Mbeki and Zuma Must Swallow Their Pride

Former presidents Jacob Zuma and Thabo Mbeki

With all former justice and police ministers who have given evidence at the Sisi Khampepe Commission having denied any involvement in the scandalous matter of protecting apartheid-era killers from prosecution, it is now very important for former presidents Jacob Zuma and Thabo Mbeki to swallow their pride and go to the Commission to clear their names in full view of the whole world, particularly the bereaved families of the murdered and tortured South African freedom fighters.

But Mbeki and Zuma have presently chosen to use the courts of this country to stop retired Judge Sisi Khampepe from presiding over this matter.

Khampepe has been tasked with the duty to preside over a Commission that would decide as to who thwarted the arrest and prosecution of the aforesaid apartheid-era killers.

There is strong suspicion that the two former presidents were heavily involved in preventing the arrest and prosecution of some of the apartheid-era killers.

Failure on their side to present themselves at the Sisi Khampepe Commission will fuel suspicions that they were agents of the apartheid-era government, or were double agents working for both the ANC and the apartheid regime.

This would mean they committed acts of terrorism and murder against proponents of the apartheid regime as well as ANC activists.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission gave all freedom fighters and apartheid-era forces a chance to come clean and reveal what it was that they had done during those turbulent times, but Mbeki and Zuma chose not to go and testify at the TRC, just like some apartheid-era security forces who defied the TRC process.

This as all of them apparently deemed themselves to be immune to all reconciliation resolutions and agreements entered into by the ANC and the apartheid regime.

If Mbeki and Zuma’s efforts during the apartheid era were honest and without contradiction or suspicion, then why were they reluctant to go and tell the whole world via the TRC process as to whose bombing and killing they as MK commanders had ordered for the sake of the liberation of the people of this country?

MK operatives like Robert McBride (dubbed by the media as the Magoo Bar Bomber during those turbulent apartheid times after bombing a bar in Durban), as well as the late Ting Ting Masango who killed a notorious apartheid-indoctrinated policeman in Mamelodi, humbled themselves and confessed to their roles as MK operatives at the TRC.

Now why did Zuma and Mbeki think they were special?

Their arrogant decision to disregard the TRC process has now come to haunt them because according to tentative testimony that has been led at the Sisi Khampepe Commission, Zuma and Mbeki allegedly entered into an illegal agreement with the late former apartheid-era president FW de Klerk, whereby it was illegally agreed that the apartheid-era security forces would be spared from prosecution if FW de Klerk wouldn’t press charges against Zuma and Mbeki “for crimes committed” during the apartheid era when the latter were commanders of MK military operations.

FW de Klerk had reportedly made the threat to get Mbeki and Zuma persecuted when he ( de Klerk) realised that apartheid-era security forces who had not sought amnensty at the TRC were on the brink of being arrested.

De Klerk therefore reasoned that since Zuma and Mbeki had also not sought amnensty at the TRC for their activities during the apartheid era, then they must also be arrested.