ANC Admits Rights Abuses, Voices Regret

Opening its files for the first time, the African National Congress admitted Thursday that its members and supporters had committed grisly human rights violations during the bitter struggle against white rule but insisted the abuses were not “official policy.”

Thabo Mbeki, deputy president of both the ANC and the government, apologized to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for what he called “excesses” and said he “deeply regrets” the civilian deaths.

The ANC, the former liberation movement that is now the ruling party in a vibrant democracy, handed over about 420 pages of documents to the commission. They included graphic details of bombings, use of land mines and other attacks that killed civilians, as well as three long-hidden internal reports describing horrific living conditions and mistreatment at former ANC military training camps.

Hundreds of ANC operatives and guerrillas who died or disappeared in exile were identified, including the names of 34 suspected spies, murderers and mutineers executed by the ANC at the notorious Quatro Camp in Angola.

Testifying for three hours, Mbeki insisted that none of the abuses “arose out of official policy, or were in any case sanctioned by the leadership. There are instances where we could have acted more firmly and speedily to prevent or stop abuses, and for that, the ANC accepts collective responsibility.”

He said the ANC “never permitted random attacks” on civilians but said they inevitably died in bombings, shootouts and other attacks. He cited, for example, an infamous car bomb at the Magoos and Why Not bars in Durban in 1986, in which three civilians were killed and 69 injured. “This attack was in line with the ANC’s attempts to take the struggle out of the black ghettos and into the white areas,” he said. “The Why Not bar was targeted precisely because it was frequented by off-duty members of the security forces.”

Other civilian deaths, Mbeki said, “including [victims of] ‘necklacings’ and attacks on a cinema and restaurants, were in fact carried out by agents of the apartheid state in their continuing attempts to damage the image of the ANC.”

He denied that the ANC sanctioned necklacing, in which a victim is burned alive with a gasoline-filled tire around the neck. More than 500 people died in such gruesome executions. “Necklacing was never the policy of the ANC,” Mbeki said.

Hundreds of people packed the hearing, including Cabinet ministers, members of Parliament, generals and other ANC veterans who fought as guerrillas, township leaders or political prisoners against the ruthless system of racial segregation and repression known as apartheid.

The ANC turned from peaceful resistance to armed conflict in 1960 after the government banned the group, jailed its leaders and used murder, torture and other terrorist tactics to crush opposition or dissent.

The ANC account, while still incomplete in parts, was far more extensive than expected, especially compared with the terse, 30-page summary of policy and grudging apology for apartheid given to the commission Wednesday by National Party leader and former President Frederik W. de Klerk. His testimony provided no new details of his government’s policies, legal or illegal. He didn’t mention, for example, the state-sanctioned death squads, covert direction of township violence or other terror tactics that led to thousands of deaths before the country’s first all-race elections in 1994.

De Klerk insisted that the former government never authorized the murders, torture and other abuses practiced by the army and police. His statement was widely derided Thursday.

“I find it very difficult to believe that because they were a political party they were not [aware of] decisions taken by security forces,” Dumisa Ntsebeza, the commission’s chief investigator, told reporters.

Mbeki hammered away at what he called the moral distinction between violence waged by the ANC and that practiced by the apartheid state. “We’re saying it was not a terrorist war,” he said. “It was a legitimate struggle waged by the people of this country who had no other option. It was a just war for national liberation.”

Mbeki appealed to the commission for help exposing and “dismantling” the vast network of tens of thousands of informants, assassins and others who were secretly recruited and trained by the former regime, saying: “Somebody needs to explain that, someone who knows what the systems were, someone who was involved, needs to tell that story.”

The commission is charged with documenting the abuses of the past, finding ways to compensate victims of political crimes and recommending amnesty for those who fully confess their role in apartheid-era atrocities.

Alex Boraine, deputy chairman of the commission, said about 2,000 people have applied for amnesty.