TRC Final Report

Volume 6

Section 5

Chapter 3

Subsection 9

Commentary

73. Testimony before the Amnesty Committee has confirmed that there were abuses in exile. The security department of the ANC routinely used torture and assault as a means to extract information from those it suspected of being enemy agents or dissidents. In those instances where operatives were executed, it is clear that there were some instances of due process being afforded to those accused of offences. In the main, however, due process was given perfunctory observance and these so-called trials cannot be conceived of as remotely resembling fair trials or hearings. These actions are contraventions of the Geneva Conventions and Protocol I.

74. The information that the Commission received subsequent to the submission of its five-volume Final Report has confirmed that the Commission was correct in making the findings that it did.

GROSS VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTED BY SELF-DEFENCE UNITS

75. In its Final Report, the Commission made the following finding against the ANC in respect of the commission of gross human rights violations perpetrated by self-defence units (SDUs):

Whilst the Commission accepts that the violent conflict which consumed the country in the post-1990 period was neither initiated by nor in the interests of the ANC, the ANC must nonetheless account for the many hundreds of people killed or injured by its members in the conflict. While the ANC leadership has argued that its members were acting in self-defence, it is the Commission’s view that at times the conflict assumed local dynamics in which proactive revenge attacks were carried out by both sides. High levels of political intolerance among all parties, including the ANC, further, exacerbated this situation; the Commission contends that the leadership should have been aware of the consequences of training and arming members of SDUs’ in a volatile situation in which they had little control over the actions of such members. The Commission therefore found that in the period 1990 to 1994, the ANC was responsible for:

Killings, assaults and attacks on political opponents including members of the IFP, PAC, Azapo and the SAP

Contributing to a spiral of violence in the country through the creation and a rming of self-defence units (SDUs).

While acknowledging that it was not the policy of the ANC to attack and kill political opponents, the Commission finds that in the absence of adequate command structures and in the context of widespread state-sponsored or directed violence and a climate of political intolerance, SDU members often ‘took the law in their own hands’ and committed gross violations of human rights.

The Commission takes note that the political leadership of the African National Congress and the command structure of Umkhonto WeSizwe accepted political and moral responsibility for all the actions of its members in the period 1990–1994 and there fore finds that the leadership of the ANC and MK must take responsibility and be accountable for all gross violations of human rights perpetrated by its membership and cadres during the mandate period.

76. The finding was based on evidence that the Commission received from victims who testified or made statements to the Commission, evidence at hearings and submissions handed to the Commission.

Response of the ANC

77. In its response to the Section 30 finding, the ANC argued that the finding:

has the deliberate intention, contrary to the truth readily available to the TRC, of shifting the blame for the political violence which occurred in the period since 1990 away for the apartheid regime to the democratic movement and condemning the oppressed for the efforts they took to defend themselves against a very intense campaign of repression and terror.

78. The ANC also restated what it had said in its submission to the Commission in May 1997:

The post-1990 violence was the work of the state, was organised at the highest level, and was aimed at strengthening the hand of the government at the negotiations table by forcing a progressively weakened ANC into a reactive position in which it would be held hostage to the violence and forced to make constitutional concession…. the ANC was not engaging in ‘ongoing conflict’, nor were the majority of the people on the ground embroiled in ‘ongoing conflict’: they were being attacked by covert units operating in accordance with the wishes of the apartheid regime .

Amnesty process

79. The Commission received a number of applications from members of ANC-aligned SDUs for violations committed during the 1990s. However, this was the result of a concerted effort made by a few individuals. Regrettably, a large number of SDUs were not reached in time and many did not have access to legal assistance. In certain instances, they did not qualify because of ongoing violence, which culminated in further incidents of violence linked but occurring beyond the mandate period. In this regard, the Commission visited a number of young people in prison.