SAPA AND TERRY BELL, Friday
SEVERAL boxes of apartheid-era documents unearthed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) during its hearings are in “safekeeping” at the justice department, Intelligence Minister Lindiwe Sisulu said on Friday.
She was responding to an article in Friday’s Mail & Guardian newspaper and this website, which reported that the documents had been “reburied – apparently by the National Intelligence Agency (NIA)”.
The article said archivists and researchers had spent three years looking for the thousands of TRC documents contained in “at least 34 boxes and two folders”.
Among them was a file relating to an uncompleted TRC investigation into the 1988 assassination of African National Congress chief representative in Paris, Dulcie September, the newspaper said.
Sisulu said it was the responsibility of the NIA to “advise government on document security”.
This included the classification of documentation.
“The TRC documents referred to (in the article) are in the safekeeping of the department of justice in line with the provisions of the Promotion of National Unity and Reconcilition Act of 1995,” she said.
“NIA’s involvement with these documents is to advise the department of justice regarding its appropriate classification before they are forwarded to the National Archives.
“As was previously stated by the NIA director general (Vusi) Mavimbela, ‘all TRC documents are the responsibility of the department of justice’.”
The NIA’s responsibility was to provide security advice, Sisulu said.
In a statement later on Friday, Democratic Alliance representative Dene Smuts said “before the files go missing again, we suggest they be despatched to the National Archives, where they belong”.
“Their content has been in the public domain as part of TRC proceedings and the record of the TRC’s work belongs to the public.
“Any further attempt to sit on the files or to keep them available for the spooks to ‘advise’ government only raises suspicion that they are in fact sensitive… for reasons which now invite speculation,” Smuts said.
The DA suggested researchers who had been looking for the files should immediately exercise their rights of access to information, and approach the justice department.
This website and The Mail & Guardian newspaper earlier reported that after three years of confusing and contradictory responses received by archivists and researchers in search of the TRC documents, it seemed that at least 34 boxes and two folders containing thousands of TRC documents had disappeared.
Abdullah Omar, at the time the minister of justice, told the truth commission in an April 1999 letter that he had personally taken charge of them.
His administrative secretary, JN Labuschagne, subsequently informed the commission that the documents had been handed on to the NIA.
Last week David Porogo, a representative for the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Development, admitted that he was aware that “the NIA now denies having them”. But he could not say where the documents were.
Franois Hugo, speaking for Sisulu, last week said that the “the whole matter of the TRC is complex”.
Only the minister could comment on missing documents, but she was unavailable to comment at the time of going to press.
The fact that such documents could disappear raised fears that they may be “sanitised” before reemerging, or be shredded.
Verne Harris, director of the South African History Archive at the University of the Witwatersrand, had tried for nearly three years to discover what happened to the documents, and he expressed his concern.
As a member of the former TRC team that investigated the large-scale destruction of documents to keep them out of the hands of the new government and structures like the TRC, he is acutely aware of how much of the record of the past has been mutilated by intelligence and security bodies.
The TRC team discovered that the destruction of records continued until at least 1996. Among the 34 missing boxes Sisulu says are in “safekeeping” are 13 containing the complete public record of the TRC hearings into the apartheid state’s chemical and biological warfare programme.
This record includes “classified” documents handed in to the hearings by former surgeon general Niel Knobel and quoted extensively during the hearings. All were vetted by the TRC and lawyers representing the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Non-Proliferation Council before being released as part of the general TRC record. This record was to be housed at the National Archive in Pretoria. The TRC decreed that it was to be regarded as “a national asset, which must be both protected and made accessible”.
Former TRC CEO Dr Biki Minyuku disagreed. He categorised the documents in 34 boxes and two folders as “sensitive” and arranged for them to be handed to Omar. But he had no apparent legal authority to do so. The TRC, through his replacement, acting CEO Martin Coetzee, said as much, stating that he had “acted without mandate”. Coetzee noted last week that he could see “no reason why all of those documents should not be in the public domain”.
Among them is a file relating to an uncompleted TRC investigation into the 1988 assassination of African National Congress chief representative in Paris, Dulcie September. There were no applications for amnesty for the murder, but it is speculated that several well-known figures in the previous security apparatus may have been involved. There are also a number of transcripts of public hearings, copies of published reports and even newspaper clippings included in the documents removed.
Taken together, the list of “sensitive” documents comprises what one former senior TRC official has labelled “a most bizarre collection”. Former TRC investigator Chandr Gould, who catalogued and packed the 13 boxes of records relating to the chemical and biological programme investigation – in which she was personally involved, was also unable to gain access later.
In October 1999 she was given permission by the TRC to consult some non-governmental notes in the record for the book she is writing on “Dr Death” – Wouter Basson, the head of the apartheid state’s chemical and biological warfare programme. After a year during which she made hundreds of telephone calls, wrote letters and attended meetings, she gave up.
Harris first discovered that the “sensitive” TRC documents were with the NIA when, as a deputy director of the National Archive in Pretoria, he attended a meeting with Coetzee in Cape Town. The information made him redouble his efforts, using every official and informal channel. But still he drew a blank.
In October 2000, at a conference in Cape Town on some of the unfinished business of the TRC, he mentioned in passing his concern that the NIA had apparently taken charge of a collection of “so-called sensitive documents”.
A report of the speech caused concern within the Ministry of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology which controls the National Archive. Within a week, a circular to all National Archive staff ordered that all future presentations or papers delivered by staff especially “in the official’s private capacity” should be vetted by the ministry.
Harris, however, left the National Archive. He took up the directorship of the South African History Archive at the University of the Witwatersrand in May last year – and continued his inquiries. In the process he discovered that the military had hidden vital apartheid-era records from the TRC.
When the Mail & Guardian reported on this in October last year, Minister of Defence Mosiuoa Lekota announced an immediate inquiry. Five months later, nothing has emerged.
“There have been problems and we are still trying to get to the bottom of this,” said Ministry of Defence representative Sam Mkhwanazi.
“As soon as we have the details, they will be made public.” The military has, in the meantime, cooperated with Harris’ staff investigating the 35 series of documents the apartheid-era chiefs withheld from the TRC.