TRC Final Report

Volume 6

Section 5

Chapter 5

Subsection 3

VIOLATIONS AGAINST PAC MEMBERS AT HOME

25. The PAC was also responsible for violations against its own members inside South Africa after 1990, for which five applications for amnesty were received. In the main, they involved the killings of suspected informers. The Commission found the PAC responsible for the killing and attempted killing of members branded as informers and agents, as well as of those who opposed PAC policies.

26. The Amnesty Committee received four amnesty applications for the killing of three individuals suspected of collaborating with the security police. In one instance, a fellow PAC and APLA member was seen in the company of a police officer and was allegedly overheard talking to him and promising to report on a PAC meeting. He was killed. The amnesty committee accepted the amnesty applicant’s explanation.⁷¹

27. In another application, an amnesty applicant took a decision to kill a comrade whom he regarded as an informer. Although he failed to do so, he himself was injured and captured in the course of his last attempt. He applied for amnesty for the attempted killing. The Amnesty Committee accepted his version and his proposition that the attempted killing of this police informer was politically justified.⁷²

FINDINGS ON GROSS HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS COMMITTED BY PAC/ APLA DURING ITS ARMED STRUGGLE

28. The Commission’s major finding on the Azanian People’s Liberation Army (APLA) was in respect of the commission of gross violations of human rights committed in the course of the armed struggle inside the country during the 1980s and 1990s.

29. The Commission stated that:

[w]hile the PAC proclaimed a military strategy of a protracted people’s war, which involved the infiltration of guerrillas into the country to conduct rural guerrilla warfare and attacks in the township, in actuality, the primary target of its operations were civilians. This was especially so after 1990 when, in terms of its ‘Year of the Great Storm’ campaign, the PAC/Apla targeted whites at random and white farmers in particular.

3 0 . The Commission noted but rejected the PA C ’s explanation that the killing of white farmers constituted acts of war. To the contrary, the Commission found PAC actions against civilians and whites to have constituted gross violations of human rights for which the PAC and APLA leadership was held morally and politically responsible and accountable.

31. The Commission found that:

[t]he targeting of civilians for killing not only constitutes a gross violations of human rights of those affected but a violation of international humanitarian law. The Commission notes but rejects the PA C ’s explanation that its killing white f armers constituted acts of war for which it has no regrets and apologies. To the contra ry, the Commission finds PAC action directed towards both civilians and whites to have been a gross violation of human rights for which the PAC and Apla leadership are held to be morally and politically responsible and accountable.

32. In dealing with this issue,an important factor to bear in mind is the PA C’s political platform, captured in a statement made by Brigadier Mofokeng at the armed forces hearing:

The enemy of the liberation movement of South Africa and of its people was always the settler colonial regime of South Africa. Reduced to its simplest form , the apartheid regime meant white domination, not leadership, but control and supremacy. The pillars of apartheid protecting white South Africa from the black danger, were the military and the process of arming of the entire white South African society. This militarization, therefore, of necessity made every white citizen a member of the security establishment.

33. The vast majority of amnesty applications fall into this category and will be considered in greater detail below.