Piers Pigou a second look
Leaving aside, for one moment, the contested issue of covert security force involvement, there are a number of reasons why we should be appalled, but not necessarily surprised, at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission amnesty committee’s decision last week to grant amnesty to 13 Inkatha Freedom Party supporters convicted for their part in the Boipatong massacre.
This latest ruling follows a recent pattern of granting amnesty in the face of half-truths and massive contradictions in applicants’ testimony. It seems that all you must do is turn up, testify to your guilt, even if it contains massive departures from your written application, and hey presto amnesty is granted.
One gets the distinct impression that fatigue and the gatvol factor have kicked in and the committee is now hell-bent on wrapping up these cases as soon as possible. It’s perhaps understandable, considering the three remaining original committee members have been on the job for more than four years. What this means in terms of getting to the truth, however, is moot.
Although, in this case, the committee sat for several weeks, heard volumes of testimony and certainly asked lots of questions, it is evident, even from their own judgement, that they failed to establish exactly what had happened in Boipatong on the night of June 17 1992.
In short, amnesty was granted because the applicants’ versions could not be disproved, even though they contained a number of material contradictions. Andries Nosenga, the one applicant who supported the victims’ version that police or whites were involved, and contradicted his co-applicants, was described as an “appalling witness”.
As such, the committee chose to dismiss all his evidence, despite its own investigations that suggested that Nosenga was at least in part telling the truth and that further investigations on a range of matters relating to security force complicity were warranted. In its wisdom, the committee made no reference to these issues or related recommendations.
Even more disturbing, given its penchant for quasi-legal technicalities, is the committee’s complete failure to address a range of other issues raised by the victims’ legal representatives in their closing arguments. The people of Boipatong and the Vaal Triangle must be wondering whether there was anyone listening.
It is somewhat ironic that last Friday’s judgement is followed this week by an appeal against the committee’s ruling to refuse amnesty in the Chris Hani assassination case. In this judgement, the committee found that the applicants, Janus Walusz and Clive Derby-Lewis, did not have the blessing (inferred or direct) of the Conservative Party to go ahead with the assassination. They could not prove that they acted on behalf of or in support of the CP and the committee ruled that the provisions of the act “do not cover perpetrators who act contrary to the stated policies of the organisation they purport to represent”.
Advocate Danny Berger representing the Boipatong victims argued that the same logic held true in their case. The IFP mantra that it is a party of non-violence is well known, even if this does not exclude the right to defend oneself. At Boipatong, the leader of the amabutho, Bhekinkosi Mkhize, who claims he authorised the attack, also testified that he had been expressly told by the hostel’s IFP leader, Prince Vanana Zulu, not to attack Boipatong.
Leaving aside the unresolved question of Zulu’s own involvement, the committee accepted Mkhize’s version that he had authorised the attack under pressure from hostel inmates and in so doing had gone against Zulu’s instructions and IFP policy. By conflating the IFP with the amabutho the committee accepted Mkhize had the authority to launch such an attack. It seems to have gone unnoticed that the IFP has consistently distanced itself from the decisions made by traditional structures.
In its own world of logic, the committee then decided that the attack was associated with a political objective and as such the massacre was in proportion to the political objective sought. Exactly what that political objective was remains unclear.
Many applicants testified that the motive of the attack was revenge against the actions of Boipatong’s self defence units (SDUs). A number of hostel inmates had been brutally murdered in Boipatong and surrounding areas. The so-called attack on the SDU, however, quickly degenerated into an indiscriminate free-for-all that targeted men, women and children, old and young. Forty-five were murdered and scores injured.
In the context of the Vaal conflict, the committee supported the applicants’ assertion that everyone in Boipatong was a “legitimate” target.
The committee then decided that having established that the attack had a political objective, the issue of “proportionality acquires less significance than it would otherwise have”.
As such the vicious murder of pregnant women and children was deemed “proportional” to the political objective sought namely retaliation and the rationale that children were killed because, as in the words of one applicant, “a snake gives birth to a snake” was apparently accepted by the committee.
The committee’s gross misrepresentation of the conflict in the Vaal was buttressed by a skewed logic of equating attacks associated with IFP hostel dwellers with attacks on IFP members within the broader Vaal community.
As such the committee inferred that these were two equally responsible entities, which in turn enabled them to argue that the massacre was just part of a broader cycle of political conflict.
This clumsy and unsustainable interpretation of available evidence effectively gave the committee carte blanche to grant amnesty, whatever the nature of the incident, but as long as they could locate it within the broader cycle of violence.
Dealing with the critical issue of full disclosure, Berger pointed out that the applicants had failed to disclose the names of others involved in the attack.
At least 300 people were involved, but those identified by the applicants are either co-applicants or dead people. Not a unique strategy by any means, but highly improbable given the context of the attack and the conditions under which the applicants were living at the time forced into coexistence as refugees and so on. Again the committee simply failed to address the issue, presumably because they felt it was not a “relevant fact”.
And then there is the allegation of security force complicity. There is no space to provide a detailed examination of available evidence regarding this issue. All but one of the applicants denied they were involved in any way, suggesting that those who made the allegation were either mistaken or had deliberately conspired to falsely implicate them.
Conversely the victims alleged that the applicants’ denial of this was contrived and intended to protect senior IFP leaders who were implicated in collusion with the security forces. Having lied consistently for a number of years, such a conspiracy among the applicants is not inconceivable.
We do know that a covert relationship existed between elements in the IFP and security forces at both a national level and in the Vaal.
In a separate incident, the commanding officers of the Vaal Triangle security police and murder and robbery unit have applied for amnesty for fabricating evidence to secure the acquittal of the late IFP Youth Brigade leader, Themba Khoza and more than 100 KwaMadala hostel dwellers for their involvement in the 1990 massacre at the Sebokeng hostel that left 18 dead.
Khoza, who was a recipient of Vlakplaas arms, was implicated by several applicants in the Boipatong hearing. The committee, however, chose to ignore any testimony in this regard or other information that strongly suggested a pattern of collusion between the police, right-wing elements and the IFP in the Vaal.
The amnesty committee rejected allegations of security force complicity, stating that the testimony presented was “fraught with difficulties”.
Without expressly rejecting the possibility that they may have been present, the committee ruled that even if they accepted these allegations there was no evidence linking the applicants to security-force elements. Witnesses, they suggested, were probably confused.
Although several applicants provided graphic detail of their involvement in the massacre, they and the committee failed to answer how an impi of 300 men could systematically rampage through Boipatong without fear of detection or apprehension by the security forces. Quoting Justice Arthur Chaskalson, who represented the African National Congress at the Goldstone commission, Berger specifically asked the committee to address the following related questions:
“Does it mean that they knew the security forces were so grossly incompetent that nothing would happen to them, that they knew that they had done it before and had got away with it and could do it again and get away with it, or does it mean that they knew nobody would act, that they would be given the space of time to clear their tracks? What is the explanation for this conduct?”
As with the Goldstone commission, the trial judge and so-called police investigation, the amnesty committee failed to provide an answer.
Piers Pigou is a former Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigator