TRC Final Report

Volume 5

Chapter 6

Subsection 4

The Commission’s shortcomings

52 The Commission also wishes to acknowledge some of its own failings and constraints. Chief among these were the following:

Its failure to identify early enough a number of areas to which it should have devoted more time and energy.

53 In particular, the Commission failed to make significant breakthroughs in relation to violence in the 1990s. The events in question were extremely recent and few leads emerged from groups operating at the time. Thus few entry points for investigation were opened up and a great deal of further investigation is required.

54 Further, while the Commission believes that it broke new ground in its probes into the SSC and the elimination of political opponents, the Chemical and Biological Warfare programme and the activities of the Caprivi-trained hit squad, its investigation into the role of MI and Special Forces in the target identification process was conducted too late for adequate follow-up.

Its failure to call before it certain key actors, most notably Mangosuthu Buthelezi

55 Following an invitation to the Commission, Chief Buthelezi made a submission and thereafter publicly stated that he had nothing more to add. Given its stance in regard to Mr PW Botha, the Commission is thus vulnerable to the charge of double standards. The only defence that can be offered is that the issue was intensely debated by the Commission, which ultimately succumbed to the fears of those who argued that Buthelezi’s appearance would give him a platform from which to oppose the Commission and would stoke the flames of violence in KwaZulu-Natal, as indeed he himself promised. In retrospect, it was probably an incorrect decision.

Its failure to spread wide enough its examination of civil society’s complicity in the crimes and misdeeds of the past.

56 The Commission should, for example, have investigated those who administered black municipal and local government structures of the apartheid period. Similarly, educational institutions (in particular universities) and state-funded research bodies such as the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, the Human Sciences Research Council and the Medical Research Council should have been subjected to the same scrutiny as the business, legal and other sectors.

Its failure to deal with significant geopolitical areas, and the violations that occurred in those areas, in sufficient detail.

57 The substantial violations that were perpetrated, primarily by security force members, in areas such as Venda, Lebowa and Bophuthatswana are dealt with only cursorily. In short, the Commission did not have the resources or sufficiently qualified personnel to make a significant research or investigative impact in these regions. If one considers that the northern areas of the country included seven homelands, each with their own security forces and vigilante groupings, and were served by the modest resource capacity of the Johannesburg office of the Commission, the omission is understandable.

The constraints imposed by its investigative capacity

58 The Commission recognised early on that it would not be able to investigate all the cases before it. It decided, therefore, to focus on specific ‘window’ cases – representative of a far larger number of violations of a similar type and involving the same perpetrator groupings.

59 One of the reasons for this decision was the necessity to corroborate and verify allegations made to the Commission by victims of gross human rights violations, particularly in the light of the decision to pay financial reparations. Payment could be made only to those who had been clearly verified by the Commission

as being victims of gross violations of human rights. This left little time for proactive investigations into unsolved apartheid-era violations.

60 The Investigation Unit (IU) was also severely restricted in its inability to access military archives and classified records.

61 The Commission also acknowledges that, in view of its reliance on members of the police and the non-governmental organisation (NGO) and private sectors to make up the IU, it was difficult to develop, in a short space of time, the highly effective, closely knit unit required for the enormous task it faced. Divergent approaches led to tensions. Despite these drawbacks, the Unit functioned remarkably efficiently and can claim credit for large numbers of successful and high-profile investigations, not least the numerous exhumations of extra-judicially executed political activists.

62 The Commission can only plead that, when it began its work, it entered uncharted waters. Not only was it unique in this country’s experience, but there were few international role models. Its entire existence was a steep learning curve and, even with the extensions to its life, there was insufficient time for all the things it should have done or wished to do.