Amnesty International Report 1997 - South Africa
- Document source:
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Date:
1 January 1997
At least 500 people were killed in continuing political violence in KwaZulu Natal; some appeared to have been extrajudicially executed. Reports of torture and ill-treatment in police custody continued. Four people were killed by right-wing opponents of the government. Further evidence emerged, through court proceedings and Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, of official involvement in human rights violations under the former government. The process of democratizing South Africa's political structures was completed when local government elections were held in the provinces of KwaZulu Natal and the Western Cape. In December, President Nelson Mandela signed the final Constitution into law. The Constitution maintains the Interim Constitution's guarantees of certain "fundamental human rights" (see Amnesty International Report 1995), including the unqualified right to life. The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) continued to boycott the national constitution-writing process. In September, the Constitutional Court rejected a draft provincial constitution which had been adopted by the IFP-controlled KwaZulu Natal Legislature in March. The Court ruled that its provisions ascribed powers to the provincial legislature and executive beyond those allowed by the Interim Constitution and were an attempt to usurp the powers of the national government. The Constitutional Court issued further rulings affecting human rights. In July, the Court ruled in a case brought by the Azanian People's Organization and the families of several prominent victims of human rights violations, challenging the constitutionality of the amnesty provisions of the 1995 Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act 34 ("Truth and Reconciliation Act"). The Court ruled that the Interim Constitution authorized a limitation on the right to obtain redress through the courts and allowed for amnesties in respect of both criminal and civil liabilities. In January, South Africa acceded to the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol. In July, it ratified the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights. The statutory Human Rights Commission (see Amnesty International Report 1995) came into operation in March. It undertook a number of investigations, including into complaints of torture of street children by police, and held hearings on abuses and violence in prisons. The statutory Independent Complaints Directorate, responsible for investigating complaints against the police, began to function late in the year. President Mandela made the final appointments to the Gender Equality Commission, the last of the statutory bodies provided for under the Constitution to monitor and protect human rights. The judicial commission of inquiry into illegal arms dealing, led by Judge Edwin Cameron, issued a second report, calling for comprehensive measures to regulate the country's arms trade and for greater accountability to the national parliament (see Amnesty International Report 1996). In April, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, began public hearings into past human rights violations. By the end of the year the Commission's Amnesty Committee had received more than 4,000 applications from individuals disclosing offences for which they requested amnesty. In December, President Mandela extended the cut-off date for offences for which amnesty may be granted to 10 May 1994. The decision was apparently made to include white right-wing parties in the reconciliation process. Also in December, political leaders from KwaZulu Natal began discussions with the President on the possibility of a blanket amnesty covering the province for the period after 10 May 1994. Political violence remained at a high level in the province of KwaZulu Natal, particularly in the four months before local government elections. The non-governmental Human Rights Committee documented 491 deaths, a number regarded as a conservative estimate of the total. The death toll declined after the June elections, but rose again in December, when 41 people were killed, including five in an execution-style killing in the African National Congress (ANC) stronghold of Tintown, Inchanga. A number of political and investigative initiatives helped lower the death toll for the year in comparison with previous years. These included the creation of additional police investigation units; the arrest of some suspects linked to multiple murders, such as the massacre of 19 people in Shoba Shobane on 25 December 1995 (see Amnesty International Report 1996); and reinforcements of soldiers and police sent to the province during the elections. Before the June elections, candidates for the different political parties were targets of attack. In April, Abraham Faniswayo Dubazane, IFP candidate for Wembezi, was shot and killed outside the IFP's Estcourt offices by an alleged ANC gunman. In June, Thulani Gumede, the ANC candidate for the Shakaville ward of Lindelani Extension, was assaulted while putting up posters in the area. ANC supporters who had earlier fled their Lindelani homes were prevented from voting, allegedly by armed IFP supporters. Police at the polling station failed to intervene to protect them. Groups of armed men and known killers continued to operate with impunity throughout the year. In October, Joseph Myeni was abducted with his brother S'bonelo from their home in northern KwaZulu Natal. S'bonelo escaped and went to the local police station in KwaMsane to request help. The police took no steps to record the incident, take statements from witnesses or alert other police stations about the missing man. About 10 days later, the family found Joseph Myeni's body in the police mortuary in Empangeni. In November, an IFP member was charged in connection with Joseph Myeni's murder and his brother's abduction. The suspect was already on bail awaiting trial in connection with three political killings in August 1995. Extrajudicial executions by the security forces continued to be reported. In August, Thulani Nzuza was shot dead in his bed, after about 20 police officers had forced their way into the family's Durban home. In May, during an election rally in Wembezi, Shulani Ndungwe, an IFP Youth Brigade official, was shot and killed by high-velocity rifle fire. An investigation was ordered into allegations that he was killed by members of the military or police. In July, 16 rail commuters were killed and 80 others injured when security guards at Tembisa Station, near Johannesburg, used electro-shock batons against the commuters. The security guards, who were checking tickets, prodded commuters with the batons, causing some of them to collapse from pain or momentary paralysis. In the ensuing panic, dozens of people were trampled, crushed or suffocated. The report of the preliminary inquiry into the incident condemned the excessive force employed by the security guards and recommended the banning of electro-shock batons, improved regulation of the security guard industry, and further investigations leading to possible criminal proceedings against officials and others responsible for the deaths and injuries. There were frequent reports of torture and ill-treatment by specialized police units, primarily of criminal suspects but also of marginalized groups, including street children. Torture equipment was seized, under court order, from a number of police stations, including, in November, from the Middelburg Murder and Robbery Unit. Members of the Cape Town Traffic Department "Vagrancy Squad" allegedly assaulted homeless people, including subjecting them to electric shocks. Recommendations for action to be taken against those implicated, made following a City Council inquiry, were not acted upon by the police authorities. Victims were sometimes tortured in informal locations. In August, Rajie Chetty was taken in her night clothes from her home near Durban by a group of policemen investigating a robbery. While being driven around in the police vehicle, she was allegedly subjected to near suffocation, had a gun pointed at her head, and was sexually assaulted and verbally abused, before being returned to her home. There were numerous complaints against the Brixton Murder and Robbery Unit (see Amnesty International Report 1996). In September, Mandla Michael Ntsibande was tortured with electric shocks, while held in a toilet cubicle at the Unit's offices. Medical examinations corroborated his allegations. The end of the year saw an upsurge in violent attacks by white right-wing opponents of the government. In December, four people died in a bomb attack in the Western Cape town of Worcester. During trials and Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, significant evidence emerged of official involvement in assassinations, torture and other crimes against government opponents under the former apartheid government. In October, the Durban Supreme Court acquitted the former Defence Minister, General Magnus Malan, and 19 other defendants, of charges of murder and conspiracy to murder in connection with the 1987 massacre of 13 people in KwaMakhutha township. However, the Court found that the killings were carried out by IFP members trained secretly by the South African Defence Force (SADF) in 1986 (see Amnesty International Report 1996). The Court also found that the perpetrators acted under the direction of two officers of the SADF's Directorate of Special Tasks (the officers appeared in the trial as prosecution witnesses), and that the murder weapons had been procured from the SADF. In October, the Pretoria Supreme Court sentenced Colonel Eugene de Kock, former commander of the security police counter-insurgency unit at Vlakplaas, to 212 years' imprisonment and two life sentences after finding him guilty of 89 charges (see Amnesty International Report 1996). Among other crimes, he was convicted of the murder of five alleged Pan Africanist Congress members in 1992; of conspiracy to murder former Vlakplaas commander Captain Dirk Coetzee, who had made public the unit's involvement in assassinations; of the culpable homicide of human rights lawyer Bheki Mlangeni in 1991, who died in an explosion intended to kill Captain Dirk Coetzee; and of conspiring to murder Japie Maponya, who "disappeared" in 1985. The defendant was also convicted of nine counts of illegal possession of arms and ammunition, after the Court found that he had taken "truck loads" of arms to Natal. In his evidence in mitigation, Eugene de Kock stated that the arms had been handed over to KwaZulu "homeland" and IFP officials. He also implicated named members of the former government in operations carried out by the Vlakplaas unit in South Africa and in neighbouring countries. In November, following renewed investigations in light of the evidence which emerged during Eugene de Kock's trial, four former security policemen were charged with the murder of Johannes Sweet Sambo, who died in police custody in Komatipoort in 1991. Towards the end of the year, a number of former senior police officers testified to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, naming senior political figures whom they alleged were involved in, or fully aware of, assassinations and other crimes against anti-apartheid activists. In October, five former members of the Northern Transvaal Security Branch, two of whom had already been charged with 27 offences including murder, gave evidence on the activities of a previously unknown organization, trewits, involving members of the security forces and intelligence services, which planned assassinations in and outside South Africa during the 1980s. Among the deaths attributed to trewits were those of Dr Fabian Ribeiro and Florence Ribeiro, shot dead in 1986. In other evidence heard by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Amnesty Committee, former police officer Brian Mitchell, imprisoned in 1992 for his involvement in the 1988 Trust Feed massacre of 11 people, gave evidence of police involvement in attacks against supporters of the ANC and the allied United Democratic Front (UDF) in Natal in the 1980s. During a special public hearing in November on the Natal Midlands "Seven-Day War", another former police officer serving a prison sentence for murder told the Commission that, during his posting in the Pietermaritzburg area between 1988 and 1991, he had participated in assaulting and torturing as many as 1,000 people, and taken part in attacks with the IFP against UDF-supporting communities. In February, Amnesty International submitted a memorandum about the death penalty to members of the Cabinet and the National Parliament and urged them to retain an abolitionist position in the final constitution. In March, an Amnesty International delegate attended the initial proceedings in the trial of General Magnus Malan and 19 others, and inquired into the progress of investigations into political killings in KwaZulu Natal. Before the local government elections, Amnesty International appealed to the authorities to ensure that proper investigations were held into human rights violations in the province and to end the climate of impunity. In June, an Amnesty International delegate visited South Africa to continue these inquiries, to investigate allegations of police torture, to meet staff of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and also members of non-governmental organizations and victim-support groups concerned with the Commission's work. In November, Amnesty International's Secretary General and several other delegates visited South Africa to publicize with local organizations human rights violations in Nigeria. The delegation held meetings with several government ministers and officials to discuss South Africa's policies on Nigeria and on the arms trade with Rwanda and other central African countries. In August, Amnesty International made a submission to the Tembisa inquiry, recommending a temporary ban on the export of electro-shock devices and their use by members of the security forces, pending a full investigation into their effects and an investigation into the training and regulation of the security guard industry.
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