From: gavan@elc.mth.uct.ac.za (Gavan Tredoux)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african
Subject: Human Rights Commission 1
Date: 6 Oct 92 21:00:19 GMT
Organization: University of Cape Town
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4


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.

In a way this reveals deep-seated problems in modern South African
liberalism, as the HRC is sponsored by organizations like the
Black Sash rooted in the liberal tradition but the focus of recent
discontent.

To the curious, this is a research interest of mine. A principal
source of primary information has been the critically important
report by Anthea Jeffery released by the South African Institute
of Race Relations this month, Oct 1, but includes other material
gathered by the University of Natal violence monitoring group,
research by Lawrie Schlemmer while at Wits University, and the reports
released by the HRC itself.

The principal theme of all HRC reporting on violence is its division
into two principal categories: violence involving the state and
what are classed as state surrogates or subsidiary groupings, and "other"
violence. This portrays violence as state-oriented, and underplays
intra-black political violence, converting it into a reflection
of state violence. Where this cannot be done, the violence is either
not reported at all, or coyly classified as anonymously "other".

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.

More specifically, two facts emerge about the classification of violence
as a Vigilante Related Action (VRA).

1. Blatantly insufficient evidence is used to classify incidents as
VRA.

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.

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.

The HRC displays great zeal in identifying aggressors and victims
elsewhere, yet mysteriously VRA swallows up a huge chunk of violence
without any concrete relation of victim to agressor, or cross-referencing
to known political conflicts, eg ANC/IFP. 

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.

Gavan Tredoux
My Very Own Institute for the Study of Violence
UCT
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