The reputation of FW de Klerk, the former South African president who shared a Nobel peace prize with Nelson Mandela for ending apartheid, was battered yesterday when the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) found that he had failed to make ”full disclosure” when testifying about human rights violations.
The former president, who is feted internationally as a statesman and authority on conflict resolution, could now face prosecution for giving misleading testimony to the commission in 1996 in an apparent attempt to keep his name clean.
In its final two volumes published yesterday the commission, set up seven years ago to investigate crimes and abuses by all sides during apartheid, found that De Klerk concealed information when testifying that neither he nor senior colleagues had authorised any human rights violations.
De Klerk initially insisted to the commission that he was ignorant of state-sanctioned terrorism, including the 1988 bombing of the South African Council of Churches’ headquarters in Johannesburg.
But he has since admitted that he knew that the police commissioner, General Johann van der Merwe, had been ordered to bomb Khotso House, a base for the council of churches and several other anti-apartheid groups.
His admission appeared in yesterday’s report, using a form of words approved by De Klerk through his lawyers.
It said: ”His statement that none of his colleagues in cabinet, the state security council or cabinet committees had authorised assassination, murder or other gross violations of human rights was indefensible.”
Yasmin Sooka, one of the commissioners, said this meant that, in effect, De Klerk had lied and that he might face sanction as a result.
The commission wanted to publish a much harsher finding in a 1998 report but De Klerk blocked it with a high court ruling, claiming that the TRC was biased, and his lawyers negotiated the diluted version published yesterday.
The first finding, which the TRC has agreed never to publish, was represented by a blacked out page.
But the Guardian has obtained a copy of it. De Klerk, it concludes,”lacked candour” by failing in his duty to provide full disclosure about a bombing which the commission considered a human rights violation even though no one died.
Those who planned it said it was a miracle there were no casualties.
”The commission finds that his failure to do so constitutes a material non-disclosure thus rendering him an accessory to the commission of gross human rights violations.
”The commission finds further that De Klerk was present at a meeting of the state security council where former state President PW Botha congratulated the former minister of law and order for the successful bombing of Khotso House.
”The commission finds that the failure of Mr FW de Klerk to take legal action against (those colleagues responsible) for the commission of unlawful acts when he was under a duty to do so contributed to creating a culture of impunity within which gross human rights violations were committed.”
De Klerk, an Afrikaner who freed Mandela in 1990 and overcame militants in his ruling Nationalist party by legalising the African National Congress and opening the way for elections to end white minority rule in 1994, had insisted that apartheid’s leaders were not to blame for its atrocities, which he blamed on overzealous, ill-informed or malicious underlings.
His relations with Mandela, who accused him of stoking fighting between blacks in the run-up to the 1994 election, are said to remain cool.
De Klerk did not attend yesterday’s ceremony in Pretoria where the commission’s chairman, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, handed over the final two of seven volumes to President Thabo Mbeki.
When the commission was set up it offered amnesty in exchange for full disclosure, an alternative to Nuremburg-style trials which has become a model for other post-conflict countries.
The televised hearings, which reached an emotional peak in 1998, were credited with smoothing the peaceful transfer to majority rule but critics complained that too many guilty parties withheld the truth and were not prosecuted.
In his final act as the chairman, Archbishop Tutu hailed the country’s reconciliation but criticised white South Africans and big business for ignoring their role in apartheid and called for immediate reparations for about 20 000 victims.
Eight-year search for the truth
July 1995 President Nelson Mandela establishes the truth commission to examine apartheid era atrocities, with archbishop Desmond Tutu as chairman
December 1997 Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Mandela’s ex-wife, admits ‘things went horribly wrong’ in Soweto after hearings into murder and torture by her ‘football club’ in the 1980s
June 1998 Apartheid hit-squad leader Eugene de Kock says president PW Botha ordered attacks on activists
June 1998 Inquiry begins into the apartheid state’s chemical and biological weapons programme; uncovers plans to make black women infertile, and evidence of production of tonnes of drugs and covert weapons
August 1998 Court finds PW Botha guilty of contempt for refusing to testify in person about murders and bombings in the 1980s
September 8 1998 Senior apartheid era police officer Johan Coetzee says Botha government was behind the 1982 bombing of ANC offices in London
October 29 1998 ANC loses bid to suppress interim report. It brands apartheid a crime against humanity but also criticises the ANC
January 29 2003 Zulu complaints lead to changes to final report; however, the commission’s main finding, that the Zulu leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi collaborated with apartheid agents in attacking the ANC, is not changed
March 21 2003 Tutu hands final report to President Thabo Mbeki and calls for immediate reparations for 20 000 victims – Guardian Unlimited Â