The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) final reports will be handed to President Thabo Mbeki on September 6 — unless a court challenge by the Inkatha Freedom Party spoils the party.
The Mail & Guardian has learned that a White Paper on reparations is before the Cabinet. Sources say it proposes a once-off R40000 award to the 22000 victims of gross rights violations the TRC identified.
Paul Setsetse, spokesperson for the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, would neither confirm nor deny the figure, saying he could not pre-empt the Cabinet.
If the policy is adopted, payments would fall well short of the R25000 a year for five years, or R3-billion overall, proposed in the TRC’s 1998 interim report.
The presentation of the two last TRC volumes — one by the amnesty committee and the other a comprehensive victims list — will formally end the commission’s work and trigger the state’s legal obligation to provide reparations in full. The state had already provided interim relief of up to R350-million, Setsetse said. A further R800-million, from the government and donors, had accumulated in the president’s reparations fund.
But the IFP has objected to the TRC presentation. It believes the reports will set in stone the TRC’s 1998 findings against party members, and particularly against IFP president Mangosuthu Buthelezi, who was branded a gross human rights violator.
On July 30 the IFP won a high court order requiring Mbeki and Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development Penuell Maduna to furnish the basis of the findings.
Mario Ambrosini, Buthelezi’s aide, said the government had supplied ”not a single piece of paper” since the case. ”Technically, the president and Maduna are in contempt.”
Ambrosini said the TRC’s lawyers had agreed to give the IFP seven days’ notice before the TRC’s work was completed. He would not comment, but it is understood the IFP is weighing up the possibility of a court challenge to the handover of the reports.
The TRC and non-governmental agencies fear that the final reparations regime will largely comprise a single monetary award. They strongly favour the appointment of a commissioner of victims in the presidency to oversee a longer-term process: arranging symbolic reparations, such as memorials; attending to victims’ health and educational needs; and continuing to seek clarity on those who disappeared under the apartheid regime.