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South Africa’s Truth Commission
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Chronology of the commission’s work from since its inception.
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July 19, 1995
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President Mandela signs into law the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Bill, estabilishing the truth commission to examine 33 years of apartheid crimes.
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April 15, 1996
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Nohle Mohapi, widow of black consciousness leader Mapetla Mohapi who died in police detention, is the first person to give evidence at the truth commission’s first hearing. Tutu breaks down the following day after harrowing testimony about inhumanity,torture and murder during the apartheid years.
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August 20, 1996
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The radical black Pan Africanist Congress acknowledges that its guerrillas targeted white civilians but said it would not apologise for its campaign.
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August 22, 1996
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Deputy President Mbeki defends the ANC’s “just war” against white rule, saying it could not be compared to abuses committed during the fight to defend apartheid.
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November 4, 1996
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Tutu threatens to quit the truth commission if the ANC refuses to apply for amnesty for past human rights abuses.
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May 15, 1997
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Tutu rejects evidence by South Africa’s last white President F.W. de Klerk, who professed ignorance of apartheid atrocities, prompting a temporary boycott of the truth body by his opposition National Party.
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August 12, 1997
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White rightist Clive Derby-Lewis says Communist leader Chris Hani had to die in an assasination in 1993 to trigger chaos and a rightwing coup ahead of democratic elections.
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October 8, 1997
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General Joep Joubert, former head of special forces, admits the military planned to “eliminate” black resistance leaders.
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December 4, 1997
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Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, President Mandela’s former wife, admits “things went horribly wrong” in the township of Soweto after an emotional plea from Tutu, at the end of nine days of hearings into murder and torture by her entourage in the 1980s.
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March 31, 1998
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The family of black activist Steve Biko says it opposes amnesty for five former security officers for their role in his death in police custody in 1977. The 30-year-old black consciousness leader died in detention from brain damage.
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May 4, 1998
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Former black guerilla leader Aboobaker Ismail says he regrets the deaths of civilians during anti-apartheid bomb attacks in the 1980s.
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May 6, 1998
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The truth commission announces the first official victims of apartheid and writes to 700 people telling them they can claim for damages.
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May 8, 1998
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The High Court overturns the controversial block amnesty granted to 37 leaders of the ruling African National Congress, including Deputy President Thabo Mbeki, which opposition parties say shows the TRC is biased in favour of the ANC.
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June 4, 1998
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Former apartheid hit squad leader Eugene de Kock says Botha ordered attacks on the anti-apartheid movement during the former strongman’s trial for contempt for refusing to testify before the truth probe. Judgement will be made on August 17 in an acrimnious case which has dragged on for months.
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June 8, 1998
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Probe begins into apartheid state’s chemical and biological weapons programme, which reveals plans to attempt to make black women infertile and produced tonnes of illegal drugs and a range of murder weapons like poisoned chocolates and whisky.
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June 18, 1998
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White supremacist Eugene TerreBlanche, the camouflage-clad leader of the neo-Nazi Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB), accepts moral and political responsibility for bombings which killed 21 people designed to disrupt the 1994 elections.
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June 23, 1998
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Graca Machel, President Mandela’s new wife, breaks down at a closed hearing into the role of the former South African Defence Force in the suspicious 1986 plane crash which killed her first husband, Mozambican President Samora Machel.
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July 21, 1998
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Former minister of police Adriaan Vlok, the only apartheid-era cabinet minister to apply for amnesty, says former hardline President P.W. Botha ordered the bombing of an anti-apartheid church office.
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July 27, 1998
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Poll says the truth commission has worsened rather than begun healing race relations in South Africa.
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July 27, 1998
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Poll says the truth commission has worsened rather than begun healing race relations in South Africa.
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July 28, 1998
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Truth body grants amnesty to four men who stabbed U.S. Fulbright student Amy Biehl to death in the Cape Town Gugulethu township in the dying days of apartheid.
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July 31, 1998
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The Truth commission, chaired by Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, spends its last day of human rights hearings in a stand-off with Wouter Basson, who ran the apartheid state’s grisly chemical weapons programme and testifies only reluctantly.
The focus now shifts to the compilation of the body’s final report due to be handed to President Nelson Mandela in late October. Over one thousand amnesty applications are outstanding and amnesty hearings are set to continue well into 1999.
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Source: Reuters
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