Amnesty Hearings — Sebokeng — 1998-07-14

MR BERGER: No, no, it's important for me to say this.  The requirement of 20(a) that the application comply with the requirements of the Act, is a completely different requirement from the requirement of full disclosure.  The requirement of full disclosure goes to further particulars and evidence before the Committee - that's what full disclosure is directed at but 20(a) is something different to full disclosure.  It's something different to the particularity that the Committee can request at a later stage.  If I can just go back to the vested rights and then I'll finish off with this.
	The AZAPO case argued or the applicants argued in AZAPO "you can't deprive us of our rights in the civil courts and the criminal courts by granting amnesty because that would be contrary to Section 22 of the Constitution" and Justice Mohammed recognised this competition in the passage I've just read and also at page 683 where he said "Every decent human being must feel grave discomfort in living with a consequence which might allow the perpetrators of evil acts to walk the streets of this land with impunity, protected in their freedom by an amnesty immune from constitutional attack, but the circumstances in support of this course require carefully to be appreciated."  
	What I'm submitting to the Committee is that, yes it's correct that if the applications are allowed in, it doesn't necessarily mean the applicants will get amnesty, that is clear, but if the applications are allowed to proceed then they can only proceed on the basis that they comply with the requirements of the Act and then what is left for the Committee to be satisfied on is (b) and (c), whether the Act associated with a political objective and whether there has been full disclosure and that will relate to the further particulars and to the evidence before the Committee but once the applications are allowed to proceed for example Mr Mthembu's application.  Mr Mthembu's application complies with our requirements of the Act so he has satisfied the one jurisdictional fact already.  Once the other applications come in, they have satisfied the one jurisdictional fact.  Mr Mthembu now has to satisfy full disclosure, those are all his affidavits and what he said before the Committee and the requirement of a political objective.  So there is a real and substantial prejudice which accrues to the victims if the applications are allowed to proceed because then jurisdictional fact (a) has been satisfied and the applicants are one third of the way closer to amnesty.  
	If one accepts that there are vested rights at play here then Sections 18, 19 and 20 must be construed restrictively.  I'm at paragraph 16 of my heads of argument.  The Appellate Division in the Malutsi case said we can interpret 'any' to mean any cause of action which arose but then we must recognise that once the six month bar has fallen in actions against the police under Section 32 of the Act, the police have a vested right not to be sued and you can't take away that vested right unless that is the only possible meaning that you can give to the legislation.  The Appellate Division said, no, we can construe the legislation restrictively so that it doesn't take away vested rights and so we will construe the word 'any' to mean any application that has not yet become time barred.

MR LAX: Just on that issue, what about the vested rights of the applicants?  Why should we lock the door on them and interpret that so as to take away their vested rights to have their applications heard?