The NPA doesn’t know how many TRC cases it should be investigating

6 May 2024

Thirty years after apartheid, and 21 years after publication of the final Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report, the NPA is yet to complete the task of identifying apartheid-era operatives who committed heinous crimes for which they should have been prosecuted. 

The NPA continued to engage the report… It was “an ongoing process”, Lamola said in a written response, issued on Friday 3 May 2024, to parliamentary questions by GOOD Party MP Brett Herron.

The TRC Act provided that where amnesty was not applied for or was not granted, those who failed to get amnesty would be prosecuted.

It has been widely reported over the past 10 years, in the media and in affidavits in High Court litigation, that the TRC recommended approximately 300 cases for further investigation. This figure was repeated in the recent opinion by Adv Dumisa Ntsebeza into the NPA’s handling of TRC cases.

In his opinion, publicly released two months ago, Ntsebeza, who served as a TRC commissioner and its Head of Investigations, said: "The TRC referred to the NPA some 300 cases of those people who did not apply for or were not granted amnesty. These were mainly South African Police Security Branch or other police officers."

But Lamola said the NPA was “not in possession of a definitive list of cases that were transferred from the TRC”. 

Fifty-nine matters had been identified by the Priority Crimes Litigation Unit “by extracting the matters from the TRC Final Report”. The identification of additional matters was “an ongoing process. Currently the total number of identified cases is one hundred and fifty-eight”, Lamola said.

If the TRC referred 300 cases to the NPA but, according to Lamola, 21 years later, the NPA is only aware of about half of them, it speaks to a monumental abandonment of post-apartheid justice.

It means that many perpetrators of barbarism in defence of apartheid will never be brought to justice, and that family members of their victims will never have the opportunity of closure.

In his answers to Herron’s questions, Lamola said, of the 159 TRC cases the NPA was aware of, 21 had been finalised and 137 were still under investigation.

“This includes re-opened inquests, and inquests where the appointment of a Judge is awaited to preside over the matter and eight (8) matters which are presently on the criminal court roll.

“As indicated above a complete list of cases was not transferred to the NPA. The NPA is therefore not in a position to answer who received a definitive list of cases.”

In his opinion, publicly released two months ago, Ntsebeza found that the NPA had “failed in its mandate”. 

“The consequences of this failure have manifested themselves in the vast number of cases that have now become irredeemable – memories have faded, witnesses have died, perpetrators have died, evidence which should have been archived, has, over time, got lost or destroyed - or both. Against these odds, one has to ask, how it is even possible to realise the national social compact struck with victims and all South Africans – to achieve accountability and justice,” he said.

Issued by Brett Herron, GOOD Secretary-General & Member of Parliament, 6 May 2024