Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi has failed in his attempts to ”whitewash history and portray himself as a peace-loving anti-apartheid activist”, say former Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) members and investigators.
Hailed as a vindication of Buthelezi’s innocence of apartheid-era wrong doing by his party and legal team, the settlement was described by former TRC commissioner Yasmin Sooka as proof that Buthelezi collaborated with the ”most senior echelons of the apartheid state’s security organs”.
The settlement, reached on the eve of what was expected to be a dramatic court battle this week, ended Buthelezi’s long-running bid to have the TRC excise parts of the commission’s final reports, which described him as a primary human rights violator. The IFP interdicted the commission from finalising its report in September last year, delaying the release of the document. It also delayed the drafting of the government’s new amnesty policy and the compensation of apartheid victims by the state.
In terms of the settlement, the TRC’s findings on Buthelezi will stand while the IFP leader will be allowed to publish an annexure spelling out his objections to the verdict.
Legal experts said this week that the settlement may clear the way for civil litigation against other IFP leaders.
IFP national chairperson Lionel Mtshali sought to present the deal as a vindication of ”Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi and the Inkatha Freedom Party” as the TRC had ”finally conceded to change some its findings” in its 1998 report.
However, the TRC said the changes were minor and that none of its core  findings have been excised or altered.
Political scientist and former truth commission investigator John Daniel, now a researcher for the Human Sciences Research Council, described the settlement as ”a great victory for the TRC’s version of the truth about Inkatha’s gross human rights violations … It tried to bully the TRC and failed,” he said.
However, he added: ”The IFP has shown yet again that it is not willing to open itself up for public scrutiny.”
Sooka pointed out that Buthelezi’s main demand had been for the removal of the TRC’s most damning finding on the IFP — that it collaborated with the former South African Defence Force (SADF) in the training of IFP youth as hit squad members in the Caprivi Strip in 1986. The reference and the finding remain intact.
”While the minister will continue to claim the role of anti-apartheid campaigner and man of peace, history will treat him in the light of his actions as uncovered by the work of the TRC, other investigators and human rights lawyers,” she said.
The Mail & Guardian’s predecessor, The Weekly Mail, exposed the top-secret operation, code-named Operation Marion and involving SADF training of 208 IFP members, in the early 1990s. Buthelezi has always maintained the men were trained for defensive purposes.
The TRC found that one of the Caprivi hit squads was deployed in KwaZulu-Natal’s KwaMakhutha township in 1987, where it killed 13 men, women and children at the home of a United Democratic Front (UDF) leader. The massacre was to become the subject of the conspiracy to murder trial of apartheid defence minister Magnus Malan and 19 others in 1996.
The trial, while accepting that Caprivi-trained hit men were responsible for the massacre, exonerated Malan, other senior defence officials and Buthelezi’s secretary and now IFP secretary general, MZ Khumalo.
Sooka said that in its court application, the IFP had sought to rely on the Malan trial outcome. However, the commission was not bound to follow court findings ”particularly those it regarded as unreliable. If it were, the TRC would have been bound by other discredited judicial findings such as those made by the Harms commission and the Steve Biko inquest.
”The TRC found that ‘backing’ was no mystery and was obviously supplied by the military and Inkatha. It could not agree with the court’s findings that the word ‘offensive’ [training] in the military context did not necessarily mean ‘attack’, nor could it concur with the court’s view that those behind the Caprivi project did not foresee that the trainees would carry out deadly attacks.”
Sooka pointed out that one of the Caprivi trainers, Colonel Jan Nie-woudt, had stated in his amnesty application that the purpose of the camp was ”to identify and eliminate African National Congress, South African Communist Party and Pan Africanist Congress targets”.
”The TRC findings indicated that Buthelezi was not an innocent and independent activist, he had requested help from the former apartheid regime and had got it,” she added.
In his application against the TRC findings, Buthelezi claimed he and the IFP consistently adhered to lawful methods. He wanted specific references to himself, MZ Khumalo and the current KwaZulu-Natal MEC for Social Welfare, Gideon Zulu, removed from the TRC’s final report. In all the party demanded that 37 paragraphs in the TRC report be set aside.
These included references to its role in the ”Seven Day War” in 1990 around Pietermaritzburg, the ”Toaster Gang” that killed Tembisa residents in the early 1990s, the Mlaba camp in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands set up for the military training of Inkatha ”self-protection units” before the 1994 election, and jailed former police hit squad leader Eugene de Kock’s delivery of six truckloads of weapons to the commander of the Mlaba camp, Philip Powell. These stand in the report.
In his legal submissions on the Caprivi training, the IFP’s attorney, Patrick Falconer, said: ”We accept that unfortunately people from all sides of the political spectrum were killed due to illegal activity. We are, however, instructed that it was never part of Inkatha policy. We believe some of these activities emanated from individuals within Inkatha, who did so in the defiance of policy on the matter, as did, we believe, certain ANC members.”
Sooka said that there was overwhelming evidence that Buthelezi worked closely with apartheid government to destabilise liberation movements.
She said the documents revealed that after the military decided to phase out support for offensive actions by the IFP because of security problems, ”Buthe-lezi during 1989 expressed to senior military officers his desire for offensive actions to be carried out in ‘cells’, as he was losing the ‘armed struggle’.
”Excerpts from top-secret apartheid era documents and interviews with senior security officials abundantly illustrate the sinister role played by Inkatha and its leader.
”Buthelezi’s desire for ‘continued offensive steps,’ as in ‘hit squads’, is evident from his discussions on October 31 1989 with senior Directorate of Special Tasks officers. In the same document, MZ Khumalo referred to the IFP leader’s wish for ‘cells that could take out undesirable elements’.”
Buthelezi’s request was put to Malan, who advised in 1990 that at that stage the ”violent option was a difficult matter”.
The TRC’s 1998 report found the IFP responsible for perpetrating about 9 000 gross human rights violations in KwaZulu and Natal from 1990 to May 1994. This has now been changed to include the role of other organisations, such as the ANC, the UDF, the KwaZulu police and the SADF.
The TRC’s final report is expected to be ready by the end of the year. Sooka said the settlement of the dispute with the IFP now enabled the TRC to address the urgent question of reparations for victims.
The findings of the report could also form the basis for victims to make civil claims against political organisations.