TRC secret records available to public
Detainees jumped from windows but one unfortunately survived
CAN’T remember. It wasn’t me. And detainees jumped from windows but one “unfortunately” survived.
These are some of the grim bits of history emerging from security police officers interviewed behind closed doors by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) two decades ago, and now being released following a long fight by the SA History Archive (Saha).
The organisation has spent 11 years battling to get access to a range of TRC records, winning victories bit by bit. The transcripts obtained so far of the in-camera hearings, known as the Section 29 hearings after the section of TRC law enabling them, run to about 15 000 pages, or about 140 records.
Some records are incomplete and there are difficulties establishing what exists and where it is. “There has been a terrible erosion of records,” said Saha director Catherine Kennedy. Saha staff received the records earlier this year and have started offering public access to them.
Kennedy said the records revealed less about any “ground-shaking revelations” and more about how the TRC conducted investigations and arrived at decisions.
Much is confusing, as the basis of the TRC questioning or even a clear indication of which incidents are the focus of the inquiries are not available. Inability to remember key details is a recurrent theme.
“If I was a computer I would have a memory disk where I would store my information therefore I would be accurate to retrieve all the information from 1974.
“Unfortunately, I am not working as a computer I am a human being,” one security police captain told frustrated interviewers.
A black security policeman from Port Elizabeth, who explained that he was nonpolitical, said he was aware of torture but wasn’t involved.
“Black policemen were not allowed to interrogate, it's only the whites who were therefore questioning,” he told an inquiry.
“You used to screams?” asked investigator.
“Yes,” he replied. “You would bring people there in the Sanlam building and when you come back you will hear them screaming because they are being tortured.”
That same policeman talked about detainees “jumping” from police office windows.
“Is there a period in time where there would be no one hear the the TRC responsible for the detainee such that he can jump from a window?” asked the TRC.
“There were three others. The one is still alive, he is in town… I am not saying that he said he jumped. We had gone to make tea, he just jumped. Unfortunately, he didn’t die, he fell on a car.”
“You are saying ‘unfortunately he did not die’?” asked the TRC.
“Yes, he is still alive,” said the policeman.
Swapo activist Anton Lubowski’s family went to Saha to read through some of the records, in their decadeslong search for further details of his killers. Lubowski was shot dead in Windhoek, Namibia, in September 1989 in a still-unsolved killing for which the TRC did not receive any amnesty applications.
Lubowski’s sister, Annaliese Lubowski, and his daughter Nadia Lubowski read through transcripts of a former member of the Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB), the secret military hit squad which is generally believed to have killed Lubowski.
The officer, who said he was one of 400 CCB members, referred to Lubowski’s killing as a CCB operation.
He also referred briefly to financial incentives to carry out attacks, and said anyone from the CCB could have shot Lubowski as they were “all instructed” to do such work.
“We were told, ‘ double up your production and you will get a production bonus, in Namibia’.” Annaliese said: “I’m convinced it was the CCB. Nadia has come to know her father through the ongoing search for his killers, and the more she learns the more proud of him she is. “He was so against the system that he was absolutely 100 percent prepared to give his life for it,” she said. “He said he could never look his children in the eye and say he did nothing.”
The information in the transcripts underlined the validity of her father’s opposition to the apartheid government, she said. “That’s the reason he stood up and said this stuff is atrocious.”
For more information, see SAHA’s website at http://foip.saha.org.za
louis.e.flanagan@inl.co.za