Issued by: Truth and Reconciliation Commission
For the record, the following is the full text of the statement issued at a news conference earlier this afternoon after the Commission's week-long deliberations.
STATEMENT BY ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU, CHAIRPERSON, AND DR ALEX BORAINE, VICE-CHAIRPERSON, OF THE TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION.
1. Before the Commission is able to begin its work, it has to be more fully constituted. To achieve this, we have devoted a substantial part of the week to consideration of the names of additional members of two of our committees, the Committee on Human Rights Violations and the Committee on Reparation and Rehabilitation. (The Committee on Amnesty was fully constituted when the President appointed judges to fill the remaining places on it last week.)
We can appoint an extra two members of the Committee on Reparation and Rehabilitation, and an extra 10 to the Committee on Human Rights Violations. We are not able to announce the names today, because not all of those agreed upon have been consulted. However, the following are examples of what we are trying to achieve with our proposals for additional members of the committees:
- We are trying to achieve more representation in areas, such as the North-West Province, which are inadequately represented;
- We are improving representation of women from the Eastern Cape and kwaZulu-Natal;
- In considering further names from kwaZulu-Natal, we are anxious to appoint people broadly trusted across the spectrum;
- We want to fill the gap in representation of the Dutch Reformed churches and the Jewish community.
2. Apart from constituting the Commission, we needed to put the Commissioners in a position in which they can, with confidence, begin their work. As a result we devoted considerable time in the early part of the week to briefings on the content of the law.
We also needed to move quickly to set up offices, employ staff and - of special importance - get our regional operations running. It is to the regional offices that victims of human rights abuses who want to tell their stories need to be referred in the first instance. The Commission has split the country into four areas: (1) North-West Province, Northern Province, Mpumulanga and Gauteng; (2) kwaZulu-Natal and the Free State; (3) the Eastern Cape and (4) the Western and Northern Cape.
Although regional offices will be in Johannesburg, Durban, East London and Cape Town, their mandate is to provide a service for all the people in the areas in which they are based. It appears likely that Commissioners will do a substantial part of their work based in regional offices. Locations for regional offices have already been identified in Johannesburg and East London.
You are already aware that the committees on Human Rights Violations and on Reparations and Rehabilitation will be based in Johannesburg, although they will of course operate in all regions. The former has its next meeting on February 5, and, as already announced, the latter is to hold the first of a series of nation-wide consultations with NGOs in Port Shepstone on February 7. Commissioners stressed continually during this week's meetings that NGOs will play a critical role in facilitating the Commission's work.
You will also know from news releases earlier in the week that the Committee on Amnesty will be based in Cape Town and that some members of that committee will scrutinise next week the approximately 2,000 representations concerning amnesty which have already been collected. A prescribed form which applicants for amnesty have to fill in will be published in the Government Gazette soon. It needs to be re-emphasised that the law stipulates that applications for amnesty must be made within a year of the gazetting of the Commission, which took place on December 15 last year.
Advertisements for key Commission staff have already appeared and shortlisted candidates for the post of Chief Executive Officer will be interviewed next Wednesday. Advertisements for media liaison officers are due to appear this weekend and on Monday more staff advertisements will appear.
Among a host of other matters we covered were the following:
- The establishment of the investigative unit. This is an essential prerequisite for the Commission's work. We have to be able to verify submissions made to the Commission before public hearings, for example.
- The setting up of a highly sophisticated data base to help with the collection, analysis and cross-referencing of information. We have benefitted greatly in this field from expertise developed in investigative operations in Haiti, El Salvador and Ethiopia.
3. Our target date for the Commission's first public hearing is late in March or in April. We have taken a conscious decision that we should not hold our first hearing in one of the major urban areas of the country. At this stage we are aiming to have the first hearing in the Eastern Cape.
4. The Commission resolved earlier this week that the two of us should seek meetings with the country's political leaders.
When we received a request yesterday, therefore, that we should meet with the country's two Deputy Presidents today, we readily agreed. The two of us met with Deputy Presidents de Klerk and Mbeki this morning, after the Commission had finished its business and discussed ways in which political parties represented in Parliament might assist the Commission to carry out its functions in terms of the law which governs our work. These were informal and exploratory talks and we shall be reporting on them to the Commission's Executive within the next two weeks, and thereafter to the full Commission at its next meeting on February 12 and 13.
Inquiries: John Allen, Archbishop's media secretary (021) 761-2531 (o) 61-3936 (h)