Special Hearings — Political Party Recalls — UNKNOWN

DR BORAINE: Thank you, Chairperson. Mr Mbeki, and to members of your delegation, you will know that in terms of the Act submissions are heard in public and that is why we are meeting like this for the sake of transparency Parliament decided that that is how the Act should read and of course we are in total agreement with that.
We find ourselves now in an awkward position in that part, one part of the submission made by the ANC is an annexure which is referred to as "For the TRC only", for our eyes only and not to be made available. Now in normal circumstances we have to make available anything which comes to us, because we are a public commission appointed by Parliament. I would like to ask why this has been designated secret and confidential, and whether we can't find a way through this, because certainly it is our normal intention to make available whatever is submitted to us, to the public, on the basis of the right to know.
So I wondered if either you, Mr Mbeki, or any of your colleagues would like to speak to this now. Maybe that we will have to look at it again, but at least we have flagged it. Thank you.

SATHYANDRANATH RAGUNANAN MAC MAHARAJ: You will notice from our submission, that even in the handling of confessed enemy agents, we were guided by a policy of rehabilitation. The result is that a number of confessed agents were left to live normal lives, others were assisted to be rehabilitated and this was a policy that ran through our whole practice of how to bring discipline in our organisation. The result is that we are very sensitive about putting names in the public arena. It is a matter that perhaps the Commission would need to look at towards the conclusion of its work.
We are mindful that there are people who worked for the enemy, who were rehabilitated, who came back and settled in this country and are leading normal lives. We would not like to contribute to a culture where people who have made honest confessions are then punished for the rest of their lives, told to leave their jobs and denied the opportunity to become or to remain honest citizens. So that is one particular problem.
The second one is that we believe where agents have not confessed, we believe that they should make their applications through the Amnesty Committee of the TRC, and that they should be dealt with in that spirit and in that way, rather than just throwing a name into the public arena, having public reaction. I don't even want to go and sketch out a scenario that says public revenge may visit some people. But I am talking about a large number of people who were sent into our ranks as enemy agents, who were inefficiently prepared, who didn't manage to do substantial damage and who responded to our treatment. So that's the context in which we have approached this problem.
To emphasise, this was the culture in which we brought up everybody in the ANC. The same approach was adopted in dealing with bona fide members of the organisation. The same approach was used even in most difficult circumstances, almost approaching battlefield situations. So that's the reason why we have put this before the Commission in a confidential set of documents, so confidential that some of us, as you would have noticed this morning, some of us hadn't seen it ourselves. Because we thought this is not the type of information that should be just leaked and leaked without a process to manage it.
So that's my explanation, Sir, and I hope the Commission will find some way, certainly we would support the view that towards the end of its work the Commission while looking at the victims, should look at those who wereperpetrators of human rights violations and how they are disclosed to have committed those violations without necessarily destroying their future lives.

DR BORAINE: Mr Mac Maharaj, thank you very much. Obviously the Commission is very, very sensitive about divulging names who may be at risk, in particular, the one point that you made.
We as a Commission and as a panel have not had the opportunity to consider and to weigh up your reply, and you will appreciate that we will have to do that now that we have got that explanation. We will do this as a matter of some urgency. We have to keep in mind victims of gross human rights violations who are extremely critical of any information that is withheld from them, which may explain some of their own situation. You will appreciate that we have to be extremely careful as far as that is concerned and secondly, obviously the transparency of the Commission is fundamental, not to the loss of life of course, but that certainly is a very important factor. I don't want to delay the proceedings now, but we will certainly have to meet and come back to you. Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.

MR ZUMA: Could I just ...

CHAIRPERSON: Yes, thank you, Mr Zuma?

MR ZUMA: Thank you. We think that we might, probably outside of this problem later in the day, just do a bit of an exchange on this one as well, so that the Commission is with us in terms of understanding our motivation. I just wanted to make an example of this in a different context and Commissioner, Dr Mgojo is aware that one person was called to testify in public, the proceedings were disrupted by people who entered and wanted to squeeze his neck totally. I later had some occasion to talk to the Commissioner here, that we needed to balance between what we are doing to bring about reconciliation and also what we do that could open up fresh wounds, to those who are aggrieved and to those who are victims. So it is a question of how do we balance this and how to deal with it. Because if we are just going to say as long as the information is demanded, irrespective of the consequences, I think that will be a rather callous way of dealing with it. So we think we needed to have a way to discuss it from our point of view, so that you could understand what our kind of feeling is. I was just adding the point that it might be useful, to have an exchange again confidentially so that you understand our feelings.

CHAIRPERSON: Wynand Malan?

UNKNOWN: Chairperson, if I may, when you discuss this, also suggest that you take into account the earlier demand from your organisation, that the names of those referred to as informers at one of the amnesty applications be disclosed, that you look at it in a global sense because I think to a large extent the same principles apply.

CHAIRPERSON: We are going to, I think we would have to deal with it as the Commission and we have our next plenary session on Thursday. We are going to be governed by the principles that have always governed us, which is that we do not sit as it were, hatching plots with different groups of people.
It is quite crucial for the integrity of this operation that we are the ones who take the decisions about what information we are going to disclose. We take into account all sorts of factors in this regard and one of them would be that we would need to have some substantiation of allegations that people did such and such and such or were enemies of, rather were agents of the old system and also the fact that we would require to give such people, if they are still alive, for instance, the opportunity of being able to respond in terms of the Appellate Division decision. That is a decision that we took as the Commission, but we would in this particular instance have to be weighing again, but those are the principles and I have to say that I mean, we would need a fair degree of persuasion to withhold information rather than share the information.