Cape Town - Damning evidence of unsolved apartheid-era crimes has been released into the public domain, which could shed light on the trail of money funnelled to apartheid operatives.
Approximately 147 transcripts of confidential TRC hearings have been handed over to the South African History Archives (SAHA) by the Department of Justice after the Archives’ marathon decade-long struggle to obtain them.
The documents are said to contain explosive details of specific abuses of human rights. The confidential TRC hearings were conducted under Section 29 of the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act (1995).
Former TRC investigative Unit head Dumisa Ntsebeza said “it was of utmost importance for the files to be accessible in the public domain, as these documents raise serious questions for the NPA about cases that were not followed up once the TRC closed its doors.”
From the records, he said, it will be clear to everyone that “we confronted perpetrators with a gruelling but polite examination, where many had to amplify their amnesty applications rather than the sanitised versions they had earlier presented.
“Now everyone can see that the investigative unit confronted perpetrators with damning prima facie evidence, and it boggles the mind that no one has been prosecuted when the justice department had this kind of information at its disposal.”
He said that information obtained in the hearings should have been used by government to retrieve cash and assets that were funnelled to secret structures such as the Civil Co-operation Bureau, which had been fingered for participation in the killings of Anton Lubowski, David Webster, Dulcie September and many other abuses such as the bombing of Father Michael Lapsely.
“We absolutely need to know what happened to the millions in the CCB slush fund, because they were an international murdering unit” Nsebeza said.
The Department of Justice had not, by publication time, responded to a request for comment on the release of the documents to SAHA.
SAHA director Catherine Kennedy described the records as “a treasure trove of critical information that has to be carefully mined for nuggets of critical information.”
Kennedy compared the collection, handed over to SAHA by the justice department after a court order, to the Stasi files which detailed the abuses committed by the former East German Secret Police and said “after an intense struggle that lasted 11 years, the justice department has handed over the majority of the section 29 transcripts.”
The documents are the transcripts of hearings conducted in-camera by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which were not open to the public. Many of the persons who testified under oath were summoned to the hearings under subpoena and were compelled to answer questions concerning their knowledge of events and persons associated with gross human rights abuses perpetrated by the primary forces who were party to the apartheid-era conflicts.
Among those who appeared at these hearings were the top commanders of the former SADF and Mkhonto we Sizwe, as also numerous covert players connected to structures that had authorised, initiated, aided, participated in or directly perpetrated human rights abuses.
Among those summoned to the hearings were General George Meiring, Colonel Joe Verster, General Andrew Masondo, Winnie Mandela, Superintendent Lappies Labuschagne, Wouter Jacobus Basson and Colonel Christo Nel.
A TRC insider said these documents will reveal details of the individuals who built the bombs, committed murders, kidnappings, tortures and who planned and issued orders for gross abuses of human rights and crimes.
Kennedy said the SAHA staff were combing through the files to establish exactly what they had in their possession. She said the department had not handed SAHA the electronic transcripts of the hearings which were part of the full collection handed over by the TRC when it shut down.
She said it had been established that “there were some pages missing from some of the transcripts and some information had been redacted.”
Kennedy said SAHA had embarked on the quest for the documents after a 2003 resolution was taken by the TRC Commissioners that the documents had to be released into the public domain.
Weekend Argus