evidence of Williamson, whom he described as “a skilled deceiver and a calculating liar”.
Bizos contended that neither Williamson nor Raven met the requirements of the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act in relation to political objective. The Act lays down criteria which the committee must use in deciding whether an act for which amnesty is sought is an act “associated with a political objective”.
These criteria include the motive of the person committing the act, the gravity of the act, whether the act was directed at a political opponent and whether it was committed in execution of an order. The committee must also consider the difficult issue of the “relationship between the act … and the political objective pursued, and in particular … the proportionality of the act … to the objective pursued”.
An act committed “out of personal malice, ill-will or spite, directed against the victim” is specifically excluded from the definition of acts “associated with a political objective” and does not qualify for amnesty.
Describing Williamson as a “vindictive human being” who hated Joe Slovo, Bizos contended that, contrary to Williamson’s own evidence, Williamson had deliberately dispatched the bomb to Slovo’s wife, First, out of personal malice and had followed the murder by feeding a cover story to selected journalists that Slovo had killed his own wife.
The recent decisions granting amnesty to the killers of Sizwe Kondile, and to Jeff Benzien, may give hope to Williamson and Raven that the amnesty committee is not, as some have suggested, prejudiced against the former security police.
Some would doubtless argue that, since the committee was willing to grant amnesty to the gunmen in the St James’ Church massacre, accepting that those shootings were proportional to the political objective pursued by the Pan Africanist Congress, it should now be willing to grant amnesty to Williamson and Raven.
Others would contend that the St James decision was misguided and that the committee should have taken a stand in that case against the murder of ordinary citizens merely because of their skin colour; it should likewise take a stand now against amnesty for the murder of ordinary members of political parties or the liberation movements.
The committee is apparently reluctant to refuse amnesty for failure to make full disclosure: statistics released by the committee last year indicated that, out of nearly 4 000 applications refused at that date, only 138 had been refused for failure to make full disclosure.
Nevertheless, the recent refusal of amnesty to the security policemen involved in the death of Steve Biko indicates that, where the committee feels driven to the conclusion that it has not been given a true account of events, it will say so.
At this stage, the amnesty committee has given no indication whether it accepts Williamson and Raven’s contention that discrepancies are caused by the passage of time or the opposing contention that the pair have actively fabricated evidence.
Cathy Jenkins is a senior lecturer in international law at the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University