Issued by: Truth and Reconciliation Commission
NEWS RELEASE ON AMNESTY DECISIONS
(The following summary of the application, and the main points of the decision and reasons therefor, is given purely to assist those journalists needing a quick initial summary of the application and is not a binding document with any legal status.)
The Amnesty Committee of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has refused amnesty to three former South African Police constables who killed a man they picked up after an ANC meeting in KwaZulu-Natal.
William Basil Harrington and Frans Stephanus Erasmus were constables in the SAP Riot Unit in Pietermaritzburg, and N Madlala was a special constable, when they killed Mr Mbongeni Jama in the Elandskop area in February 1991.
Harrington was sentenced in February 1992 to eight years' jail, but the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court increased the sentence on appeal to 18 years. Erasmus was sentenced to six years' and had his sentence doubled on appeal. Madlala had his sentence increased from eight to 15 years'.
A five-member panel of the Amnesty Committee heard the application.
After reviewing the evidence before them, the Committee said:
"Counsel for the Applicants submitted that the killing of Jama was an act associated with a political objective as required by section 20(1)(b) of the Act. We proceed to examine this submission. It was urged on their behalf that they had been indoctrinated to treat the ANC as the enemy. Jama was a member of the ANC. He was therefore perceived to be an enemy. That may well be so, but they had on that day monitored an ANC mass meeting which had lasted for nearly two hours. During that meeting there was the usual toyi-toying, shouting of ANC slogans and the making of anti-Government speeches. Yet Applicants took no action against the organizers or speakers at the meeting. This must have been because they knew that the ANC was no longer a banned organization and it was no longer a criminal offence to be a member of that organization.
The Committee dismissed evidence that Jama was killed because his pocket book revealed that he had been involved in an attack on Inkatha members. It continued:
"So why was Jama killed? The evidence leads us to the conclusion that Jama had been beaten up so badly that Applicants would never have been able to justify it to their superior. And this was the reason for subsequently killing him. After killing him they set about destroying any evidence of their illegal conduct and agreed among themselves that the killing of Jama was to remain their secret. It was his misfortune that he fell in the clutches of the Applicants who, according to the evidence of Harrington and Erasmus, regarded it as justifiable procedure to search, detain, interrogate and perhaps assault ANC people. If satisfactory answers were obtained from their victims then he would be brought before a court in the ordinary course. When satisfactory answers were not obtained, the victims were beaten up and sometimes dropped off in an Inkatha area and left to the mercy of Inkatha supporters. Harrington even admitted that on various occasions after assaulting ANC members, he had thrown them into a river without bothering to look back to see if they could get out of the water. If firearms were found on ANC members or in their homes, they were taken away from them and sold to Inkatha supporters. In this way he had sold between 100 and 150 firearms to Inkatha and used the money to buy alcohol and meat for braais. This was never reported to his superiors because he believed that in selling these firearms to Inkatha, he was rendering a service to them. He said that this was common practice among members of the Riot Squad.
The Committee said the applicants were quite clearly a law unto themselves and were clearly not acting under the instructions of their superiors.
The murder was not an act associated with a political objective and the Committee refused amnesty.
(THE FULL TEXT OF THE DECISION IS AVAILABLE, FROM THE TRC OFFICE FOR CAPE TOWN JOURNALISTS, AND BY FAX FOR THOSE OUTSIDE CAPE TOWN.)