TRC Final Report

Volume 6

Section 3

Chapter 4

Subsection 2

FACTORS ENCOURAGING OR IMPEDING APPLICATIONS

10. Many applicants were serving prison sentences at the time that they made their amnesty applications. However, not all had necessarily been convicted of the offences for which they sought amnesty. In other words, they were sometimes serving sentences for offences other than those for which they sought amnesty.

11. At a meeting with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (the Commission) in January 1998, representatives of the APLA High Command expressed the organisation ’s reservations about the amnesty process. The meeting ended, h o w ever, with an agreement that APLA cadres currently in prison would be encouraged to apply for amnesty. The Amnesty Committee agreed that the PA C should appoint counsel to represent PAC/APLA applicants. It was also agree d that consultations between Amnesty Committee staff and applicants in prison would take place only in the presence of a PAC representative .

12. The quality of legal advice received by members of the liberation forces was a weakness of the process. Many were not aware of the fact that government had set up a fund (administered by the Department of Justice) through which ANC and PAC applicants had access to the same levels of legal assistance as applicants in the employ of the state. The Commission, on the other hand, was able to provide legal aid only through the Legal Aid Board and at a much lower rate. It is probable that a not insignificant number of such applications either lapsed or failed as a result of this.

ANALYSIS OF AMNESTY INFORMATION

P o q o

13. No applications for amnesty were received from members of Poqo for violations committed during the 1960s.

Violations committed by the PAC within its own ranks

PAC camps in exile

14. The Commission received evidence indicating that many gross violations of human rights occurred in the ranks of the PAC in exile, mainly in Tanzania . Despite this, only one application for amnesty was received. Amnesty was granted to Mr Mawethu Lubabalo Ntlabathi [AM5693/97] for assaults on Messrs Matsokoshe and Tebogo in a PAC camp in Tanzania in 1992 and 1993, with the approval of its military attaché, Mr Bafana Yose.

15. The applicant told the Amnesty Committee that the assaults were a means of disciplining the two APLA cadres for their involvement in stealing APLA property, thereby undermining army discipline and the building of an effective army to attack and overthrow the government of South Africa.

16. The Amnesty Committee accepted that military forces have to maintain strict discipline in order to operate successfully and that offences associated with that objective fell within the definition of acts, omissions or offences associated with a political objective [AC/2000/247].