'Prosecute apartheid politicos'

2006-04-20 16:31

Cape Town - It was time for politicians and security-force officers to face the music for their role in apartheid-era human rights violations, a Cape Town conference heard on Thursday.

Former Truth and Reconciliation Commission member Yasmin Sooka said she would like to see "those who created this milieu", and not the foot-soldiers, brought to book.

This would hopefully happen when the long-awaited post-TRC prosecutions got underway.

Sooka was speaking at a Cape Town conference marking the tenth anniversary of the first sitting of the TRC.

"If you look at who actually came forward in the amnesty process, you had one minister, the former minister of law and order Adriaan Vlok, and you had a few generals," she said.

"But by and large the politicians, in a sense, got away with it."

She said it was clear from the applications of those who did apply for amnesty from the TRC that almost all of them operated on the basis that they were doing what they were supposed to.

Choose selectively this time

They were not merely "bad apples" in the system.

"And they, in a sense, expected the politicians would cover them... This was what the apartheid state was geared for," said Sooka.

"And so, I would certainly like to see us not going again for those who pulled the triggers, but rather to look selectively at some of those who were responsible for creating this environment in which criminality could flourish.

"Remember this was not happening within the law, it was happening outside the law."

She said it was not her job to suggest names, but there were "at least two or three people I could think of".

Sooka's comments follow the national prosecuting authority's announcement of a policy on prosecuting apartheid-era crimes for which individuals were not granted amnesty.

List of 300 names

The prosecutions will be managed by the NPA's priority crimes litigation unit.

It is expected that investigations will focus on a list of more than 300 names that the TRC handed to the NPA in 1998.

Dave Steward, spokesperson for the FW de Klerk Foundation, said there had been no clear agreement on amnesty during the negotiations that led to the 1994 election.

He said no one supported the idea of immunity, and he agreed that those who committed acts of "egregious" violence should not be let off the hook.

"I'm not saying there should not be prosecutions," he said.

"I'm just saying it should be an even-handed process if we are going to achieve reconciliation and not widen differences between our communities."

He asked how many of the 300 names submitted by the TRC were from the "struggle side", and said the TRC itself had not investigated violations by members of the liberation movements with the same zeal as those committed by the security forces.

- SAPA