President Thabo Mbeki has been urged to quickly and generously pay reparations to apartheid victims in line with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Act.
”The victims have waited since 1998, while (their) perpetrators have received amnesty or pardon,” the Working Group on Reparations, a non-governmental organisation, said in an open letter to the president on Wednesday.
The letter had been endorsed by several organisations, including the SA Council of Churches, SA Jewish Board of Deputies, Institute for Democracy in SA, Chief Rabbi Cyril Harris, Institute for Justice and Reconciliation and the Black Sash Trust.
”It is our view that without comprehensive reparations, along the lines recommended in the TRC Report of 1998, the Commission will continue to be regarded as a ‘perpetrator friendly exercise’,” the document stated.
The victims agreed to testify before the TRC, which granted amnesty to perpetrators in exchange for full disclosure, in light of the provision for reparations. The TRC Act provided that victims lose their right to take criminal or civil action against perpetrators who applied for amnesty.
”Victims and survivors are expecting individual, including financial, reparations — and this is surely their due,” the letter said.
It would be a moral tragedy for the victims and would impact negatively on the government’s credibility if the process did not go ahead.
”Our government and parliament (must) act quickly, generously and decisively in implementing final reparations, in consultation with relatives of victims and survivors,” the letter concluded.
Presidential representative Bheki Khumalo said the matter had been tabled before the Cabinet some time ago, and that it would serve again ”very shortly”.
”It is definitely receiving attention,” he said. – Sapa