EVIDENCE WA KA NGOBENI, Johannesburg | Friday
THE South African National Defence Force (SANDF) hid key apartheid-era military intelligence information from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).
The commission had investigated the wholesale disposal of apartheid-era information and concluded that all military intelligence had kept was three series of files. Each series contains thousands of pages of records kept of military operations inside and outside South Africa during apartheid.
Last week, in answer to an archivist who submitted a Promotion of Access to Information Act request to the Department of Defence, a list was provided of 38 series of top secret documents still in the SANDF archive.
Verne Harris, director of the South African History Archive, attached to the University of the Witwatersrand, asked the department for a list of files contained in three “series” which the SANDF told the TRC was all that was left after the mass destruction of sensitive documents before 1994.
The 38 series contains thousands of classified documents on covert operations conducted by the apartheid- era government. The covert operations targeted anti-apartheid organisations in South Africa and abroad.
SANDF representative Louis Kirstein said on Thursday he was unable to provide the Mail & Guardian with comment as the chief of military intelligence was away.
“We have taken note of the allegations and the response is ready. But it cannot be sent to you because it has to be approved by the chief of military intelligence,” Kirstein said. “The answer will come next week as we have already studied the allegations.”
The South African History Archive’s list of secret files still kept by the SANDF records the dates when the files were compiled. The oldest series file covers the period 1941 to 1977. One of the files was compiled from 1977 up until 1997, fuelling speculation that some apartheid-era covert operations carried on even after the 1994 general elections.
Former TRC officials expressed shock this week after being told about the new files. The TRC, they said, was only aware of three series files. This is reflected in the TRC’s final report.
The report reads: “Although subjected to close scrutiny during the 1993 destruction exercise, a large volume of military intelligence files survived. The joint investigative team identified three discrete files groups from the SANDF archive.”
This revelation is likely to buttress public belief that the TRC never managed to get to the truth of the apartheid-era atrocities.
Former TRC researcher Charles Villa-Vicencio, who led the TRC research team into the SANDF, said the new information shows that the SANDF “deliberately misled the TRC”.
Villa-Vicencio said the SANDF had told the TRC at the time that the three files series were the only ones that survived the systemic erasure of “sensitive” documents by the previous government.
“If these new files exist we believe that we were decidedly misled by the military. Their actions were morally reprehensible and are legally indefensible,” he said.
Harris’s response from the Department of Defence includes the number of boxes in which the files are kept. There are thousands of box numbers on the list.
It is highly unlikely that the South African public will ever know what is in those boxes, says Harris. The TRC, he says, “was the only window of opportunity to have access to those files”.
The Promotion of Access to Information Act, he says, is one option the public can use to access information from the government. But there will be a problem. As the series files are classified “top secret” the SANDF will only release a “declassified” version to the public.
Villa-Vicencio said the TRC final report recommended, among other things, that a comprehensive audit of the military intelligence information be conducted.
This new information, he says, “demonstrates the necessity of such an audit.
We cooperated with the military in good faith and from this it seems that they did not do so. Maybe they were seeking to hide the information, which of course undermined the TRC’s objective to make the truth available to the public.”
Villa-Vicencio said the three files, which were given to the TRC, did not “have pertinent information” and failed to serve the commission’s objectives.
“The question one should be asking is; why did they hide the information?” he asked, adding the information allegedly concealed by the SANDF could have helped the TRC to present a “far more extensive report”.
“The SANDF was obliged to disclose all the files to the TRC according to the law. The military did not assist the TRC in this regard.”
A senior TRC researcher, who did not want to be named, said the SANDF consistently “stonewalled” the commission’s requests.
“The unfortunate reality is that the SANDF always created problems for the TRC. When they granted us access to those three series files it was too late and meaningless.
“Instead what we did was check whether files were still intact. We could not do anything as we had to deal with constant difficulties created by the SANDF.”
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