TRC Final Report

Volume 2

Chapter 4

Subsection 2

■ THE AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS

Preface

3 The Commission recognises that it is able to make some very detailed observations and findings about the abuse of human rights in the military camps of the ANC owing to the fact that the ANC had earlier initiated a number of its own enquiries, namely the Stuart report, an investigation into the death of Thami Zulu (both internal ANC commissions) and the Skweyiya and Motsuenyane Commissions. The ANC also made extremely detailed submissions to the Commission.

4 The Motsuenyane enquiry, in particular, was a public and independent enquiry to which anyone could bring evidence about such abuses, and a significant number of individuals did so. This enquiry is, in fact, recognised in some of the international literature as a truth commission in its own right.

5 The Commission believes that this was an unprecedented step for a liberation movement to take, and that the ANC should be commended for setting a high standard in this regard. It regrets that it did not receive the same level of cooperation from other structures and organisations in the compiling of this report. Much of the detail contained in the section that follows comes from the ANC’s own enquiries and submissions to the Commission.

6 Following the banning of the ANC in 1960, the organisation established an armed wing, Umkhonto weSizwe (‘spear of the nation’), popularly known as MK. MK engaged in acts of war from 1961 to 1990 when, following its unbanning on 2 February, negotiations commenced. The armed struggle was suspended in August 1990. The Commission has examined the gross violations of human rights allegedly perpetrated by members of the ANC and MK. Particular attention has been paid to violations committed by MK in planned and unplanned offensive operations; violations against perceived spies, informers and ‘collaborators’ within its own ranks; violations against other parties in the course of the ‘mass struggle’ of the 1980s, and violations against other parties after the legalisation of the ANC in February 1990.

7 In the course of the armed struggle, a number of military actions took place which resulted in the death or injury of civilians, and where gross violations of human rights can be said to have been committed, despite ANC policy to avoid unnecessary loss of life. Police statistics indicate that, in the period 1976 to 1986, approximately 130 people were killed by ‘terrorists’. Of these, about thirty were members of various security forces and one hundred were civilians. Of the civilians, forty were white and sixty black¹ .

8 The ANC told the Commission that civilian casualties were attributable to poor reconnaissance, faulty intelligence, faulty equipment, infiltration, misinterpretation of policy, anger on the part of individual members of MK and the ‘blurring of the lines’ between military and civilian targets in the mid-1980s.