Anton Ackermann, the man who prosecuted the apartheid regime’s chemical and biological warfare chief, Wouter Basson, is to head up a unit to oversee apartheid-era prosecutions.
National Director of Public Prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka has established this unit in line with recommendations by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).
This unit ”to supervise litigation” was set up at the end of March and is already looking into cases, said National Directorate of Public Prosecutions representative Sipho Ngwema. He said it would work with an existing investigation team under Chris McAdam.
Ackermann was the deputy director of public prosecutions in Pretoria and McAdam previously headed the investigation into political violence in KwaZulu-Natal.
On Wednesday Ackermann told the Mail & Guardian he had requested an audit of all cases already under investigation by McAdam’s team.
The TRC’s final report recommended that a special task team be established to investigate individual cases and to confirm disappearances. The report made particular mention of the hundreds of people who disappeared or were displaced during the violence in KwaZulu-Natal after the commission’s mandate ended.
Investigations into TRC-related prosecutions are already under way. Though prosecutors may use testimony presented at TRC hearings, they must also present independent witnesses and evidence.
One case expected to be prosecuted is that of Azanian People’s Liberation Army commander Letlapa Mphahlele. He cocked a snook at the TRC by withdrawing his amnesty application for, among others, the attack on the Heidelberg Tavern in Cape Town in December 1993 and the St James church killings in July 1993.
President Thabo Mbeki ruled out a general amnesty on Tuesday after TRC criticism that this would undermine its work. The TRC’s final report criticised the presidential pardon extended to supposed political prisoners last year.
TRC amnesties were linked to full disclosure of human rights abuses, in return for which amnesty recipients received immunity from prosecutions, according to the TRC Act. Those who have not applied for amnesty can now come forward with information and cooperate with law-enforcement and intelligence agencies. Perpetrators will be able to benefit from existing legal remedies such as plea bargains or immunity from prosecutions in return for testimony.
Mbeki also turned down a wealth tax on businesses proposed by the TRC. The government has also came out strongly against the spate of international lawsuits against multinational companies that profited from apartheid.
”We consider it completely unacceptable that matters that are central to the future of our country should be adjudicated in foreign courts, which bear no responsibility for the wellbeing of our country,” Mbeki told Parliament on Tuesday.
Talks would continue with the business sector to determine how it could best contribute to reconstruction, ”proceeding from the premise that this would be in its own self-interest”.
Minister for Justice and Constitutional Development Penuell Maduna told the M&G this week the government could not jeopardise investment and ”destabilise the economy” by endorsing apartheid victims’ litigation or by imposing a wealth tax on them.
The TRC found that businesses had benefited ”financially and materially from apartheid policies”, though the sector had not acknowledged this in the special TRC hearings.
Maduna said although the government agreed with the TRC’s findings, it faced a conundrum: ”What do we do — do we shit on all of them? All whites benefited from apartheid — do we go around smacking them because they are beneficiaries?”
He disagreed with the view that the business sector’s threats of disinvestment were an attempt to blackmail the government. Black workers who have their pensions invested in several of these companies would lose out, he said.
Maduna dismissed a universal wealth tax similar to the one imposed on West Germans to help reconstruct the former East Germany. He said apartheid victims would refuse to pay the wealth tax ”starting with your Cyril Ramaphosa. And I won’t pay it either myself.”
Instead of a wealth tax, Mbeki has called on all South Africans to follow their conscience and contribute to the President’s Fund, which will pay the one-off reparation grants of R30 000 to about 22 000 survivors of gross human rights abuses identified by the TRC.
Meanwhile, the anti-debt lobbyists Jubilee 2000 and Khulumani, the apartheid victims’ support group, will challenge businesses to make contributions towards reparations. They intend inviting businesses to a national conference to discuss the sector’s responsibility for reparations.
”The government handed the baton to business. We’ll put both the government and business to the test, to test their sincerity,” said Ike Tlholwe, Khulumani’s national director.
Jubilee 2000 and Khulumani last November jointly brought a multibillion-dollar lawsuit against 21 international companies that operated in apartheid South Africa.
Their move came after four years of lobbying foreign banks to write off apartheid debt as a form of reparation.
But the two groups have not sued South African companies, believing other strategies should be used to make them face up to their apartheid-related profits.
Both groups say they were taken by surprise by the government’s strong words against international lawsuits. The government previously had not taken a stand for or against the lawsuits.
Mbeki and several Cabinet ministers slammed these legal proceedings in Tuesday’s parliamentary debate on the TRC report.
”It is an abuse to use the law, unsound law at that, of another land to undermine our sovereign right to settle our past and build our future as we see fit,” said Minister of Trade and Industry Alec Erwin.