Cleric Allan Boesak says that if he had taken the stand in his own defence in his year 2000 trial, Archbishop Desmond Tutu could also have ended up facing criminal charges.
He made the claim on Wednesday at a media conference at which he gave his reasons for not participating in this week’s 20th anniversary celebrations of the United Democratic Front, of which he was a founder and patron.
Boesak accused the African National Congress, which is organising the celebrations, of ostracising him after his year in jail for theft of donor funds.
Nor had it met its “commitment” to accept collective reponsibility for what happened with the money.
He said he did not testify in his own defence in the trial for two reasons.
The first was that he and his legal team were “absolutely convinced” there was no evidence on which the judge could make the finding that he (the judge) eventually did; and no case to respond to.
The second was that had he testified he would have had to call witnesses who played roles in officialdom, including the government, and he did not want to discredit the struggle against apartheid.
“The other reason was if I had testified … my trial was to a very large extent an effort by an untransformed judiciary to discredit the struggle.
“If I had gone to testify I would have had to call as witnesses to corroborate my own testimony; people who were in official places in government, prominent places, people who had become important in the processes.
“For instance, I would have had to call Archbishop Desmond Tutu to say to him, let us talk about the time that we had to work in the South African Council of Churches.”
At the time, he said, he had been the council’s vice-president and Tutu its general secretary.
He would have had to ask Tutu in court how much of the council’s work was underground, how much information it could put openly in reports and accounts, and how much of the money used “for certain purposes” could be talked about openly.
“So it would have had enormous consequences. Not only him, there were others as well. And I thought I would not have been part of an effort to discredit the struggle,” he said.
“I have gone to jail for the sake of the ANC. That is the one indisputable fact that remains.”
Boesak said that more than a year ago he sent an application for a pardon to President Thabo Mbeki, and had not yet even had the courtesy of an acknowledgement.
There were few things that would have given him more pleasure than to be part of the birthday celebrations, so his decision not to participate had been extraordinarily painful and difficult.
The celebrations began with a church service in Cape Town on Wednesday, and include a rally on Sunday and a banquet, at which Boesak was to have been honoured, the following week. — Sapa
Boesak feels ‘ignored and discarded’