South Africa Establishes 'Truth' Panel

JOHANNESBURG, JULY 19 -- President Nelson Mandela signed into law today a bill creating a "truth commission" to uncover human rights abuses committed during South Africa's racially separatist past.

The commission's work, which is to last 18 months, will constitute a profound test of Mandela's government of national unity, in which several parties and racial groups long at war with one another -- especially Mandela's African National Congress and the National Party of former president Frederik W. de Klerk -- have attempted with notable success to work together under the mantle of democracy.

In a measure of the difficulties ahead, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was legally born even as new allegations of dirty tricks were being leveled at de Klerk, the last apartheid president, who was Mandela's 1994 Nobel Peace Prize partner and now one of his deputy presidents.

The panel primarily will investigate crimes committed by the white-minority government before Mandela was elected in the first all-races vote in April of last year. But it also will probe abuses committed by black movements that waged guerrilla war to undermine the apartheid regime.

Although its focus is not likely to be de Klerk -- the leader whose party created apartheid and, 46 years later, agreed to abandon it -- there have been calls for him to reveal what he knew and when about alleged covert operations by government agents during last year's election campaign. Whether de Klerk, hailed internationally as a genuine reformer, will appear before the as-yet-unnamed truth commissioners is not clear.

"We can now deal with our past, establish the truth which was so long been denied us and lay the basis for genuine reconciliation," Mandela said as he signed the bill creating the commission. "Only the truth can put the past to rest."

The panel will offer amnesty from prosecution to anyone who comes forward with information about apartheid-era crimes. It will investigate alleged abuses, subpoena witnesses, conduct searches and seizures and parcel out reparations and compensation to victims. It will not have the power to prosecute but can refer cases to proper authorities for resolution.

Tens of thousands of black South Africans were killed, tortured, detained or otherwise harassed by the white-minority government during the period the commission is empowered to investigate -- beginning with the Sharpeville massacre of 1960, when 69 black demonstrators were killed by police in the first of many such acts of official brutality.

Acts of political violence on a lesser scale also were perpetrated during that period by black liberation movements, such as the ANC, as they fought a guerrilla campaign against the apartheid regime. Human rights violations between black groups also will factor into the proceedings, particularly the bloodshed between the ANC and the Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party over the past decade, as will the deeds of far-right-wing white groups, such as those that attempted to derail last year's elections with a bombing campaign.

The question of who will take ultimate responsibility for state-sponsored crimes of the past remains a thorny one. Thus far, several boards of inquiry appointed by the previous government have brought firings or prosecutions of minor figures in the apartheid security apparatus but have not penetrated the upper echelons of power.

But according to accounts given recently by police agents, de Klerk and other members of his State Security Council were aware of or directed so-called "third force" activities aimed at destabilizing the ANC between the time of Mandela's 1990 release from 27 years of political imprisonment and the 1994 election that ended white-minority rule.

The agents' testimony was contained in a secret report by a de Klerk-appointed panel of inquiry that was leaked last month to the Mail & Guardian newspaper here. The Goldstone Commission report reiterated what the panel had obliquely indicated before: that a "third force" within the security apparatus indeed did exist, as Mandela's ANC long had claimed, and that it was directed by high-ranking police and justice officials in the de Klerk government.

At least two former police operatives have said that the undercover activities were approved and supervised by the State Security Council -- an allegation that de Klerk denies. The activities were said to include telephone tapping, recruitment of informants within the ANC, creation of front companies, mail interception and establishment of organizations to counter the influence of the ANC. These actions were undertaken in addition to previously revealed security-force operations employing murder, torture, bombings and the arming of ANC opponents, such as elements within Inkatha.

De Klerk received the report shortly before last year's election, but unlike 47 previous Goldstone reports, this one was not made public. De Klerk has said it was a basis for further investigations, and that therefore its disclosure was not appropriate. Mandela also received a copy, but he did not release it either.