Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi on Friday said he was flabbergasted by Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s criticism of his party for taking umbrage with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report.
Tutu and former TRC commissioners met in Cape Town on Thursday to consider the IFP’s legal action in the Cape High Court which is aimed at forcing the commission to change its findings against Buthelezi.
In its interim report, presented to former president Nelson Mandela on October 29, the commission found that the IFP under Buthelezi, was the ”primary non-state perpetrator… responsible for approximately 33% of all the violations reported to the commission”.
The IFP says this conclusion is not supported by the evidence and has challenged the findings in court for the last three years.
In a statement after meeting some TRC commissioners on Thursday, Tutu said: ”We are quite despondent that surprisingly the IFP should take four years to take umbrage with our report”.
Buthelezi in a statement on Friday said: ”One cannot but be flabbergasted, dumbfounded and astonished by the statement made by the TRC chairman.
”Within a matter of weeks of the publication of the interim report, we demanded access to the documentation on which the TRC ostensibly based its outlandish and preposterous findings against me and the IFP.”
The TRC denied access to such documentation, which forced the IFP to begin litigation against the commission, Buthelezi said.
After almost four years of litigation, the TRC had not produced one single document or shred of evidence to justify the ludicrous findings it made against himself and the IFP.
”The TRC defied and ignored many requests to produce such documents. In the end, it was subjected to a stringent court order requesting it to produce the record of its findings and decisions.”
The deadline for compliance with the order was July 30.
The TRC did not comply with the order and ”technically speaking, Archbishop Tutu is in contempt of court”.
The IFP has set down the review application for a hearing at the earliest date possible.
”The interdict proceedings were about ensuring that the TRC could not finalise its report and repeat its outlandish findings against me and the IFP without the review application having first been finalised.”
Against this background, stating that the IFP had only now taken umbrage with the TRC’s interim report defied any logic.
”My only desire is that of restoring the truth. I have never ordered, authorised, condoned or ratified any gross human rights violation.
”The findings in the TRC report relating to the black-on-black conflict cannot stand as the record of our national history”.
The findings were flawed and an insult to the millions of people who suffered because of the black-on-black conflicts, he said. – Sapa