By Kate Gyton
With strikes, marches and rallies on June 16, black South Africans answered the call of the African National Congress for mass actions against the white minority government's blocking of the transition to democracy.
But the blocking of progress in negotiations on a new constitution is only the most visible sign of the government's determination to maintain minority rule. Its less visible activities are far more dangerous.
Despite all the talk of a "new" South Africa, a report just released by Amnesty International documents the security forces' continued complicity in torture and political killings right up to the present moment. State of Fear leaves no doubt that the government is behind the ongoing violence in South Africa.
"Many of us thought this was happening in South Africa", Patrick Earle, Amnesty's campaign coordinator, told Green Left, "but the comprehensive report, the detailed evidence make it impossible for the South African government to escape responsibility. We've witnessed the government try to put the blame for the escalation in violence on to others — clearly the ultimate responsibility is theirs."
In February 1990, the African National Congress, the Pan Africanist Congress and other opposition organisations were unbanned by the government. Nelson Mandela was finally released. The Pretoria Minute was signed in August 1990 — the first step in the peace process.
"You will no longer be required to prevent people from gathering to canvas support for their views. This is the political arena and we want to keep the police out of it", F.W. de Klerk told police officers at a meeting in January 1990, adding, "We don't want to use you any more as instruments to reach certain political goals".
That was for public consumption, especially overseas. The reality is that in the period from January 1990 to March 1992, more than 7000 people were killed, victims of large-scale attacks on whole communities, of unprovoked shootings by security forces, of targeted assassinations or of torture and death in police custody.
More than 400 people died in March 1992, during a surge in political violence in the run-up to the March 17 whites-only referendum.
The overwhelming majority of those killed have been members or perceived supporters of the ANC and other unbanned organisations, members of trade unions, human rights and peace groups.
Many communities live in constant fear. Moreover, the report points out, the establishment of more open and active politics after the unbanning of opposition organisations has been rendered impossible in
Overwhelmingly, the message received by Amnesty International representatives in townships and squatter camps was one of enormous frustration, anger and fear. As one resident of the East Rand township of Thomas expressed it, "The situation is very tense. You feel that you can die at any time".
Despite the disbanding of the police Security Branch in April 1991, political activists are still under continued police surveillance. Many former SB personnel have been appointed to "Special Investigation Units" charged with responsibility for investigating allegations of serious crimes by members of the security forces!
Some of the repression is carried out by the government's allies in the "bantustans". The report describes the pattern of repression since 1990 in the nominally independent Bophuthatswana. Broad detention powers under the Bophuthatswana Internal Security Act create conditions in which police torture of detainees easily occurs — there is no access to lawyers, and police have immunity for acts "in good faith".
In 1990-1991, 860 people were detained without charge or trial in Bophuthatswana. In the authorities' undeclared war against the ANC, entire meetings have been arrested. This is part of the campaign to prevent communities from setting up ANC structures. Trade unionists, particularly those at the Impala complex of platinum mines near Rustenburg, have been victims of torture by police.
Also documented is the role of the kwaZulu police — the overwhelming evidence, AI states, is since its inception in 1981 the kwaZulu police have acted to further the interests of the Inkatha in Natal. Even the Supreme Court brought out restraining orders on the police — but the flow of complaints through 1992 to AI shows that the police have not been brought under control.
A section of the report entitled "Police and military collusion with Inkatha against the ANC" details some of the many incidents in which the police actively participated or stood back and allowed massacres to occur:
- 80 people killed during an onslaught by thousands of armed Inkatha supporters on Pietermaritzburg townships in March 1990;
- 80 people killed by two days of attacks by Inkatha supporters and masked white men on Phola Park squatter camp east of Johannesburg in September 1990;
- 29 people killed when 1000 Inkatha supporters, with active police involvement, invaded Swanieville squatter camp on May 12, 1991;
- 18 residents of Bruntville township, Natal, killed during attacks by hundreds of Inkatha supporters on night of December 3, 1991, with police in unmarked vehicles raiding residents' homes for t have used to defend themselves.
In 1991 the government conceded, in the face of evidence published in Johannesburg's Weekly Mail, that the police had funded Inkatha's activities as far back as 1986 and that the military had trained Inkatha members in "security and VIP protection".
Amnesty International concludes there is compelling evidence to show the police and military "were involved in the instigation, promotion and permission of violence".
Black Lawyers' Association member Justice Moloto, writing in the progressive weekly New Nation, faults the National Peace Accord on the grounds that it allows the de Klerk government to adopt "a lax attitude towards violence".
"We need an accountable effective and unbiased police force that will be relied upon to root out violence." Moloto argues that the government's security forces are "a part of the problem and cannot be a part of the solution", as envisaged by the NPA.
Moloto says the situation is even worse under the de Klerk government than under previous repressive regimes. Moloto argues that in those eras, state violence would be unleased briefly as in Sharpeville, then periods of relative peace would ensue.
AI is calling on the Australian government to pressure the South African government to act on the proposals coming from the report. These include:
- public acknowledgement of the role of the police and military;
- publicly to declare such violations will not occur again;
- independent judicial inquiries into allegations against the security forces.
"Many people felt after the start of the reform process there was no role for the international community any more", Patrick Earle said. "There is still a very clear role for the international community to pressure the South African government to stop the killings now."