S. Africa to Probe Abuses, Offer Amnesty : Human rights: Panel to focus on reconciliation. Those who confess to political crimes will be pardoned.

An official commission will investigate state-sanctioned murders and the catalogue of other human rights abuses committed under apartheid, this nation’s African National Congress-led government decided Tuesday.

But eager to allay fears within South Africa’s security forces of Nuremberg-style trials, officials also offered a new amnesty for politically motivated crimes to those who are prepared to confess before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Justice Minister Dullah Omar said the commission will focus on reconciliation efforts, highlighting victims’ suffering as well as perpetrators’ responsibilities.

“The fundamental issue for all South Africans is to come to terms with our past on the only moral basis possible--namely, that the truth be told and that the truth be acknowledged,” Omar said. “We cannot forgive on behalf of victims. The identity of the victims and what happened to them and the identity of perpetrators must be made known.”

He said the commission will investigate abuses by both the state and liberation movements, including the ANC. But he argued that the two are not comparable.

“I do not and will not equate those who fought in the struggle against apartheid with those who participated in all kinds of activities in order to keep apartheid in place,” he said. “I do not see the two sides as having the same moral claims.”

The panel’s precise mandate will not be defined until the government presents legislation to Parliament later this month.

Besides investigating the assassinations of prominent individuals and the torture of those in police custody, human rights lawyers say the commission could be expected to take up issues such as mass detentions during the state of emergency and involvement by security forces in massacres, such as the killings of 39 in Boipatong in June, 1992. That incident led the ANC to suspend its negotiations with the white government.

Human rights groups are pressing for the commission to examine apartheid’s broader harm--abuses such as the forced removal of blacks from their land, a deed that the whites-only Parliament deemed legal but the United Nations declared a crime against humanity. More than 3 million blacks were driven from their homes to desolate areas called “homelands.”

Victims groups see the Truth Commission as a mechanism to restore their land rights or obtain compensation. But some victims fear that the government plan for the commission will sacrifice full disclosure of the truth--including names of those responsible for crimes--in favor of reconciliation.

Exposing the past threatens to conflict with President Nelson Mandela’s efforts to win the confidence of whites who still dominate the economy and the hierarchy of the security forces.

If the commission were given a free hand, a large proportion of those implicated in political murders and other abuses are likely to be Afrikaners in the police and army; revelations about them, some in the ANC fear, could destabilize the security forces.

Full disclosure could also be expected to implicate white members of the former administration who are part of the new government of national unity.

Similarly, delving into the role of Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party in political violence might spark new rounds of killing. And an investigation of the ANC role in township violence--including the notorious “necklace” killings in which victims were burnt alive--and abuses in its Angolan prison camps could prove embarrassing to Defense Minister Joe Modise, among others.

The ANC came under increasing pressure from victims, human rights lawyers and its own supporters to investigate apartheid crimes after the government--in an effort to promote reconciliation--said it planned to grant amnesty to many of those convicted of political crimes.

Omar said the government still plans to go ahead with its amnesty for those convicted of political crimes, or indemnity for those facing charges. But it will require a confession to the commission.

While white segregationist political parties and paramilitary groups have demanded the unconditional release of their supporters held for politically motivated crimes, human rights activists have argued that a blanket amnesty would remove the incentive to testify before the commission.

Omar also said there would be no amnesty for crimes committed after Dec. 5, 1993, when a power-sharing administration was installed.

That means that the killers of Chris Hani, a top leader of the ANC and Communist Party, and Amy Biehl, an American Fulbright scholar, could be eligible for an amnesty if their crimes were deemed politically motivated. But unless Mandela exercises his presidential prerogative, that rules out the release of 36 neo-Nazis accused in election-week bombings that killed 21.

There were further calls for a Truth Commission last week after an inquest concluded that Matthew Goniwe, a prominent anti-apartheid activist, and three colleagues were murdered in 1985 on state orders.

Judge Neville Zietsman said a secret army signal ordering Goniwe’s “permanent removal from society” was his death warrant. But the judge said he could not prove that Gen. Joffel van der Westhuizen, the officer who ordered the signal, was responsible for the killings.

Goniwe’s outraged widow, Nyameka, said the judge’s decision made the case for why South Africa needs a full accounting of its past. “I can’t forgive and forget, or go on with my life, until I know the actual killers,” she said. “We cannot close this chapter yet.”