From: shaze@cs.ubc.ca (Scott Hazelhurst)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african
Subject: Re: Human Rights Commission 1
Date: 7 Oct 1992 09:57:18 -0700
Organization: Computer Science, University of B.C., Vancouver, B.C., Canada
NNTP-Posting-Host: pacific.cs.ubc.ca

gavan@elc.mth.uct.ac.za (Gavan Tredoux) writes:

a long criticism of the HRC, most of it rhetoric. 

Before saying anything else, I need to clear that I have
accepted that there is HRC is biased, and that there is
lots of room for improvement.

I have posted as a separate article, an opinion piece which
appeared in The Star dates 22 September 1992 so you can read
in full an analysis of the Jeffery article which Gavan
quoted. In this posting I will just use excerpts to illustrate
a point I made some weeks ago which sparked this all off.
the SAIRR has its own bias, and the use of the SAIRR as an
infallible reference point is mistake.

Gavan gives one instance of a claim that the HRC is biased:
>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.


What Jeffery's actually said in her report was:
  "The HRC ... attributes the Crossroads massacre -- in
  which 23 sleeping members of the IFP (including a woman and
  two children) were killed by Xhosa-speaking men, allegedly from
  an ANC squatter camp -- to 'vigilante related action'. It defines
  such action as attacks by (or in defence against) surrogate
  forces of the State, in the form of 'vigilante' provate armies
  formed by homeland administrations or black local authorities.
  Deaths thus laid at the door of the State are said by the HRC
  to include the deaths of these 23 supporters."

What did the HRC actually say in their report (read if for
yourself)
  "The victims were caught unawares by the attackers who were
  armed with guns, petrol bombs, pangas and spears and some of
  the victims died in their burning homes. The area waas
  forcefully taken over by Inkatha supporters in August 1990 and
  has remained an Inkatha stronghold since then. Among those
  killed were a woman and two children. Witnesses reported that
  the attackers came from the direction of the Holomisa camp.
  The ANC disputed this, reporting that the attackers had got
  off a train near Crossroads at 10pm and had launched the
  attack at 10.45pm".

Now the report may be criticised on a number a issues. The categorisation
may be wrong. It may be sympathetic towards the ANC in that it
reprots the ANC's respons. BUT: it makes quite clear that Inkatha
was the victim; and it makes it clear that it was an ANC/Inkatha
conflict, and I think the implication is clear that ANC supporters
were responsible. So the one instance we are given is fundamentally
flawed. Had another (perhaps equally flawed) flawed instance been
given I would not have been able to respond as I don't have the
original HRC reports.

Whatever, it doesn't say much for the much vaunted analytical and
FACTUAL (not my capitalisation) skills of Anthea Jeffery.

>The next enthralling installment will reveal the sleight of hand used
>to classify violence involving unidentifiable agressors and victims
>as VRA, with a selection of examples stretching over several years.

I suppose it is a similar sleight of hand that Jeffery uses
in selecting excerpts from an HRC report to show them in as
bad a light as possible.

Sorry, Gavan, I don't buy it. Your selective excerpts from Jeffery's
selective excerpts need analysis. I now need to go back to each
HRC report to see what they actually said in order to verify
Jeffery's claim.

And where does it get us. You posted this in response to my challenge
to Hardy who claimed there was a world-wide smear campaign against
Inkatha supported by the "liberal" [his quotes not mine] press. I
wanted more detail. Instead you post stuff that the HRC is biased.
Nu.

I leave it someone else to carry on this thread -- it's been enough
of a time sink for me.

Scott