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Column for SUNDAY DESPATCHES, Sunday 27 August 95
If anger can cut through sophistry, controlled anger should cut right to the heart of a matter.
I hope that is the case with the anger of some of us at the handling of the issues of justice and the Truth Commission.
The truth is that many people in this country are getting away with murder -literally. And a lot else besides.
The truth is that it is those who carry individual guilt who have such a special interest in establishing collective guilt for the crimes committed under apartheid. And I mean crimes - not ideological misdemeanours, or the "unfortunate mistakes" of war.
Collective guilt is an intangible thing that cannot be prosecuted and punished, so clearly collective guilt is the thing to advocate if you are a security policeman or someone else who fears prosecution for torturing prisoners, or harassing innocent citizens, or playing "dirty tricks", or murdering people merely because they are under political suspicion.
And of course you would fall back on the mouldering, meretricious argument that you were "only carrying out orders".
We all know of police colonels and captains and sergeants and corporals who played an active - we suspect horrendously over-active part - in dealing with political opponents. We all know of cases of detainees "slipping on soap", "tripping over steps", "falling" out of windows, and carelessly "suffocating themselves" to death on pillows and things. Most South Africans suspect murder in most of these cases. And many South Africans recall mental and physical torture, blackmail and other dirty tricks which still remain unconfessed by the bullies and masochists who carried them out.
These specific crimes were not brought to trial long ago because the police investigating the police could somehow never find sufficient evidence. This cynical form of "inside investigation" is intolerable. And it is also intolerable that men who commited crimes are hoping to get away with it by saying, "I was just carrying out orders".
If it is allowed to happen it is, literally, a cop-out. A Minister of Police, for example, might have instructed a Commissioner of Police to "take stronger action" - and hastily added, "but don't tell me about it". If the Minister did that he should be made by the Truth Commission to answer publicly for it. But that doesn't mean the Commissioner of Police is less guilty. He had specific responsibility for the details of an over-all policing plan, and is guilty for any part of it that exceeded the law. How much licence did he use? How much licence did he give his Head of Security? Did Head of Security give certain police a licence to kill prisoners? Did he tell subordinates to murder civiliians, or hire assassins?
Any security policeman or 'spy' who was "carrying out orders" did so of his own volition, and usually on a scale of his own choice. Any could have opted out; obtained a transfer, or interpreted his instructions as going no further than the law allowed. Many police did this. They deserve to be distinguished from the sadists, the bullies, the weak ones who took advantage of secrecy to indulge in criminal acts.
Surely the Station Commander, say, of Protea Police Station, believed to have beaten up countless prisoners, is responsible - if this were proved - for the wounds and possible deaths, he caused? Surely the notorious Special Branch operators of the Eastern Cape should not go free? Surely the informers - those who have squealed to save their own skins - should be among the first to be publicly tried?
Let the argument, that these people had licences to torture, be examined in court. And let a hundred or more of these cases be prosecuted now. Now - before the Truth Commission attempts its worthy task of "healing the nation, absolving the guilt, and restoring peace of mind".
Otherwise the Truth Commission itself may be in danger.
In the last 18 years there have been no less than 15 Truth Commissions in nations across Africa, Latin America and East Europe. Most have been manipulated by a new government. None has been a complete success.
The Senate President of Rumania told South Africans recently: "In our case we believe a Truth Commission will produce more harm than justice; more harm than social equilibrium".
I believe this need not be so in South Africa - provided we deal with specific crimes under apartheid, and before the Commission deals with its social implications. It is not for the Commission to forgive murders, torturers and those who preyed on ordinary South Africans.
Nor is it for the public - the unknowing, unheeding, fickle public - to do so. It is the victims - the whole range from the Duncan Innes's who were detained and interrogated for no legal reason, and the Harry Mashabela's, who were beaten up in police cells and never given a reason for it, to those like Steve Biko's family, and David Webster's family - and a thousand others . . . it is they who have to be asked forgiveness.
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