Mbeki, Zuma’s roles in dealing with apartheid-era cases questioned

Former Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) commissioner, Yasmin Sooka, has raised questions about the role that former presidents Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma have played in dealing with cases of apartheid-era political crimes.

Sooka, who is also a board member of the Foundation for Human Rights, testified before the TRC Cases Inquiry in Newtown on Tuesday.

She said that in 2007, Mbeki sought to pardon scores of apartheid-era perpetrators, some of whom had never even applied for amnesty.

She says Zuma also pursued the option of using his presidential prerogative to do the same.

“We supported an urgent application to interdict president Mbeki from using the pardons process. And again, we had to argue that the special dispensation that the president was using was again an impermissible rerun of the TRC’s amnesty process. And thankfully, in April 2009, I think it was Judge Siriti who granted an interdict and prevented the president from using his presidential pardon discretion. That was, of course, followed in 2009 by Ryan Albert, a member of the AWB (Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging) approaching the Constitutional Court to overturn the interdict on the political pardons. And interestingly, in this application, he was joined by President Zuma.”