Government under fire for proposal to extend amnesty

One of South Africa's more unusual exports to the rest of the world, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), came under scrutiny this week. NGOs and political analysts questioned the government's decision to consider giving blanket amnesty for those who who didn't originally apply, or whose application failed. South African President Thabo Mbeki was criticised last week when 33 prisoners were granted a presidential pardon on the grounds of their alleged political activities. After the publication of their names, it emerged that of the 33 prisoners, at least 20 had earlier been refused amnesty. Also, most of those freed were members of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), a former ally of the ANC during apartheid. Some of the crimes committed by the prisoners included murder and robbery Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the former chairperson of the TRC, warned that the pardons could undermine the work of the commission. "It would make a mockery of the TRC and eviscerate the entire TRC process," Tutu told the Sunday Independent. The commission, in operation since April 1996, had been charged with documenting gross human rights violations committed during apartheid, between the years 1960 and 1994. Under its mandate, the TRC granted amnesty to those who confessed their roles in full and could prove that their actions served some political motive. In more than one case the commission has been used as a model for other post-conflict countries trying to confront their brutal history by exposing the truth, and at the same time promoting national reconciliation. The latest furore around the pardons has however once again questioned the success of the commission's work and the South African government's commitment to justice. Political parties have criticised the government for what they are calling "one-sided" pardons. One analyst said that any form of blanket amnesty was "completely immoral". Professor John Daniel, a senior researcher for the commission told IRIN: "I don't think the government really has a coherent strategy. The recent presidential pardons is obviously a government tactic to short circuit the originally conceived amnesty process. "It is disingenuous for the government to go ahead and pardon those who it feels fought on their side and exclude former opponents. In a sense its a sense of impunity which cannot be justified. The TRC process was not about taking sides." He added: "Why them, and not others? Why were they refused amnesty in the first place." The row has also opened the debate around collective amnesty, where action and perpetrators are not specified. The ANC supported this in its amnesty application in 1999, when Mbeki and 26 other ANC leaders accepted "collective responsibility" for unspecified crimes between 1960 and 1994. The TRC turned their application down. Right wing parties have jumped on the bandwagon saying that criminals charged with actions intended to further their political party's agenda should be released. This could mean that offenders such as ex-policeman Eugene de Kock, serving 212 years for 89 criminal offences, and high profile assassins, Clive Derby-Lewis and Janusz Walusz, could go free. Both Lewis and Walusz were convicted of killing South African Communist Party leader, Chris Hani. Justice Minister Penuell Maduna told the Sunday Independent newspaper: "We are not starting any process of general amnesty, because, as you know, general amnesty has all sorts of implications. "And indeed there was a reason why we didn't go that route and we went the TRC route in the first place." But the attention on the 33 former prisoners and the conditions under which some of them will be released has irked a leading human rights organisation who said the recent pardon "once again favoured the perpetrator instead of the victim". Senior Researcher at the Centre of Violence and Reconciliation, Tloki Mofokeng told IRIN: "If the government had intended to grant a blanket amnesty why did it bother with the entire process? Why did it waste all of that money? Instead it should have gone toward reparations. "The government continues to sacrifice the victims ... The government promised that moves would be made towards reparations as soon as the TRC completed its work. It seems the focus has shifted. The victims have yet to see the promise of reparations that government officials shouted from the rooftops about," she said. "As imperfect as the commission may have been, the government needs to immediately come up with a comprehensive policy on reparations and amnesty," Mofokeng added. When asked if the latest postmortem on South Africa's TRC would cast doubt on the internationally accepted view that the exercise was a huge success, Daniels said that the integrity of the commission's work speaks for itself. "I think South Africa has shown that there is an alternative to blanket amnesty and that is 'conditional amnesty'. This is certainly not the first obstacle the process has encountered. I don't think the TRCs work can be undermined because of this. All one needs to do is look at countries like Chile which wasn't particularly successfully with its decision to grant general amnesty," he said.