Perpetrators of apartheid crimes should be given the chance to tell their stories to enable closure for their victims and for themselves, Director General in the Presidency Frank Chikane said on Tuesday.
”We want to free all those young people who are in their forties and thirties now and who are carrying the burden of this secret that threatens them day and night fearing that one day its going to be found out. Why can we not just finish that now?” Chikane said.
Speaking at a press conference at the Union Buildings in Pretoria, Chikane said while there was an opportunity at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), the hearings were never meant to get all the perpetrators and all the victims.
”It was clear in the end you could only have a sample of people who have gone to the TRC,” he said.
He criticised those who say the book on apartheid-era crimes should be closed.
”If you had somebody who is missing in the family and you don’t know where the body is, you can’t forget this. You need to be assisted to find the body [and] if you find the body, you want to know who the person is who put the body there,” Chikane said.
”I believe that it is important that we close this chapter not by asking families not to remember that they are missing somebody; we close the chapter by getting people to tell the story.”
But, Chikane said perpetrators should not be condemned for only coming forward now and telling their stories.
”Why should people who wake up in the morning and say, ‘I have just seen the light. In the midst of the transition I was scared, did not know what to do. But now I have realised this country is normal — actually this country is better than the one in which I lived,’ and they come forward and say, ‘I want to end this pain,’ why should we not give them a chance to do that?”
Speaking a day after the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) announced that it will go ahead with the prosecution of apartheid-era police minister Adriaan Vlok, former police chief Johann van der Merwe and three former high-ranking police officials, Chikane said there is a difference between forgiveness and the legal process.
The NPA has filed papers with the Pretoria High Court and the matter will be heard on August 17. The charges relate to an alleged plot to kill Chikane in 1989, when he was secretary general of the South African Council of Churches, by lining his underwear with poison.
Last September, Vlok asked Chikane’s forgiveness and washed his feet.
Chikane said he has forgiven Vlok and others who acted against him in the apartheid era. ”I made a determination that I need to make a stand to forgive them, because not to forgive them means I carry a burden, and the bitterness,” he said.
Recounting the story of the poisoning, Chikane recalled how at the time, several people around him told others that he was about to die and, at one stage, how a priest administered the last rites to him.
”It’s quite a story; you laugh about it now, but it was quite a traumatic experience actually. It’s quite a thing to listen to people talking about you dying,” he said.
He has not yet decided whether to attend Vlok and the other’s hearings. ”Who knows? I might be a witness. We will deal with it when it comes,” he said.
Prosecution welcomed
The Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) welcomes the NPA’s announcement that it will be filing charges again Vlok and the others, it said in a statement on Tuesday.
”The CSVR and others have voiced concerns about the prosecution guidelines introduced by the NPA in December 2005 to deal with apartheid-era cases — guidelines which in effect seem to allow a second amnesty process with little transparency or disclosure of truth,” said Hugo van der Merwe, the centre’s programme manager of transitional justice.
”We are therefore particularly pleased to hear the statement of NPA spokesperson Panyaza Lesufi … which noted that it is the position of the NPA that the criminal case against Vlok and others must be handled in the public arena of the courtroom rather than being negotiated through private boardroom dealings. We hope this approach sets a clear precedent for dealing with similar human rights abuses.”
The TRC’s historic compromise was to grant amnesty from criminal and civil proceedings for those individuals who came forward and made full disclosure of their involvement in past atrocities. While this compromise may have been a necessary element of the transition to democracy, it was underpinned by the threat of prosecution for those who did not come forward or failed to disclose the full truth, said Van der Merwe.
Failure to follow through on this threat of prosecution not only undermines the country’s national reconciliation process, but betrays victims and the enormous sacrifice that was demanded of them.
While it is regrettable that prosecutions are being pursued 13 years into a new democracy and more than four years after the TRC completed its task, it is yet not too late to fulfil victims’ rights to justice and truth, Van der Merwe said.