Special Hearings — Political Party Recalls — UNKNOWN

MR DE KLERK: Well firstly I am all in favour of assistance towards all our neighbours to rebuild. Not all their problems can obviously be traced to the subject matter of your question. It can be generally traced to ill-conceived policies which were followed. Policies which resulted in the destruction of their economies, and which resulted in high unemployment. But I am not, by saying that, saying that surely yes, certain steps which have been taken must have also had a negative effect there. 
Since we returned to the international community in the last years of my presidency and in my participation in the GNU and now in my participation in Parliament I am all in favour of South Africa, within the framework of affordability and what it can do, to stimulate development in our neighbouring countries and create evermore opportunities for them. So I am very positively inclined.
As far as the help to such organisations at that stage UNITA is to be distinguished from RENAMO. In the case of UNITA the United States of America also supported the war, together with us even though they had sanctions against us. It was an issue of foreign forces from Cuba being brought in into Angola, it was a full-scale war and while, yes, it had it's civil war aspect it also became internationalised by the very presence of vast numbers of Cuban soldiers. 
The same to a certain extent applied to Mozambique, but as far as RENAMO is concerned, from the very moment that I came into a decision-making role I was assured that that support has been ended, that that has been ended with the Nkomati Accord and that any support that they were given was aimed at bringing people together, getting them to talk and no longer any form of military support or whatever and that support was given evenhandedly with regard to medical supplies and that type of thing.

GLENDA WILDSCHUT: That's precisely what the problem is, because when agreements end it doesn't mean that suffering ends.

MR DE KLERK: I agree.

GLENDA WILDSCHUT: That the lives of people who have been destroyed and devastated, their suffering continues years into the future, and that's the problem that we're facing. So by just agreeing that an agreement with a particular organisation or that an operation has stopped doesn't mean that the suffering of those people has ended. And I think that that's the question we are faced with right now. 
In your submission today I was very struck by the fact that there seemed to be a theme that gross violations constitute murder and assassinations. Torture we talked about and severe ill-treatment for example, leaves long, long-standing scars on people and some of us on this panel have been seeing and treating and involved with people who have suffered tremendous consequences of torture and severe ill-treatment and will still continue to suffer those consequences 10, 20 years into the future. 
We have a responsibility, not just to say that we are sorry for what has happened. And I put it to you, Mr de Klerk, we heard very carefully the apology you made this morning, but what does that mean to somebody who has lost his sight, who is blind, to somebody who has lost a family, to somebody who is suffering long-term psychological consequences of torture, what does that mean to somebody, unless we can say that some kind of corrective action needs to be taken? 
And I put it to you, what do you think, as the leader of your party, what corrective action should be put in place for people who have been traumatised by the conflict of the past?

MR DE KLERK: I fully agree with you in your analysis that an apology, after all the sides have apologised, because there are similar people who are victims on all sides of the conflict, after all the sides have apologised it will not rectify physically or mentally really harm which has been done. And therefore we enthusiastically support it and continue to support the concept of reparation.
I have made it clear here that we would like, as opposition party, in a constructive, cooperative spirit, to say that we would like to sit down with the governing party and say inasmuch as the State must do something how can we take hands to ensure that we do something meaningful in the field of reparation. We are fully supportive of the concept of reconstruction and development, how do we fit in reparation with available programmes which are available in any event? That's the type of thing that will need to be done on an administrative and policy implementation basis. But on the concept of reparation within the framework of what the country can afford, we are positive, we are constructive, we warmly support it and we would like to be part of developing more specific proposals in that regard.

CHAIRPERSON: Dr Ramashala.

MAPULE RAMASHALA: Mr de Klerk quite frankly I am very disappointed in the time and the space allocated to the question of reparation and rehabilitation in your submission. As a matter of fact at the Bisho hearings, and I realise that Mr Meyer is not here, but at the Bisho hearings when I raised the question Mr Meyer said at the next NP submission that the issue would be addressed at great length. But be that as it may I want to say that your lack of commitment to addressing this issue is indicated on 46 of your second submission which just says, 
"Once sufficient information is available the NP would like to hold talks with the government to discuss the possibilities of rehabilitation".
I'd like to raise a number of issues that you might want to note.
Some of the difficult issues that we are facing involve the rehabilitation of those responsible for the commission of gross human rights violations, and in your case people who are in the National Party, the information at our disposal specifically through the amnesty process, suggests that there are a number of people who are responsible for gross human rights violations who explicitly continue to express support, their support and loyalty to their former NP government.