TRC Final Report

Volume 1

Chapter 6

Subsection 4

Data capture

20 Once the statement had been perused, the details of each violation were entered onto the database. Because the database was connected to the regional offices by means of a wide-area network, data were shared between the four offices, helping to ensure that each data processing unit followed a standardised approach.

Corroboration

21 Once the statements had been entered onto the database, it was the task of a team of investigators to corroborate the basic facts of each matter according to a standard list of corroborative pointers (for example, by obtaining court records, inquest documents, death certificates, newspaper clippings and so on).

22 In addition, regional researchers conducted literature searches and field trips in order to produce briefing documents on the political conflicts that had taken place in areas where gross violations of human rights had occurred. This allowed them to generate valuable background material and information on the political context in which the violations took place. This corroborative material and background research provided the commissioners with the additional information they needed to make their findings – establishing whether the allegations in the statements were, on a balance of probability, true.

23 Corroborating the evidence gathered in more than 20 000 statements received in the two years between 14 December 1995 and 14 December 1997 proved one of the

greatest challenges faced by the Commission. Many of the statements consisted simply of a story told by a particular victim and contained no supporting documentation or evidence on the basis of which the Commission could make a defensible finding. The onus was, therefore, on the Commission itself to attempt to locate relevant evidence or documentation in order to corroborate each victim’s statement. The following examples of types of incidents requiring corroboration illustrate the magnitude of this task:

a incidents that had occurred more than 1 000 km away from the closest office;

b incidents that had occurred more than twenty, and in some cases thirty, years ago;

c incidents that had occurred at a police station at which either no records of the event existed or all records had been destroyed;

d incidents in which all victims had been killed, or were dead, and the whereabouts of the only eye-witness were unknown;

e incidents that had occurred in a neighbouring state or in Europe.

24 It is clear from the above that the corroboration of statements was an extremely difficult and time-consuming task. It was complicated by the large numbers of statements involved and because each statement, on average, referred to between two and three victims. The Human Rights Violations Committee was, as a result, faced with the task of corroborating over 50 000 individual cases. The enormity of this task cannot be overemphasised.