The Presidency has rejected the notion of a multiparty team to advise the government on post-Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) matters.
Spokesperson Mukoni Ratshitanga said on Wednesday guidelines followed by the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) on the post-TRC legal process were approved by the Cabinet and adopted by the National Assembly.
”No compelling reasons exist to depart from the existing guidelines as adopted by the Cabinet and Parliament,” he said.
Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Helen Zille earlier called for such a team to advise the government on ways to bring closure to the ”shame of the past”.
The party leader said questions remained about various apartheid-era acts of violence and about even-handed enforcement of justice.
Ratshitanga dismissed Zille’s claim that growing polarisation around the NPA’s decision to prosecute apartheid-era minister of law and order Adriaan Vlok ran the risk of undoing the process of reconciliation.
”The DA’s claim … cannot be sustained by the facts and is therefore in every respect without foundation,” he said.
”It may serve to whip up the fears and emotions of sections of our society,” he said.
Prosecution and reconciliation were also raised by the Freedom Front Plus (FF+) on Wednesday in a letter to African National Congress chairperson Mosiuoa Lekota.
Party leader Pieter Mulder said he wrote on the consequences a ”one-sided prosecution of leaders of the past” would have on reconciliation and relationships.
Proposed prosecutions had received an ”overwhelming negative reaction”.
”If leaders on both sides of the conflict of the past are prosecuted, it could make a contribution to get to the truth about many cases of the past,” said Mulder in a statement.
”If the prosecutions are, however, to be done one-sidedly and no ANC leaders are to be prosecuted, it will be destructive for reconciliation in South Africa.”
The FF+ had asked for the issue of amnesty and prosecutions resulting from the TRC process to be on the agenda for a forthcoming meeting between eth party and Lekota.
Amnesty and its consequences could not ”be a legal process only”, Mulder said. — Sapa