The Official Truth Falls Short for Many

Marius Schoon, a white anti-apartheid activist, summed it up best as he sat opposite the killer of his wife and 6-year-old daughter during hearings of this country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1998.

Schoon told friends that he had no problem with the truth -- just the reconciliation.

Two decades ago, the apartheid security police sent a letter bomb to Angola, where Schoon and his family were living in exile. His son, Fritz, a toddler at the time, survived the blast that killed his mother and sister. He was found wandering outside in the street after the explosion, unable to speak.

“Reconciliation never was an option in his mind,” said Fritz Schoon, 22, now a law student planning to be a human rights lawyer. His father was diagnosed with cancer soon after the hearings on his case and died in early 1999. The man who ordered the bomb sent, Craig Williamson, is a free man, given amnesty by the commission.

Many South Africans credit the commission with the peaceful transition from white minority rule to democracy. But many others believe that the commission, whose work ended six years ago, delivered only half-truths and no reconciliation.

Nkosinathi Biko, son of slain black activist Steve Biko, described the commission as a “game of amnesty” that benefited the perpetrators of gross abuses.

The amnesty was a result of a political deal between the apartheid-era National Party government and the African National Congress. In return for full disclosure, apartheid-related political killings and abuses were amnestied. Biko believes there are two Truth and Reconciliation Commissions.

“There was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that the international community has come to know. It’s a grand, noble idea. I think there’s a lot of romanticism. Then there’s the real TRC, which is measured by its success,” said Biko, 33, who was 6 when his father died of a massive brain hemorrhage while in police custody in 1977 -- with police claiming he fell during a scuffle. No one has ever been prosecuted for the killing.

“There were minor gains by the TRC in that there were many people who didn’t know what happened to their loved ones who got some idea of what happened,” Biko said. “But overall I think we got nowhere close to the truth.”

There was no requirement that perpetrators express remorse or sorrow for their crimes, and victims lost any right to civil compensation beyond reparations that the government limited to one-time-only payments.

Ten years after South Africa’s first democratic elections, there is still much unfinished business: what to do with about 3,000 apartheid officials who were refused political amnesty because they failed to meet the criteria, and what to do about the thousands of others who never applied for it.

The government has been under pressure to grant a general amnesty for military officials, and there are reports it is considering other amnesties and pardons. Frederick W. de Klerk, the last apartheid-era president, said amnesties should be available to those who did not apply.

Yasmin Sooka, former deputy chairwoman of the commission’s human rights violations committee, said that many retired generals or current military officers failed to seek amnesty and that many provincial police -- including torturers -- were still doing the same jobs.

The commission took 22,000 apartheid victims’ statements over two years and received more than 7,000 amnesty applications. Thousands of apartheid security officials sought amnesty, many telling the names of people they executed and what happened to the bodies.

De Klerk said in an interview that he opposed the idea that cold-blooded murder, assassination and extreme violence should ever have qualified for amnesty, but that during negotiations on the amnesty deal the ANC had insisted on it. Because of the ANC’s violent resistance to white rule, many of its activists feared that they could be vulnerable to legal action.

Johann Kriegler, a former judge on the Constitutional Court set up after the end of apartheid, described the commission as “an uncomfortable political and moral compromise” that was “designed to make everyone equally unhappy.”

Fritz Schoon called the process “a charade,” saying many officials were granted amnesty without telling the full truth.

“It sums up the true nature of the TRC. At the end of the day, it was a prearranged process between the ANC and the National Party government so the bulk of the National Party big guns would get off and the bulk of the ANC big guns would get off,” Schoon said.

Williamson said at the commission hearing that he did not think Marius Schoon’s children would be present when the bomb exploded, a claim Fritz Schoon rejects. Howard Raven, who packed and sent the bomb on Williamson’s orders, testified that the bomb was intended for Marius Schoon but that when Williamson heard that Schoon’s wife and daughter died, his retort was “Serve them right.”

After the hearings finished, Williamson’s lawyer approached Marius Schoon and said that Williamson would like to have a beer with him. Schoon refused.

An interview request to Williamson was referred to his lawyer. A subsequent letter to the lawyer went unanswered.

Criticism of the process sharpened recently with the payment of reparations in the last few months at a fraction of what the commission recommended.

The commission recommended payments of up to 27,000 rand ($4,100) a year for six years. Instead, the government announced single payments of 30,000 rand ($4,555).

“There was no commitment to deal with the victims,” said Tihoki Mofokeng, acting director of the Khulumani victims support group. “The majority of victims are angry and very disappointed because they feel the government has failed them. It’s not about the money. They feel that the perpetrators got off better than the victims.”

Duma Khumalo is a member of the “Sharpeville Six,” who were falsely accused of killing the deputy mayor of the township of Sharpeville, south of Johannesburg. Sentenced to death in 1985, the six were spared from the gallows in 1988 by then-President Pieter W. Botha 15 hours before the planned execution. Khumalo was released in 1991. To him, the commission was like a small taste of a delicious cake, because it was a comfort to tell his story. But no one in the justice system involved in his arrest or trial appeared.

“I don’t know what 30,000 is supposed to mean to me,” he said, referring to the reparations payment. “I’m not saying I want the government and the TRC to make me rich. But if you are talking about reconciliation, you are supposed to say sorry and repay the damage that happened to me.”

Human rights groups and victims advocacy organizations are critical that there were only a few prosecutions of those who were refused amnesty or did not apply for it. But Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the head of the commission, said in 1998 that it would cripple the justice system to prosecute those people.

“The burden on our system would be intolerable and the cost astronomical,” he said then.

Sooka said there would be some prosecutions in the future but there were still questions on what to do about the thousands not yet dealt with: “What kind of strategy will be pursued? Will it be more than foot soldiers? How high will it go? We don’t have those answers yet.

“You do need to send a strong message for those who lied to the commission and for those who didn’t come forward.”

A general amnesty for the military or others would be “offensive” and would face certain legal challenge, she said. But one possibility is new amnesty hearings with a more limited scope than the original commission.

“There must be some kind of accountability. It would be absolutely awful if the military got away without having to make any disclosures,” Sooka said.

Biko said failure to prosecute and the talk of new amnesties sent the wrong message -- that people could commit gross abuses with impunity.

“I think it’s unfortunate that in a country that went through the kind of violence we went through there have not been more than two or three major trials,” Biko said. “There was never a collective acknowledgment of responsibility for apartheid.”

Fritz Schoon says he feels no emotional pain over the killing of his sister and mother now. “It’s more a matter of pain that justice has not been done,” he said.

What would he do if he met Williamson in the street?

“I’d see to it that it didn’t happen.”

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Times staff writer Scott Kraft contributed to this report.