From: vamg6792@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Mtufruti)
Subject: UPI: ANC will not accept general amnesty in return for ANC amnesty
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 15:38:51 GMT


	JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (UPI) -- An informant who reportedly
supplied the African National Congress with information about suspected
military involvement in the killings of four anti-apartheid activists
was assassinated by unknown gunmen.
	Andre Maasdorp de Villiers, who was killed Monday night, had been
telling the ANC and the media about a military unit allegedly involved
in the 1985 killings of prominent anti-apartheid activist Matthew Goniwe
and three others.
	De Villiers was gunned down by four men outside his home in
Athelstone, a rural area about 560 miles south of Johannesburg, as he
parked his car, The Star newspaper reported Wednesday.
	President Frederik de Klerk in May ordered an official investigation
into Goniwe's killing after newspapers disclosed the existence of a 1985
military document that called for the activist's ``permanent removal
from society.''
	Investigators carrying out the probe were reported to be accumulating
evidence of involvement by senior military and government officials.
	The ANC claimed de Villiers provided them with information about an
elite special forces group founded by the South African military in the
1980s to combat black resistance to Pretoria's racist apartheid policy.
	Members of the unit allegedly used an automobile body shop partly
owned by de Villiers to change the registration plates on cars and to
re-paint the vehicles.
	De Villiers already had identified some members of the unit and
promised to supply the ANC with more information about some of the
activities involving cars handled in his shop.
	``Mr. de Villiers was one of those brave compatriots who came forward
and volunteered to speak to the ANC about what he suspected,'' ANC
spokesman Linda Mti told a news conference in Port Elizabeth, 670 miles
south of Johannesburg.
	The government currently is trying to negotiate a general amnesty
deal with the ANC for political offenders that would include military
and government officials reportedly linked to Goniwe's murder.
	In return for the general amnesty, the government has offered to
release more than 400 prisoners, whom the ANC regards as political
prisoners, from South African prisons.
	The ANC severed all talks on a general amnesty last week, saying the
government did not have the moral right to grant a general amnesty and
insisting the matter be left to an interim government.
	The ANC also rejected any link between an amnesty and prisoner
releases.
	The ANC, in a statement Monday, said the sudden call for a general
amnesty ``clearly relates to accumulating evidence of senior ministerial
and security force involvement in assassinations and violence.
	``If a general amnesty simply sweeps all the misdeeds under the
carpet, the clamor for justice will only increase from those who have
been harmed,'' the ANC said. ``The truth has to be revealed, and the
judicial process completed, to help ensure a democratic future for South
Africa.''
	The ANC's decision to scrap negotiations for a general amnesty and
the release of political prisoners ended the only talks between the ANC
and the government since the ANC, alleging government involvement in
township violence, withdrew June 23 from negotiations aimed at the
creation of a new non-racist constitution.
	The government has denied the ANC charges on township violence.