From: "FRANCO BARCHIESI" <029FRB-AT-muse.wits.ac.za>
Date:          Sun, 1 Nov 1998 21:10:48 GMT + 2:00
Subject: AUT: ANC slammed by human rights group


The following article was in today's "Sunday Independent" (Jo'burg). 
The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has just 
released its five-volume report on the crimes, violations and abuses 
of the apartheid regime. The African National Congress has tried to 
prevent in any way (including the request of an urgent interdict 
from the Supreme Court) the publication of the report, on the basis 
of documented acts of violation of human rights, revealed in the 
report, committed by ANC cadres and structures during the 
liberation struggle. Oddly enough, the whole section of the report 
devoted to the involvement of former state president FW De Klerk in 
apartheid crimes will be blackened (sic) in the final report that 
will be distributed, thanks to a court interdict obtained by De Klerk 
himself. I am forwarding the following article by way of information, 
and not because I subscribe to all the views expressed by Human 
Rights Watch. However, among the facts discussed in the TRC and which 
are not mentioned in the article are, for example, the elimination of 
internal opponents in ANC training camps. 


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SUNDAY INDEPENDENT (Johannesburg) 01 November 1998

        Human Rights Watch criticises the ANC for trying to muzzle 
the truth commission and hiding its abuses behind the justice of its 
struggle

by Maureen Isaacson and Jean le May
       
      The bitter row over the ANC's controversial bid to delay the 
Truth and Reconciliation Commission's final report in a High Court 
action on Thursday escalated at the weekend with an attack by a 
prominent human-rights organisation based in the United States. The 
New York-based Human Rights Watch castigated the ANC and former 
president FW de Klerk for trying to "muzzle" the commission on the 
eve of the report's release. Kenneth Roth, executive director of 
Human Rights Watch, said: "It was disturbing to see South Africa's 
political leadership undermine the vitally important work of the 
commission." Human Rights Watch urged the ANC to "stop hiding behind 
the legitimacy of its struggle against apartheid". Meanwhile, the ANC 
has defended its decision to go to court and has denied a split in 
ANC ranks over the court application. Deputy President Thabo Mbeki 
denied yesterday that he had snubbed President Nelson Mandela over 
how to handle the report. In a statement from his office, Mbeki said 
it was ANC secretary-general Kgalema Motlanthe who briefed President 
Nelson Mandela as a matter of courtesy on the intention of the party 
to interdict the commission. "In this regard, President Mandela was 
not expected to - and did not - express an opinion on the intentions 
of the ANC to interdict the commission," said Mbeki. Presidential 
spokesman Parks Mankahlana said there was a divergence between the 
interests of the government and those of the ruling party when it 
came to the report. Mandela, as head of state, could not criticise 
the report while Mbeki, as head of the ANC, had every right to 
express the ANC's reservations. "I don't think there is a split," 
said Mathews Phosa, the head of the ANC's legal department. "We 
accept the report... We may disagree about the tactics of the 
handling of the inaccuracies in the report but we all agree that the 
inaccuracies need to be addressed. "We confessed our wrongdoings and 
said we were sorry but they [the commission] seem to be taking us on. 
We can never accept that they are equating our struggle to the 
apartheid regime." Human Rights Watch said it "rejected the ANC's 
view that it should be held to a lower standard of scrutiny because 
it was fighting a just war". "The abuses committed by the ANC during 
the liberation struggle, including the targeting of innocent 
civilians in bombing campaigns and the torture and summary executions 
of suspected collaborators in ANC camps, cannot be justified by 
reference to the justice of its struggle," Human Rights Watch said. 
Deputy defence minister Ronnie Kasrils also hit back at the 
commission and asked: "What did they expect, professional soldiers? 
The essence of the matter is that no just war in history has been - 
or can be - lily-white. Wars are fought within a bloody context," he 
said. Kasrils said the struggle against Nazism was the most 
appropriate example. He said that acts committed during the anti-Nazi 
crusade - such as the summary execution of collaborators, spies and 
traitors - had saved humanity and were not characterised as gross 
violations of human rights. "You cannot conduct a clean struggle ... 
People are most certainly going to get hurt and not very nice things 
happen at times," he said. The ANC yesterday issued a strongly worded 
statement defending its decision to go to court and its belief that 
the truth commission "made findings which are blatantly contrary to 
fundamental principles of international law". National director of 
prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka said yesterday there would be no 
automatic prosecutions of perpetrators named in the truth 
commission's final report and some criminal offences could be dropped 
for the sake of reconciliation. 

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Franco Barchiesi
Sociology of Work Unit
Dept of Sociology
University of the Witwatersrand
Private Bag 3
PO Wits 2050
Johannesburg
South Africa
Tel. (++27 11) 716.3290
Fax  (++27 11) 339.8163
E-Mail 029frb-AT-muse.arts.wits.ac.za
http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/aut_html
http://pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il/~mshalev/direct.htm

Home:
98 6th Avenue
Melville 2092
Johannesburg
South Africa
Tel. (++27 11) 482.5011


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