GOOD Statement by Brett Herron,
Unite for Change Leadership Council Member and GOOD Secretary-General
30 January 2026
South Africans must pay close attention to the lawfare being conducted by two former Presidents relating to the Khampepe Commission. There’s something the former Presidents don’t want us to know about the NPA, and why the State chose against prosecuting heinous killers who did not legally qualify for amnesty.
The Khampepe Commission was established by President Ramaphosa last year to probe whether the State’s failure to implement the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission implied political interference in the country’s prosecutorial process.
The Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act, No. 34 of 1995, which established the TRC, was not the choreography for a piece of political theatre. It was a legal instrument with explicit instructions on the granting and non-granting of amnesty.
In its final report, the TRC recommended that hundreds of cases in which perpetrators did not receive amnesty be subjected to further investigation and prosecution.
If the prosecutorial process that should have followed was interfered with by politicians, they were not exercising their authority or discretion; they were breaking the law by capturing the NPA because the NPA must prosecute without fear or favour.
Judge Sisi Khampepe, the head of the commission appointed to probe these matters, today dismissed an application for her recusal by former Presidents Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma.
In a scathing written ruling, the judge said that the two former Presidents had unreasonably delayed their application for her recusal, failed to explain their delays, and that their delays demonstrated their apprehension of bias was unreasonable.
Judge Khampepe is a formidable jurist, uniquely qualified to lead the inquiry. She served as a member of the TRC’s Amnesty Committee, is the only former TRC Commissioner to have gone on to serve on South Africa’s apex Constitutional Court, and she has the additional experience of having worked for the NPA.
The former Presidents are nonetheless unlikely to accept her recusal ruling as the last word on the matter. They will presumably seek a court’s opinion on the matter, with the likelihood of appeals and further delays thereafter.
At the heart of the matter was a decision by 37 ANC leaders and operatives not to apply to the TRC for amnesty individually, as required by law. Their attempted collective application was dismissed, leaving the 37 vulnerable to prosecution or the publication of career-limiting information.
Most human rights violations examined by the TRC were perpetrated by apartheid security forces, but because of these few ANC cases, the entire post-apartheid process of healing and nation-building through accountability and justice was subverted.
It is said that the NPA was captured during the State Capture years; in fact, it appears to have been in the bag much longer than that.
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