The ruling party has influenced public debate to the extent that its critics from the right and left have been largely marginalized. However, public discourse in recent weeks involving the issues related to compensating victims of the former apartheid regime and the legal definition of "amnesty" for acts committed during the national liberation struggle, illustrates that the process of assessing history will remain a matter of contention in the foreseeable future.

Reparations For Human Rights Abuses

Trevor Manuel, the Finance Minister, stated in a speech on Wednesday March 11, that the allocations for reparations would increase to R300 million by the 2000/01 fiscal year. Tutu added that "we have have proposed that the victims should be paid a total of R50 million a year for a period of six years". This plan would later be enhanced with a final reparations package that would include grants to individual victims of R17,000-R23,000 per year. This figure was matched with the median household income in South Africa over the coming six years.

Amnesty and Reconciliation

The last hardline state president, P.W. Botha (1978-1989), has remained intransigent in his refusal to appear before the TRC. Under threat of imprisonment, the white minority leader who declared a national state of emergency in the country during 1985-86 and presided over the arrest, torture and murder of thousands of cadres in the democratic movement-continues to scoff at the Commission.

In the midst of this conflict, the NP has sought to take legal action to challenge the government's policy of amnesty, which they claim favors former leaders of the military and political wings of the ANC.

In response to the NP's legal application to have many of the TRC's amnesty rulings declared null and void, the TRC has asked the Cape Supreme Court to overturn 37 amnesty decisions that were granted in favor of leading ANC officials, including the current Vice-President, Thabo Mbeki. In addition, the TRC list of amnesties to be revoked includes five cabinet members as well the commission's chief executive officer, Biki Minyuku. Tutu stated that this decision to request a revocation of these amnesties was due to "at least four legal irregularities". "The amnesty decisions failed to identify the specific offenses for which amnesty was given. I am advised...that the failure to do so renders the amnesty decisions void", Tutu said. In addition, the TRC claimed that its decision to revoke the amnesties were also based on the perception that all 37 persons had not made full disclosures of all pertinent facts to the Commission, as is required by law. Tutu continued by saying that "activists who were engaged in the anti-apartheid struggle over a long period of time may well find it necessary to apply for amnesty in respect of a course of conduct. Such persons should properly be eligible for amnesty".

In carrying out this request for withdrawing amnesty from 37 ANC leaders, the TRC is hoping to persuade the NP to drop its present legal challenge to the TRC's amnesty policy. On saturday, the high ranking ANC leaders held a meeting in Guateng to discuss the TRC'S recent legal application. In addition to the South African Vice-President Thabo Mbeki, others included in the TRC request for amnesty revocation includes: Joe Modise, Minster of Defence; Mac Maharaj, Minister of Transporation; Pallo Jordan; another cabinet minister; Alfred Nzo, Minister of Foreign Affairs; and Dullah Omar, Minister of Justice. This list continues with people such as Mpumalanga Premeir, Mathew Phosa; deputy Speaker, Baleka Kgositsile, deputy Environmental Affairs Minister, Peter Mokaba; SA's Ambassador to the United Nations, Jackie Selebi; deputy Intelligence Minister, Joe Nhlanhla and Kwa-Zulu Natal MPL, Dumnisani Makhaye. Initial press reports on Sunday from the Independent Newspaper group indicated that the ANC would not challenge the TRC's application before the Cape High Court.

PAC Criticizes ANC Amnesty Policy

It seems that the answers to the issues of reparations, amnesty and national reconciliation are far from being resolved in post-Apartheid South Africa. Even though the present ANC led government has demonstrated its flexibility in responding to the white settler dominated economic interests in the country, the fomer white ruling party's national constituentcy is continuing to resist efforts designed to re-correct the human rights abuses of the apartheid years and before. Totally absent from any of the present TRC proceedings are the representatives of national and international capital, who have plundered and exploited the natural resources and labor of the country for over three centuries. This process continues with the large-scale downsizing within the gold and diamond producing industries inside the country, which historically has been the major source of foreign exchange, international investments and multi-lateral trade.

Tensions perist over the role of private capital in the transformation process as the leaders of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the South African Communist Party (SACP) have openly expressed reservations about specific ANC governmental policies- criticisms which have placed some strains on the ANC-COSATU-SACP tripartite alliance. Events over the next year will portend much for the balance of forces that will emerge after the 1999 national elections.