GOOD Statement by Brett Herron,
GOOD Secretary-General
09 January 2025
This week’s announcement by Minister of Justice Mmamoloko Kubayi of the creation of 19 permanent National Prosecuting Authority posts to investigate TRC cases is good.
It is good for the families and friends of victims of heinous crimes committed by apartheid forces to reach closure, it is good for the principle of equal accountability for all, and it is a good riposte to the sickening and destructive South African culture of impunity.
But for the country to really benefit from the exercise requires a proper explanation from government for the deliberate non-prosecution of these cases for more than 20 years.
It is important to know who decided to ignore the TRC recommendations on further investigations and prosecutions, and why, because this knowledge is fundamental to the integrity of South Africa’s political settlement of more than 30 years ago.
The TRC did not only recommend prosecutions in certain cases; it also recommended measures to begin to tackle economic inequality. The recommendations, collectively, were intended to advance justice and reconciliation and begin to build national unity.
The non-prosecution of these cases – together with the slow pace of social, spatial and economic transformation since the advent of democracy – feed a rising narrative that South Africa’s political settlement was a stitch-up between the ANC and National Party, and directly threaten the Constitutional principles of justice, equality and non-racialism.
Last year, former President Thabo Mbeki vigorously denied oft-repeated allegations from a former head of the NPA, Vusi Pikoli, that he (Pikoli) was instructed by his political head, then-Minister of Justice Bridget Mabandla, not to prosecute TRC-recommended cases.
Mbeki’s denials followed the release of a report by Senior Counsel Advocate, Dumisa Ntsebeza, who was appointed by the NPA to review its post-TRC performance.
Ntsebeza reported that the NPA’s failure to conduct prosecutions had led to a number of cases becoming “irredeemable” due to the fading of memories, destruction of evidence, and death of perpetrators and witnesses.
“Against these odds, one has to ask, how it is even possible to realise the national social compact struck with victims and all South Africans – to achieve accountability and justice,” Ntsebeza wrote.
Over the past few years, since the 2017 re-opening of the inquest into the death in detention of Ahmed Timol, in 1971, the NPA has enrolled a trickle of TRC cases. Minister Kubayi is promising more – including re-examining the death in 1960, in strange circumstances, of ANC President and Nobel Peace Laureate Chief Albert Luthuli.
Only the ANC can answer why it lacked the appetite, at a time it held unfettered political power for 30 years, to reinvestigate the death of a former President. Its official opposition for most of that period, the DA, has had no interest in further prosecutions as most perpetrators would fall into its broad constituency.
The GOOD Party welcomes Minister Kubayi’s announcement, in a reply to a parliamentary question asked by the EFF, of additional NPA focus on TRC cases.
If the Minister wants to contribute to nation-building, however, the nation still awaits an explanation for the deliberate delay of justice in respect of TRC prosecutions, the failures to institute economic recommendations, including a wealth tax, the under-payment of reparations to designated victims – and the pile of unspent cash earning interest in the President’s Fund.
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