EMSIE FERREIRA, Cape Town | Thursday
THE South African government is “spitting in the face” of people who were oppressed, impoverished and tortured by the apartheid regime by not paying them promised reparations.
Speaking at a two-day conference in Cape Town called “The Unfinished Business of the TRC”, Judge Dumisa Ntsebeza, a former Truth and Reconciliation Commission commissioner, said the government was ignoring international precedents that provided for money to be paid to, for example, victims of the Holocaust.
“We have billions [of rands] for corvettes and such armaments, we must have billions for the victims,” he said, referring to the government’s recent decision to buy military equipment worth R30bn.
University of Cape Town academic Wilmot James told the conference that the state had failed to draw up a policy to pay the money because it saw “no immediate political disadvantage if it is not done,” while the University of Stellenbosch’s Wilhelm Verwoerd said that by not paying reparations, the government was – in the words of TRC chairman Desmond Tutu – “spitting in the face of the victims.”
The commission in 1998, after three years of hearing victims’ testimony of suffering, recommended that 17 _000 people each be paid between R17 _000 and R22 _000 a year for six years in reparations.
Some R300m of the R3bn needed for this is available, but President Thabo Mbeki’s government has in recent months questioned the justness of paying individuals for their suffering, saying that activists did not struggle against apartheid for money.
Last month Finance Minister Trevor Manuel hinted that some of the victims lied when they spoke of their suffering, saying, “There were many Oscar contenders among those who appeared before the TRC.”
Manuel has also argued that individual reparations are not necessary as the government is making efforts to uplift all the country’s poor through its policies.
This had drawn a bitter response from TRC officials and victims.
Former activist Riefaat Hattas said: “We did not fight for money, but money can put something meaningful into my life. I have been tortured, I have nightmares, I could pay for counselling.” – AFP