Mbeki rejects call for approach to TRC

Published Aug 2, 2007

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By Angela Quintal

President Thabo Mbeki's office poured cold water on calls for a political approach to dealing with the potentially divisive unfinished business of the TRC, making clear prosecutions would go ahead three years after similar concerns prompted a moratorium.

"The presidency wishes to place it on record that the guidelines which the National Prosecution Authority is pursuing to bring the post-TRC legal process to finality were approved by Cabinet and adopted by the National Assembly," presidential spokesperson Mukoni Ratshitanga said.

He was referring to the revised post-TRC prosecutorial guidelines prompted by the NPA's 2004 decision to charge a little known United Democratic Front foot-soldier in the Eastern Cape.

After years of campaigning by former apartheid generals for a blanket amnesty, it was ironically the charging of the UDF's Ronnie Blani in 2004, that set the cat among the pigeons.

He was later sentenced to five years for the 1995 murder of an elderly couple, Koos and Myrtle de Jager.

Political pressure from within the ANC amid outrage that the first prosecution was from the liberation struggle side saw a moratorium at the time on any further post-TRC prosecutions.

Apartheid security policeman Gideon Nieuwoudt died during his prosecution, while the prosecution of his colleagues accused of trying to poison Frank Chikane, now presidency director-general, were put on hold at the list minute, pending the revision of the guidelines and parliament's approval.

On Wednesday, DA leader Helen Zille joined others in yet another call for the reopening of the process, calling for the appointment of a multi-party task team to advise government on the post-TRC legal process.

This was immediately rejected by the presidency, who also dismissed Zille's concerns that the post-TRC legal process "runs the risk of undoing the process of reconciliation".

This view could not be sustained by the facts and was therefore in every respect without foundation, Ratshitanga said.

"It may serve to whip up the fears and emotions of sections of our society.

"The presidency is therefore of the view that no compelling reasons exist to depart from the existing guidelines as adopted by cabinet and parliament."

In a radio interview, former TRC deputy chairperson Alex Boraine noted that the commission had made a very strong recommendation to the government in its final report, that those who did not apply for amnesty and should have, or those who had applied, but were rejected, should be followed up.

"Part of the mess we are in now, is because it has taken so long for the NPA or its predecessors to take action."

Former transport minister Mac Maharaj, speaking at the Cape Town press club on Wednesday, was asked about his views on the prosecution of former law and order Adriaan Vlok and former police general Johann van der Merwe and the resulting brouhaha.

"This is a problem of an injured society, a brutalised society, and it needs processes that are political to carry it forward."

Maharaj said he was concerned that a political problem was being shunted off to a bureaucracy, namely the NPA, to handle.

Calling for transparency, he said: "I disagree with pushing it into a bureaucracy and giving the power to the prosecuting authorities to do plea bargains, or to just let off a person without you or I knowing.

"Therefore this matter should be handled politically, as a matter to be judged and taken on transparently, so that we carry our people forward, so that we understand where we come from, and to heal us as a people."

Referring to possible consequences on reconciliation, Maharaj said it should not be forgotten that it would be "our children, black and white, who have to live together".

He noted that even TRC chairperson Archbishop Desmond Tutu had warned not to do it this way and effectively allow a back door amnesty.

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