TRC Final Report

Volume 6

Section 5

Chapter 4

Part Appendix2

Subsection 2

The TRC made a number of finding relating to black-on-black conflict. In this regard the figures of casualties suggested by the TRC are unsubstantiated and have been extrapolated through statistics based on an undisclosed and obviously erroneous methodology. Contrary to what is stated in the TRC’s report, almost 400 Inkatha leaders were killed in a systematic plan of targeted mass assassination. More than 10,000 Inkatha members and supporters were killed and hundreds of thousands of them were dispossessed or suffered untold misery and gross human rights violations because of the armed struggle waged against Inkatha.

The TRC made certain findings relating to the KZP which suggested that on occasions they co-operated with the SAP in perpetrating gross human rights violations. These findings ignored certain relevant facts and are wrong. As the ruling part of KwaZulu, Inkatha had the responsibility of maintaining law and order. The TRC i g n o red the reality that Prince Buthelezi had no operational control over the KZP which, in terms of law, was under the control of the South African Government in respect of all matters relating to its deployment, training, promotion and operational c o n t rol. Nothing in the TRC Report or in any credible evidence before the TRC detracts from the fact that Prince Buthelezi never ordered, authorized, approved , condoned or ratified any gross human rights violations.

Certain of the findings in the TRC report endeavour to connect crimes committed by individuals or groups operating at community level with the IFP or Prince Buthelezi. In particular the TRC has in its report reconstructed events relating to the training of 206 young people by the SADF in the Caprivi Strip. The findings in this re gard are e r roneous and in conflict with the approach taken by the Durban Supreme court to similar evidence before it in extensive criminal proceedings. These people were chosen on the basis of criteria determined by the SADF and trained by it inaccordance with its chosen requirements. The training was requested by the KwaZulu Gove rnment solely to protect the lives of government officials and the integrity of g o v e rnment structures and assets which were being targeted by terrorism and insurrection related to the armed struggle. Prince Buthelezi was at the time reliably informed of ANC plans to assassinate him, which information was confirmed before the TRC in the testimony of President Mbeki. The KwaZulu Government never had operational control of these trainees. No basis exists for suggesting Prince Buthelezi could have believed that 206 barely trained security guards could be deployed against hundreds of thousands of ANC cadres who were well equipped and well trained by Soviet and Cuban military personnel.

In fact, Inkatha and the KZG were the only major participants in the conflicts of the past which had no control over a private army to be deployed for political purposes. Private armies were available both to the exiled political forces, such as the ANC and the PAC through the military training camps abroad, as well as to the leaders of the TBVC states and, obviously, to the SAG. Prince Buthelezi’s refusal to accept nominal independence was, as admitted by former State President FW de Klerk, the major cause of the demise of the great scheme of apartheid, as it prevented the SAG fro m consolidating its claim that the white minority was no longer ruling over the majority of disenfranchised black South Africans. The fact that the Zulu people remained South Africans and did not have an independent state, forced the chief Minister of the KZG to provide for their security.

This as the background leading to the training of the Caprivi trainees which was fully scrutinized during the 8 month Malan trial referred to in the TRC report. The trial court found nothing illegal in such training. In arriving at its conclusions the TRC failed to pay proper re g a rd to the evidence before the Court and its judgment.

The TRC in making certain findings in relation to self protection units misconceived their true nature. The training of SPUs was legal and was intended to achieve legal purposes relating to community policing and defense supervised by the National Peace Accord. Factually, SPUs never became involved in the conflict of the past. The only contrary evidence available to the TRC was that of someone whose political allegiance changed from the IFP and its Leader. He was involved in the setting up of a military camp for self-protection training, which he did without any knowledge of the IFP Leader. The TRC never offered the opportunity to the IFP to produce evidence to counter the false testimony placed before it, during in camera hearings at which the IFP was not represented no afforded an opportunity to test such evidence.

The TRC wrongly concluded that the IFP and its Leader could have made plans to disrupt the April 1994 elections by deploying a thousand people trained for a few weeks, against the combined might of the SAP, the SADF and MK, the ANC’s private a r m y. In fact, the IFP and its Leader never considered any plan to disrupt the April 1994 elections, the Central Committee (the decision making body of the IFP) never passed a resolution to that effect and the IFP’s structures were never involved in any illegal activity. When the IFP expressed its opposition to the 1994 elections, it did so in a principled fashion, relying on its usual methodology of passive resistance and nonviolence, by exercising its democratic option of not participating in such elections.