TRC Final Report

Volume 6

Section 1

Chapter 2

Subsection 8

CHALLENGES FACED BY THE COMMITTEE

67. The Committee was faced with various challenges, not all of a substantial nature. Only those factors that made it difficult for the Committee to do its work will be reflected upon here.

Reviews

68. No provision was made in the Act for an appeal against any decision of the Committee. Once the Committee had made its decision and informed the applicant, the Committee was functus officio (its function fulfilled) and could not review its decision or change it. The only remedy available to those who were dissatisfied with the decision (whether applicant, victim or interested party) was to approach the High Court to review the decision.

69. At the time of compiling this report, eight review applications had been filed against the decisions of the Committee. In two instances, the applications succeeded and the matters were referred back to the Committee for reconsideration . In three instances, the applications were dismissed. The remaining thre e instances were still pending at the time of publication. (These reviews are dealt with in more detail in Chapter Four, ‘Legal Challenges’.)

Operational challenges

70. Operational challenges had the most profound impact on the ability of the Committee to finish a huge workload within the shortest period possible. Some of the most significant are mentioned below:

Staff

71. All members of staff were employed in a temporary capacity and on a contractual basis. Due to the lack of employment security and uncertainty about exactly when the process would end, staff members were understandably constantly on the lookout for permanent employment elsewhere. Apart from a basic salary, staff members were offered no incentives, such as service bonuses, causing the Committee to lose experienced staff on a regular basis. It became increasingly difficult to fill vacancies, as it was almost impossible to find experienced and skilled people willing to enter into contracts for limited periods without being able to offer them substantial incentives.

Budgetary constraints

72. The Committee did not have its own budget and had to compete with the rest of the Commission for available funds. More funds would certainly have gone a long way towards making it possible to employ more staff and so reduce some of the pressure on the Committee.

Preparation of applications

73. The preparation of an application entailed substantially more than simply reading it and submitting it to the Committee for finalisation. The information contained in applications was, as a rule, very scant and had to be supplemented in one way or another. The vast majority of applicants did not have the luxury of a legal representative to assist them in completing the application form, and those who had lawyers usually divulged as little as possible. This necessitated a continuous exchange of correspondence between the Committee and applicants to elicit the necessary information.

74. Approximately 65 per cent of the applications were submitted by people who w e re in custody and had limited means of obtaining information. In most of these instances, court and police records had to be obtained. Delays were frequently experienced in obtaining re cords from the responsible institutions and, in many instances, the investigators had to go personally to collect them.

75. Corresponding with applicants in custody was often very difficult, since they w e re often transferred from one prison to another without the Committee being informed. This resulted in correspondence being despatched to the wrong address and reaching them only after a delay.

76. Some of the incidents mentioned by applicants had never previously been investigated by the police or dealt with at a trial. Consequently, the Committee had to investigate these incidents long after the event had taken place.

77. Establishing the identity and location of implicated persons, and especially of victims, was a very difficult and time-consuming task. The print and electronic media had to be used. The cost of placing even a single newspaper advertisement per missing person could add up to a considerable amount of money.

78. Investigative work took investigators all over the country, in many cases to remote and inaccessible areas. Investigators often had to contend with uncooperative victims and implicated persons, but all information furnished by applicants had to be verified.

79. The co-operation of political parties with the amnesty process was at times disappointing. Getting them simply to confirm an applicant’s membership or provide information about an incident or policy could take anything between two and six months. In the meantime, the Committee was left to contend with irate and frustrated applicants.

Hearings

80. The task of scheduling – and adhering to a planned schedule – was complicated by a number of factors, including the difficulty of finding a suitable venue. Not all institutions were willing to make accommodation available for a hearing, especially for periods of up to two weeks or longer. Factors that had to be taken into account in the choice of a venue included financial constraints, security, and the accessibility of the venue to applicants, victims and the general public. Another difficulty was finding a date that suited the various legal representatives representing the applicants, the implicated persons and victims. In addition, lawyers tended to treat hearings as criminal trials, with the result that the crossexamination of applicants sometimes continued for days.

81. These are but some of the challenges the Committee faced. Due to dedication and effort on the part of everyone involved, none of these challenges proved insurmountable. Notwithstanding these less than optimum circumstances, the Committee was able to complete its mandate successfully by 31 May 2001.