Former S. Africa Defense Chief, 19 Others Acquitted

Onetime Defense Minister Magnus Malan and other members of the former apartheid regime’s top military hierarchy were acquitted of all murder and conspiracy charges Friday in a dramatic close to this young democracy’s most sensational political trial.

The sweeping acquittals of all 20 men originally accused in a hit-squad massacre of 13 people in 1987 were a sharp setback to government efforts to persuade perpetrators of apartheid-era atrocities to confess their crimes before the nation’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission or face possible prosecution.

Durban Supreme Court Judge Jan Hugo’s verdict also disappointed those who had hoped this trial would conclusively prove that the former National Party government secretly created and deployed a “Third Force” of armed black surrogates to wage an undeclared “dirty war” against anti-apartheid activists.

President Nelson Mandela said he “fully” accepted Friday’s judgment, but he appealed for calm in the still volatile nation.

“Without confidence in the courts, this society will degenerate into private vengeance and extralegal activities,” Mandela warned in Cape Town.

Malan, long one of the country’s most feared and powerful figures, grinned and shook hands with co-defendants and lawyers after the red-robed judge announced at 11:15 a.m. that “all accused are entitled to acquittal.”

The rest of his statement was drowned in applause and cheers.

“We have been acquitted in a process that serves as an example of how democracy should function in a civilized country,” Malan, 66, told reporters later on the courthouse steps.

“While our country is staggering under waves of crime, corruption and stress, an important event took place here today,” he added. “Today, the truth has prevailed.”

Tim McNally, the provincial attorney general, argued at a news conference that the seven-month prosecution had produced “substantial benefit” despite its spectacular collapse.

“The principle that no one is above the law has been seen in practice,” McNally said. “The generals, such as Gen. Malan, have been called to account.”

McNally rejected widespread criticism in the legal community here that he had assembled a weak case and bungled it in court, saying glumly, “I worked day and night to succeed in this trial.”

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But Mbusi Ntuli, a relative of the massacre victims, said he is “very, very bitter.”

His father and three young sisters were among those killed in their sleep when 10 men in ski masks burst into their hut in KwaMakhutha township and sprayed them with AK-47 assault rifles in the predawn darkness of Jan. 21, 1987.

“This is South African justice,” Ntuli, 21, complained angrily as his mother, Anna, wept by his side. “It’s always been like this, and this is how it will be in the future. It’s still the old judicial system.”

In addition to absolving the defendants of all 18 charges of murder, attempted murder and conspiracy, Hugo refused to approve immunity from prosecution for the three chief state witnesses, including two former military intelligence operatives. They had told the court that they planned the brutal attack with the approval and cooperation of superior officers.

But McNally said later that he will not prosecute the trio, in part because the only evidence against them is their own testimony--which the judge repeatedly denounced as unreliable and untruthful.

Gen. Tiene Groenwald, a former chief of military intelligence who was acquitted in the case, said the verdicts vindicated the former South African Defense Forces for their still-shrouded role against the “total onslaught” campaign of the then-banned African National Congress.

He said the acquittals “give the knock” to allegations of illegal “Third Force” activities.

“We also trust this will put an end to so-called political trials,” Groenwald said, adding: “I think the message it sends out is you have no protection if you go to the Truth Commission. You only have protection if you go to a court of law.”

The commission, headed by retired Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, has spent eight months collecting often-agonizing testimony from hundreds of victims and survivors of apartheid-era atrocities in an effort to expose and heal the wounds of the past.

But it has failed, so far, in its parallel attempts to coax perpetrators of those crimes, especially former soldiers and security branch officials, to voluntarily confess their roles in exchange for amnesty.

Tutu told reporters Friday that he accepted the acquittals, but he added that they said “very little about moral guilt.”

He warned against concluding “that because people were acquitted in this case, all perpetrators can breathe a sigh of relief.”

Over the previous two days, Hugo had steadily shredded the prosecution case that Malan and his co-defendants ordered the secret training, arming and deployment of Inkatha Freedom Party supporters in 1986 to act as death squads against Inkatha’s political rivals, including the ANC.

Hugo said the training itself was not illegal and that no evidence backed prosecution claims that the military’s covert “Operation Marion” was aimed at sowing terror in black communities.

He also rejected arguments that the term “offensive units,” as used in military documents approving the operation, implied illegal hit squads.

“In all the documents, the word ‘offensive’ could have had an innocent meaning,” he said. The term could mean “peace offensive,” he suggested.

Still, Hugo cited an odd reference for his legal interpretation. He quoted Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll’s classic “Through the Looking Glass” as saying, “When I use a word, it means what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.”

Hugo said it was “quite apparent” that Malan played a role in creating Operation Marion.

But he added: “There is nothing in our view to suggest that he envisioned hit squads or that he intended or foresaw members being involved in unlawful activities.”

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Hugo said the evidence showed that Inkatha’s leader, Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, had secretly requested assistance in 1986 from South Africa’s apartheid leaders to train, arm and pay a paramilitary force as protection against political rivals in the then-homeland of KwaZulu-Natal. Buthelezi was not charged in the case.

Among those acquitted Friday were retired Gen. Johannes Geldenhuys, former chief of the defense force; retired Gen. Kat Liebenberg, former chief of the army; retired Vice Adm. Andries Putter, former chief of military staff; and retired Gen. Cornelius van Tonder, former chief of intelligence operations.

Hugo said that he and two assistant judges were unanimous in their ruling. South Africa does not have jury trials.