The Truth About the Truth Commission, by Andrea Jeffery (SAIRR)

**www.white-refugee.co.nr**www.jagia-07146.co.nr**www.king-soci.co.nr**www.crime-of-apartheid.co.nr**

The Truth About the Truth Commission

by Anthea Jeffery, with a foreword by John Kane-BermanSOUTH AFRICAN INSTITUTE OF RACE RELATIONS, JOHANNESBURG, 1999

Published by the South African Institute of Race RelationsAuden House, 68 De Korte StreetBraamfontein, Johannesburg, 2001 South AfricaP.O. Box 31044, 2017 Braamfontein, South AfricaTelephone: (011) 403-3600|| Fax: (011) 403-3671e-mail: sairr@sairr.org.zaInternet address: http://www.sairr.org.zaCopyright South African Institute of Race Relations, 1999ISSN 1018-0842PD 15/1999 || ISBN 0-86982-463-5 || Spotlight Series: No 3/99Members of the media are free to reprint or report information, either in whole or in part, contained inthis publication on the strict understanding that the South African Institute of Race Relations isacknowledged.Otherwise no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted inany form or by any means, electrical, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without the priorpermission of the publisher.Cover photograph: Paul Velasco, PictureNET Africa; Cover design: G'Echo Design

Dr. Anthea Jefferyis theHead of SpecialResearch at the

South African Institute of Race Relations

(SAIRR). Her latestbook is

People’s War: New Light on the Struggle

. Dr. Jeffery holds law degreesfrom the University of the Witwatersrandand from Cambridge, and a doctorate inhuman rights law from the University ofLondon. Her first book was

The Natal Story: Sixteen years of conflict.

Overview of

People’s War: New Light on the Struggle

1

http://www.sairr.org.za/sairr-today/news_item.2009-09-03.4310602162/

**www.white-refugee.co.nr**www.jagia-07146.co.nr**www.king-soci.co.nr**www.crime-of-apartheid.co.nr**

I. Foreword

The 1990s should have been a period of unqualified celebration for all who loathedapartheid and sought a society based on human dignity and equality before the law. Byhis dramatic actions on 2nd February 1990, the then state president, Mr F W de Klerk,had opened the way to negotiation about a new constitution based on universal adultsuffrage. Yet violence intensified very shortly afterwards. The Institute watched withhorror. It was tragic and ironic that this happened at the same time as political reformgathered momentum. Moreover, the vast majority of victims were not policemen,soldiers, or insurgents. They were ordinary people, nearly all of them black.From February 1990 to April 1994, nearly 15 000 people died in political violence inSouth Africa. These deaths amounted to 72% of the 20 500 political fatalities thatoccurred from 1984 to 1994. They constitute 62% of the more than 24 000 such fatalitiesthat have now taken place since September 1984. The average fatality rate in politicalviolence from 1985 to 1989 was about 1080 a year, but in the early 1990s it more thantripled to some 3 400.Some of the victims of violence were shot dead by the police while demonstratingagainst injustice.Some were tortured to death. Some were kidnapped or ambushed orled into traps, and then killed. Some died when car bombs and limpet mines exploded.Some were killed because they went to work or to the shops in the face of a stayawaycall. Some died on commuter trains and taxis. Some were slain as they lay sleeping intheir beds, or waiting at bus stops, or driving in cars. Some died in massacres. Somewere executed by the necklace method. Some died because they were white, othersbecause they were black. Many of the dead were selected as targets, because they were'terrorists', or 'collaborators', or political rivals. Some died because they happened to bein the wrong place at the wrong time.We owe it to the victims and their survivors to ascertain and tell the truth about theirdeaths-to identify who killed them, to know why they were stabbed or shot or blastedby explosives or set on fire.Knowing the truth would have value in itself. If we could reach a common understandingof the conflict of the past, it would also help lay the foundation for racial and politicalreconciliation. The goals the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was mandatedto attain were important.Superficially, the TRC appears to have provided a balanced and comprehensive account,for it has issued condemnations all around: upon the former National Party (NP)government for instructing the 'elimination' of political opponents and then claimingsurprise at their deaths; the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) for its massacres of supportersof the African National Congress (ANC); the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) and its armedwing for targeting civilians; the white right wing for planning an insurrection intended toderail democracy; the former United Democratic Front (UDF) for attacks in the 1980s oncouncillors, policemen, and collaborators; and the ANC for bombing operations thatsometimes 'went awry' and killed civilians, for abuses in its camps in other countries,and for creating a climate in which some of its supporters thought certain violations tobe legitimate.

**www.white-refugee.co.nr**www.jagia-07146.co.nr**www.king-soci.co.nr**www.crime-of-apartheid.co.nr**

The TRC was right to examine all these issues. It was also right to condemn theseviolations and their perpetrators. The fact that it condemned political organisationsacross the spectrum suggests, too, that it was even-handed in the way it did its work.There is, however, a fundamental problem with its report. It was required to tell thetruth in full. Instead it has told some of the truth, but far from all of the truth.Significant multiple killings have been omitted, without explanation. Overall, thecommission has done as much to distort as to disclose the truth. Distortion arises fromtwo main factors-the methods it used, and the aspects of violence it left out.The commission's methodology is flawed, fundamentally so. The TRC failed properly tocheck the allegations on which it relied. It based key findings on untested and(effectively) uncorroborated statements that were sometimes mainly hearsay. It failedto comply with basic principles of fairness. It acknowledged that it was supposed toapply 'established legal principles' but in practice it exempted itself from them. It oftenrelied on secret testimony and the self-serving allegations of criminals seeking to escapeimprisonment. The quality and veracity of much of its 'evidence' was dubious. Yet itused this evidence to hold individuals and organisations accountable for what itdepicted as premeditated murder-and did so without giving proper reasons to support itsfindings.It also reached its major conclusions aboutviolations when some 90% of amnestystatements (on its own reckoning, a vital source of evidence) had still to be considered.It never quantified how many political killings had occurred within its mandate period(extending from 1960 to 1994). It left 12 000 or more killings unexplained-notably thosethat occurred when violence was at its most intense. Its approach was selective ratherthan comprehensive. Some parts of its report are simply sloppy.The commission sometimes effectively repudiated earlier judicial rulings withoutexplaining why they were incorrect, or its own findings right. Sometimes, it got evenbasic facts wrong-such as the death toll in a well-known incident. On occasion, itmisrepresented what courts or commissions of inquiry had earliersaid. At other times, itsimply ignored judicial rulings altogether, putting forth its own version of the truth as ifno contrary finding existed. Both the law and principles of transparency and fairnessrequire judges to give reasons for their findings. Often the TRC did not bother.The commission also went so far as to redefine the meaning of 'truth' and indeed todenigrate the very notion of 'factual and objective truth'. It invented 'narrative','dialogue', and 'healing' truths, tacitly admitting that the truth it told was somethingother than factual.Distortion also arises from what the TRC left out of its account. The commission rightlyprobed counter-revolutionary strategies and activities, some of them criminal. It failedadequately to probe the revolutionary activities the counter-revolution was supposedlydesigned to overcome.The conflict, contrary to earlier predictions about South Africa, was not a race war. Oneof the major, and, for some people, embarrassing, problems confronting anyoneexamining the fatalities that occurred from 1984 to 1994 is the fact that nearly all ofthe victims were blacks, who were killed by other blacks. The depiction of violence as'black-on-black' is a crude simplification which explains nothing. The real question iswhy these deaths occurred. Can they be explained by rivalry between competing