THE LOWLY NEWSPAPER MAN: Biko inquest delay deepens drift towards collective amnesia about apartheid horrors

Just under three weeks before the 49th anniversary of the murder of Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko, an indignity was visited on his memory. At the start of the inquest into the death of Biko at the hands of the security police, the family had to haggle with the state for funding for representation. The reason: Legal South Africa, the state entity entrusted with ensuring access to justice for all citizens, had determined that Biko’s widow, Ntsiki, did not qualify for assistance. They had applied the means test and concluded that her income and assets ruled her out. So a cold bureaucratic process had been applied to the search for the truth about the brutal assassination of one of the nation’s most iconic leaders. In essence, her request for assistance was treated no differently from that of an alleged shoplifter, car thief or murder accused appearing in our overburdened courts. The situation was rescued at the 11th hour by Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development Mmamoloko Kubayi, whose directive that her department would cover the costs arrived during the demeaning arguments. It was the appropriate thing to do since it was she who said, when announcing the inquest last year, that “this decision reaffirms government’s commitment to upholding the rule of law, promoting accountability, and pursuing justice for families affected by deaths that still demand clarity and resolution”.Judge Isaac Madondo, the retired jurist overseeing the inquest, was scathing about how the authorities were just treating this as an ordinary matter. Biko’s son Nkosinathi, visibly drained by the day’s proceedings, spoke about how “undignified” it had been to have spent the day haggling over resources. He added that he was so relieved that his mother was not there, revealing that “I deliberately kept her away from that kind of conversation. She bears no burden for the attainment of justice for the death of her husband.”Nearly 50 years after an apartheid-era inquest found that Biko’s death was not the result of “any act or omission involving an offence by any person” we were at a moment when truth was at the doorstep and small-mindedness got in the way. It was a small delay but it was hugely significant because it reflected just how this country is refusing to deal with its past. There seems to be a disease spreading in the country that apartheid and its horrors happened a long time ago and that we should not seek answers today.The Biko inquest matter is just one of these grave steps on the road to collective amnesia. Overshadowed by the Madlanga Commission that is exposing the nexus between politics, law enforcement and organised crime is the Khampepe Commission into the alleged suppression of prosecution of apartheid-era crimes by the democratic government. Both processes, among others, were the products of relentless campaigning by affected families and civil society groupings.That we should have a commission of inquiry into whether erstwhile liberation leaders protected apartheid-era monsters should be a ridiculous proposition, but unfortunately it is not. Evidence led at the commission has indicated secret oral pacts between the evil regime and the liberators about violating the tenets of the quest for justice. In return for peace and quiet, as well as hiding information about who in the liberation movement was snitching for the regime, the ANC leadership is believed to have agreed not to follow up on the apartheid government’s systematic killing machine. We have learnt that even the great Nelson Mandela may have been in on this scheme.So desperate has the ANC leadership been to hide the truth about our past that two former presidents, Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma, are waging a court battle that could collapse the Khampepe commission and thus put to rest any quest to find out why the post-apartheid order colluded with the National Party bigwigs in order to protect each other.The two sworn enemies have found common cause in trying to prevent the commission from airing the conversations that took place behind closed doors between them on the eve of democracy and in the aftermath of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Kubayi’s predecessor, Ronald Lamola, now in charge of international relations, justified not prosecuting apartheid’s ogres by saying that the Cyril Ramaphosa administration’s justice department had prioritised pursuing State Capture cases and funding the Zondo Commission. Okay, Ronald, the swallows and pigeons believe. The TRC process is celebrated throughout the world as the model for dealing with post-conflict hatreds. Yet the country that designed that model is now treating it as a joke or, worse, a mistake. The ANC, the former governing party and still the dominant party in the Government of National Unity, seems to believe that the reconciliation bit was the only relevant part of the TRC initialism. This is nothing short of betrayal. It is a betrayal of the millions of South Africans who bought into the nation-building process on the basis that justice would be served on the worst elements of the past regime, or, at the very least, that there would be a full exposition of the truth. It is also a betrayal of the quest for healing. The TRC should not have been a full stop. It should have been the beginning of a new sentence, a new paragraph in the writing of our new story.We live in an angry nation that has not fully come to terms with the trauma of our past. The violent responses to every grievance, domestic or governance, are a manifestation of that. The governors of our land are not aiding the healing by trying to sweep the past under the carpet. If this country is to move forward, let us all know what happened and who did what to who. We must know everything there is to know about the regime’s crimes and the atrocities committed by the liberation movements in the camps abroad. There must be a process of full healing of our wounds. The first will be for our leaders to stop being an obstacle to truth seeking. DM