After Acquittals, S. Africa Presses Search for Truth

Desmond Tutu has retired as Anglican archbishop, but in many ways the spiritual leader of the anti-apartheid struggle remains South Africa’s moral spokesman.

So Tutu’s comments carried a sharp sting after the politically charged acquittals Friday of the most senior officials ever tried for apartheid-related crimes. Former Defense Minister Magnus Malan and his top military and intelligence chiefs were cleared of 18 murder, attempted murder and conspiracy charges.

“The court acquits because the evidence is not sufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt,” Tutu said at an exhibit in Paarl, about 25 miles east of Cape Town, documenting the ravages of white supremacist rule. “But you know, as you walk free out of the court, that people know that you did this.”

Not everyone agreed, of course. Supporters of the former National Party government hailed the verdicts as proof that the discredited white-minority regime cannot be blamed for the bitter internecine war between blacks that killed thousands in the decade before the first all-race elections in 1994.

And although the Malan case raised fears that the drive to solve apartheid-era crimes might be slowed, officials announced progress in resolving some equally infamous atrocities in a separate case that may highlight the difference between justice and truth.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, headed by Tutu, unexpectedly said Saturday that for the first time perpetrators of politically motivated killings have agreed to publicly confess in hopes of being granted amnesty.

Spokesman John Allen said five former security policemen have agreed through their attorneys to testify Oct. 21 about 40 hit squad murders, as well as bombings, arson and other crimes committed between 1986 and 1992.

The group’s grisly work, according to the commission, included the 1986 assassination of African National Congress supporter Dr. Fabian Ribeiro and his wife, Florence, and the 1985 disappearance of three prominent Port Elizabeth activists. The so-called Pepco 3 allegedly were beaten with pipes and strangled at an unused police station.

The five confessions would be the first from people not in custody on criminal charges. The commission already has approved amnesty for three such prisoners and denied it to two other inmates serving life sentences for murder.

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To be sure, the Malan case was significantly different. Malan and most of his co-defendants were professional soldiers who headed a sophisticated military force. And the Durban prosecutor’s case against them was lambasted by the judge as shoddy and ill-prepared.

The apartheid security police, in contrast, were far less subtle in either their brutality or their record keeping. The five officers seeking amnesty have been under investigation by the Pretoria prosecutor who in August gained the conviction of death squad leader Eugene de Kock on 89 charges, including six of murder. De Kock headed the Vlakplaas counterinsurgency unit, and at least three of the five men now reportedly prepared to confess worked with him.

While the confessions could resolve some apartheid-era crimes, the fundamental question remains in the Malan case: If the 20 men acquitted Friday in the 1987 massacre of 13 people, most of them women and children, didn’t plan, condone or commit the atrocity and others like it, who did?

Durban Supreme Court Judge Jan Hugo, who along with two other judges reached the verdict in the nonjury trial, gave a partial answer. He conceded prosecution claims that the atrocity was carried out by supporters of the Zulu nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party who were secretly trained, armed and paid by the South African military.

Hugo simply didn’t believe three state witnesses who identified six of the accused as gunmen in the attack. And he rejected prosecutors’ claims that military memos, diaries and other documents proved that Malan and his aides had approved the training program to create surrogate death squads for their strategy of dividing blacks to help maintain white control.

“Many questions in this case must remain unanswered,” he said.