FINALLY, after years of delay tactics and talk of a “blanket amnesty”, the much vaunted post-TRC prosecutions have arrived. A huge relief not only for the immediate victims of war-crimes and crimes against humanity but for all those South Africans who experienced apartheid and the military junta of Botha-Malan-Vlok.
If anything, the prosecutions will re-affirm the commitment by anti-apartheid activists to ending racial superiority in all its forms, and strike a note with those who criticised the TRC for not having any muscle. What is the use of granting amnesty to perpetrators of criminal activity if those crimes are later excluded from our social discourse?
There can be no Truth and Reconciliation without Justice and this missing element in our body politic will hopefully put the ghost of apartheid to rest,finally, as perpetrators are brought to book, in part for not having the guts to admit their wrongfulness or guilt before a world-wide audience.
Let there be peace, transparency and openness as the country watches, listens and waits for the post-TRC trials to start, and for the transgressors to be sentenced. Only then can we hope to achieve a national reconciliation built upon the moral structures of the anti-apartheid movement, one that refused to cowtow to the illegitimate structures of the apartheid government and which still aims to create a nation that is wider and broader than any single political structure or party.
As a war resistor I would also like to take this opportunity to renew my call for a national reckoning and atonement for the Border War and for our government to apologise to the frontline states, especially Namibia and Angola, for the war crimes carried out in the name of the Republic of South Africa.