From: nicolson@odie.ee.wits.ac.za (James Nicolson)
Subject: Re: Human Rights Commission 1
Organization: Wits Electrical Engineering (Novell Users).
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 10:44:21 GMT

In article <1992Oct6.210019.8054@ucthpx.uct.ac.za> gavan@elc.mth.uct.ac.za (Gavan Tredoux) writes:

>The first in a series of postings on the activities of the 
>"Human Rights Commission" (HRC), self-dubbed, which acts as a violence
>monitor in South Africa. These postings will demonstrate faulty
>methodology and flagrant disregard for natural priciples of 
>fairness and objectivity, together with highly innacurate reporting
>of known evidence.

[some material deleted]

I'm not disagreeing... I just want to ask for clarity on two points 
(maybe I'm jumping the gun, since you haven't finished the series)

>A remarkable feature of HRC figures is the predominant role played by
>what are termed "vigilantes", a term extended to cover the predominantly
>Zulu-based party Inkatha (IFP) and a whole range of actors connected
>in some imputed way to homeland administrations. Often these actors are only
>indentified as "vigilantes" and no attempt is made to provide more
>specific identification. On the whole, the category appears as an inferred 
>one.

The SAIRR claimed that they were unable to ascertain specifically who was 
responsible for around (I think) 80% of the violence. Isn't this just the 
same problem? Is the problem with not attempting _specific_identification_, 
or with broadly classifying these types of attacks as VRA. 

Your criticism of the VRA category:

>2. The category is used duplicitously to lump all violence involving
>Inkatha into one category, both in situations where they are aggressors
>and in situations where they are victims.

Does the HRC specifically link the word _vigilantes_ and Inkatha? I think 
that a classification of a large portion of violence as being perpetrated by 
_vigilantes_ is quite true, if you use the common meaning of _vigilante_. In 
SA, though, the word is used by left wing organisations to mean Inkatha-type 
vigilantes.   Where a group of supporters of other organisations perpetrate 
violence (for whatever reason), they could still be classified as 
vigilantes (in its usual meaning). Does the HRC definition of _vigilantes_ 
apply only to people from IFP and similar homeland organisations?

Why I ask, is because in your example (below), it seems strange that the 
violence is classified as VRA, simply because it is directed against 
Inkatha. Didn't the HRC define it as VRA, because it was a vigilante-style 
attack (regardless ofthe political affiliation of the attackers or the 
attacked).

If this is true, then is the objection, that the figures then create a 
perceived bias, because people relate Inkatha and _vigilante_, because of 
the IFP's history of vigilantism?

I would be genuinely interested to hear what the _HRC_'s definition of a 
vigilante attack is. This would make it much clearer what the problem with 
the VRA category is.

>We choose one example among many to illustrate 2.

>EXAMPLE: Crossroads Massacre, April 1992

>Events - Unknown men, reportedly Xhosa-speaking, move through the 
>Inkatha-controlled Crossroads squatter camp on the reef, killing
>nearly 30 people, mostly sleeping, including women and children.
>It is alleged that they came from the nearby ANC/Xhosa controlled
>Holomisa camp (named after Bantu Homolisa, leader of the Transkei junta,
>and a seat of Xhosa ethnic resurgence on the reef). In scale this rivals
>the Boipatong massacre later in June.

>Classification - VRA, on the basis that Inkatha is, according
>to the HRC, a vigilante grouping, subsidiary
>to the KwaZulu homeland administration. 

>Here Inkatha are patently victims, yet the violence emerges not in 
>some anti-IFP, or IFP/ANC, or Xhosa/Zulu, category, but rather
>as just "action involving vigilantes". In fact, the HRC has no categories
>tracking ANC, or ethnic, or anti-state violence, a fact we will return to
>later. Unsurprisingly, some 80% of violence emerges as VRA in HRC
>reports.

------------
James Nicolson, Department of Electrical Engineering
University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa