TRC Final Report

Volume 6

Section 5

Chapter 3

Subsection 8

GROSS VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTED BY THE ANC IN EXILE

Introduction

63. In its five-volume Final Report, the Commission recorded that it had received the reports of the Stewart, Skweyiya, Sachs and Motsuenyane Commissions of Inquiry. All of these commissions had been appointed by the ANC. The Commission also had sight of the report of the Douglas Commission. These commissions of inquiry investigated allegations of human rights abuses in the ANC camps and in exile. The Commission also received evidence from victims testifying to their experiences both in the camps and in exile.

64. The Commission must also record its appreciation to the ANC for the frank way in which it handled this question during its submissions to the Commission and during the two political party hearings. The disclosures made enabled the Commission to get a sense of the problems encountered when dealing with young people in the camps and how justice was dispensed in the camps. The ANC also handed over a file that dealt with a number of the executions that had taken place in the camps.

65. A number of section 29 hearings took place, during which those named as responsible for abuses were questioned about their role and the prevailing conditions. The Commission received twenty-one amnesty applications fro m members of the ANC’s security department. However, nine applications were later withdrawn. This deprived victims of the opportunity to find out what had happened to their loved ones.

66. The twelve remaining applications included four killings, three cases of negligence that may have contributed to deaths, one shooting and eleven cases of assault of persons in the custody of the ANC. All of these applications were granted. Eight of them were dealt with at a public hearing.

67. Whilst the movement at a leadership level made frank disclosures, the same cannot be said of the welfare desk. The Commission was required to deal with this desk on a daily basis in order to verify information supplied by victims and their families. In more than 250 instances, the Commission was unable to obtain any response from the welfare desk, thereby creating further suspicions in the minds of many families about the deaths or disappearances of loved ones.

68. The death of Mr Thabo Naphtali provides one example of this. In terms of the evidence given to the Commission, he was accidentally shot during a night skirmish in the camp at Viana. Although his family knew that he had gone into exile, the movement neither notified them that he had died nor informed of the circumstances of his death. They discovered these facts only at the amnesty hearing.

69. In terms of international law, the fact that persons died in custody at the hands of the ANC places the responsibility for their deaths on the ANC.

70. The Commission recorded the following findings, on the basis of the evidence before it:⁶⁵

The ANC and particularly its military structures responsible for the treatment and w e l fare of those in its camps were guilty of gross violations of human rights in certain circumstances and against two categories of individuals, namely suspected ‘enemy agents’ and ‘mutineers’.

The Commission found that suspected agents were routinely subjected to torture and other forms of severe ill treatment and that there were cases of such individuals being charged and convicted by Tribunals without proper attention to due process, sentenced to death and executed. The Commission found that the human rights of individuals so affected were grossly violated. Likewise, the Commission found that the failure to communicate properly with the families of such victims constituted callous and insensitive conduct.

The Commission also found that all so-called mutineers who were executed after conviction by military Tribunal, irrespective of whether they were afforded proper legal representation and due process or not, suffered a gross violation of their human rights.

With regard to the allegations of torture and ill treatment, the Commission found that although torture was not within ANC policy, the security department of the ANC routinely used torture to extract information and confessions from those being held in camps particularly in the period 1979–1989. The Commission noted the various forms of torture detailed by the Motsuenyane commission, namely the deliberate infliction of pain, severe ill-treatment in the form of detention in solitary confinement, and the deliberate withholding of food and water and/or medical care, and finds that they amounted to gross violations of human rights.

71. The Motsuenyane Commission submitted its report to the ANC in August 1993. Its conclusion was that there had been severe abuses in ANC detention camps over a number of years. In one detention camp, the Commission concluded that:

Quatro was intended to be a rehabilitation centre. Instead, it became a dumping ground for all who fell foul of the Security Department, whether they were loyal supporters accused of being enemy agents, suspected spies or convicts. All w e re subjected to torture, ill-treatment and humiliation far too frequently to achieve its purpose as a rehabilitation centre.

72. The Motsuenyane Commission also found that adequate steps were not taken in good time against those responsible for such violations.