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Apartheid criminals 'must pay'
16/08/2007 12:02 - (SA)
Johannesburg - The guidelines under which apartheid-era police minister Adriaan Vlok and ex-police chief Johan van der Merwe are to be prosecuted are too lenient, the Khulumani Support Group said on Thursday.
"Rather than working to end impunity, these guidelines provide what amounts to a "re-run" of the TRC process without any of the inherent guarantees of the TRC," said Khulumani in a statement.
The group said the prosecution guidelines - under which Vlok and Van Der Merwe are being tried in connection with the attempted poisoning of Reverend Frank Chikane - were amended by the government in 2005 without public consultation.
"These amendments create new and less rigorous amnesty opportunities for apartheid criminals who either failed in their original applications to the TRC or avoided altogether engaging with the TRC," said Khulumani.
Travesty of justice
"We reject special legal provisions for apartheid perpetrators. This is a travesty and undermines the faith of citizens in our system of justice."
Khulumani said that together with the International Centre for Transitional Justice, the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, and the Legal Resources Centre, they would be challenging the constitutionality of the amended guidelines.
"While new opportunities are created for apartheid criminals to once again seek indemnity from prosecution, no benefits or opportunities have been extended to victims and survivors of apartheid atrocities to address their urgent needs."
The Khulumani Support Group has 33 000 members, most of whom are unemployed women living in rural areas.
They run various programmes including post-TRC lobbying and advocacy for the rights of apartheid victims, the facilitation of reconciliation programmes within divided communities and the running of business-skills and arts and culture training.
Khulumani said, together with their partners, they would be launching a charter for redress in Church Square in Pretoria on Friday to coincide with the start of the trial.
They charter provides a checklist of what victims and survivors of apartheid needed in order to experience a sense of justice and be able to actively participate in building South African society.
"The Charter identifies the fact that reconciliation has a price - the price is the cost of redressing the terrible wrongs done to individuals and communities across South Africa," said the support group.
"[Victims and survivors] demand full public disclosure by perpetrators of their activities and their consequences".
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