We talk about Human Rights Day. We talk about Human Rights Week. We might talk about March as Human Rights Month. But what do we know of Human Rights 32 Years? For some people in the Eastern Cape whose relatives were killed or whose bodies were disabled in Apartheid-era atrocities, a 30-year silence is all they’ve had in return for their wounding. GILLIAN RENNIE reports on renewed investigations into apartheid killings.
INSERT HEREEver since masked gunmen burst into a pub in East London in 1993 and shot five people dead, survivors have wanted to know who shot them. The attackers also left seven people permanently injured before throwing a grenade and a teargas canister into the mayhem and then disappearing into the night.Nobody claimed responsibility for the attack. Ever. Nobody applied to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) for amnesty. One police investigator after another has failed to find the perpetrators. More than once, the National Prosecuting Authority has opened the case and then dropped it.
This means that for the past 32 years survivors of the Highgate Hotel Massacre have had no idea who shot them or why. They have tried by every means available to them to get answers to these questions. For instance, in 1997, three of the survivors testified to the TRC’s Human Rights Violation Committee. The Commission declared that they were indeed victims, that their human rights had been violated, and that the mystery of who had attacked them needed to be investigated. But only silence followed.
The Highgate survivors are not alone. Families of the Cradock Four have also endured decades of silence from the state. They have tried – repeatedly and unsuccessfully – to have the killers of their fathers and husbands prosecuted. They know who shot and killed Fort Calata, Matthew Goniwe, Sicelo Mhlauli, and Sparrow Mkonto in 1985 because, in 1999, six former police officers appeared before the Amnesty Committee of the TRC regarding their roles in the arrest and murder of the Cradock Four. None of them was granted amnesty. But nor were they ever brought to court.
Both sets of Eastern Cape victims have been waiting all these decades for justice, for their right to be heard – again – because the TRC agreement with government was that its business was temporary. Its aim was to assist South Africa’s transition to democracy, and it used public hearings and the amnesty process to do so. When it closed, because it had to, the TRC recommended several hundred cases for further investigation and prosecution. Several hundred unresolved Apartheid-era violations of human rights still needed answers. It was widely believed that justice would then follow its normal course.
In other words, the TRC signalled, all those cases were prosecutable.
But the state did nothing. With its silence this long and loud, South Africa (proud celebrator of human rights) continued to violate the rights of already violated humans by not bringing these cases to court. By suppressing their right to be heard.
The Unfinished Business programme
Enter the Foundation for Human Rights (FHR) and its noteworthy programme called The Unfinished Business of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This programme leads the struggle for justice, truth, and reparations for victims and their families. Because, as its website declares, “addressing impunity and injustice is critical for any society to move forward from its past”.
Of the hundreds of unprosecuted cases handed over to the state, only a handful have seen the light of day in court. Others have been swept under the carpet as a result of political interference in the independence of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA). Apartheid-era victims are also at the belated end of a struggle to realise the promise of a comprehensive reparations policy which has never been fully implemented. According to the FHR, “This has left many of the victims betrayed and traumatised.”
Soon after the Truth Commission shut up shop, The Unfinished Business of the TRC Programme started its work, supporting survivors and families still awaiting justice for apartheid-era political crimes. For all these decades, FHR legal teams have been gathering powerful evidence to allow justice to prevail. Its people advocate, litigate, raise awareness, and collaborate in civil society. In doing these things, they restore human rights. In doing these things for year after year, through decades when hope has been slender, the FHR has begun to break through.
Decades of activism paying off, at last
Recently the FHR brought to court the cases of Neil Aggett (whose family waited 38 years), Ahmed Timol (45 years), Imam Haron (42 years), and continue to resist multiple delays in others. The FHR also acts on behalf of a victim collective seeking stalled reparations. Earlier this year, 25 families and survivors of apartheid-era crimes brought an application in the Pretoria High Court against President Cyril Ramaphosa and his government, seeking constitutional damages for the government’s gross failure to adequately investigate and prosecute apartheid-era political crimes following the TRC process. Together, the families seek a total of R167 million. Among them are the families of the Cradock Four, and victims of the Highgate Hotel Massacre. Decades of activism may be paying off at last.
In addition to this collective action, an inquest into the Highgate Hotel Massacre has begun. It’s three decades late but it’s underway, at last, in a Special Tribunal of the East London High Court. And the Cradock Four families, despite multiple setbacks from the law, have a date in court for later this year. In the past 30 years, government after government violated any trust these survivors had in state instruments, especially the rule of law. This means they have also violated a survivor’s right to hope.
Human rights, definition of.
Human rights, violation of.
Violation, definition of.
In its deliberations on these matters, specifically over what constitutes a gross violation of human rights, the TRC was thoughtful and explicit. Their bottom line, though, was this: The responsibility for building the bridge between a dehumanising past and a just and democratic future does not belong to the Commission alone. In other words, we all must build that bridge. Including the state.
So let’s not pretend one Human Rights Day per year is enough. Some human rights take 32 years. Some even longer. And if a bridge appears after all that time, it’s because some crusaders never relinquished the fight. It’s because human rights are for everyone, and we all are responsible for protecting them.
