WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2008-12-14 Time: 07:00:06 Posted By: Jan
By Jeremy Gordin and Angela Quintal
The door has been slammed shut on “back door” amnesties for the perpetrators of human rights abuses under apartheid.
Judge Francis Legodi of the Pretoria high court found that certain amendments made in 2005 to the National Prosecuting Authority’s prosecution policy, which would allow NPA prosecutors to give amnesty for “political crimes” committed during the apartheid era were unconstitutional and invalid.
The final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) identified about 300 cases for possible prosecution. These were cases in which the perpetrators of human rights abuses were either denied amnesty or did not apply. Since 2001, the NPA has prosecuted only four of these cases.
In 2005, the prosecuting authority adopted a policy in terms of which, when dealing with these cases, the prosecuting authority could negotiate amnesties with the perpetrators.
But the policy was challenged last year by Thembisile Nkadimeng, the sister of Nokuthula Simelane, a missing MK operative; and by Nyameka Goniwe, the widow of Mathew Goniwe; Nombuyiselo Mhlauli, the widow of Sicelo Mhlauli; Elizabeth Mkhonto, the widow of Sparrow Mkhonto; and Nomonde Calata, the widow of Fort Calata. The four men, known as the “Cradock Four”, were abducted, tortured and murdered in the 1980s.
The widows, represented by the constitutional litigation unit of the Legal Resources Centre, believe that some of those involved in the deaths of their husbands and Simelane did not apply for amnesty and have not been prosecuted.
They argued that the amended prosecution policy allowed the NPA to “re-run [for the second time] the TRC’s amnesty process” and grant effective indemnities from prosecution to those who had been refused or failed to apply for amnesty from the commission.
They said that such a policy would entitle the NPA to decide not to prosecute human rights abusers, even in circumstances in which there was adequate evidence to justify prosecution.
The court agreed on Friday that the policy amounted to a “copy cat” of the TRC amnesty process and ruled that such a policy was unlawful and a “recipe for conflict and absurdity”.
At the time of the announcement of the amendments, then-president Thabo Mbeki said the new policy would not be a re-run of the truth-for-amnesty process, but would instead be a way for those who did not participate in the TRC process to “co-operate in unearthing the truth” in exchange for prosecutorial leniency.
But the amendments not only allowed for the non-prosecution of those who met the TRC requirements for amnesty (full disclosure of crimes committed for a political objective before May 11 1994), but also provided additional open-ended criteria under which the national director of public prosecutions, could decline to prosecute, even where there was enough evidence to get a conviction. The new policy also did not allow victims to see or hear the “truth” disclosed by perpetrators because the process was to occur behind closed doors.
Hugo van der Merwe of the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation said that the NPA had applied for and made amendments to its powers in December 2005 to give itself “room in which to manoeuvre”.
“As I understand it,” he said, “the NPA came under a great deal of pressure not to prosecute – and this came from across the political spectrum.”
Van der Merwe said that there had been huge “political sensitivity” attached to the cases that should still have been prosecuted. He said many senior members of the ANC and the Pan Africanist Congress had not applied for amnesty during the TRC and did not want to be prosecuted now.
“So the NPA had to find a way in which it could offer amnesties,” Van der Merwe said, “but the families of the Cradock Four said that, where there was proper evidence, the NPA had to prosecute and not re-run the TRC.”
Van der Merwe, and Comfort Ero of the International Centre for Transitional Justice said that the NPA had now to get on with prosecuting properly. Ero said the judgment upheld an important principle of the rule of law in a democratic state, “namely that where there was sufficient evidence to prosecute, the NPA must comply with its obligation under the constitution”.
Tlali Tlali, the NPA spokesperson, said that “unfortunately no one at the NPA has been able to study the judgment. So we don’t know which sections of the amendments have been struck off… and how we are to continue with our prosecutions of apartheid-era abuses.
“Until we know that, I really can’t comment fairly.”