c. 1996 Religion News Service

EAST LONDON, South Africa (RNS)-Dramatic first-day testimony during South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings was interrupted today (April 15) when security police cleared the main hearing room because of a bomb threat.

When the hearings proceeded about 30 minutes later, an angry Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, chairman of the commission, said,”there are some people who will stop at nothing to prevent the commission from carrying out its work.” The emotionally charged day, with witnesses eager to tell their stories and others apparently determined to try to stop them, underlined what the 17- member commission may find in store over at least the next 18 months.

The session also highlighted differing opinions that South Africans still have over the hearings, which aim to find out as much as possible about human- rights abuses during the apartheid era.

The Truth Commission is a result of an agreement between the then-ruling National Party and the African National Congress before the 1994 elections that brought Nelson Mandela and the ANC to power. The agreement called for a commission to grant amnesty to perpetrators of human-rights abuses during the apartheid era under certain circumstances.

But instead of granting a blanket amnesty, parliament later created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and charged it with hearing from both victims and perpetrators, granting amnesty to the latter in return for their testimony.

After the commission reconvened today, witnesses and victims of human-rights abuses, both black and white, detailed stories of abduction, torture and murder during the country’s apartheid era. The stories sometimes reduced the witnesses and victims to tears in front of hundreds of people inside East London’s city hall.

The hearings ran most of the day, with testimony from five different witnesses. Nohle Mohapi detailed events surrounding the death of her husband, Mapetla Mohapi, a close associate of the slain anti-apartheid leader Steve Biko, and her imprisonment in solitary confinement by South African police for six months.

Nohle Mohapi, who worked as a secretary for Biko after her husband’s death, told the commission of a miserable existence in a small prison cell, never being able to change her clothes or wash, and being infested with head lice and subjected to beatings.

Her testimony was followed by that of the wives of prominent anti-apartheid activists Charles Sipho Hashe, Qaqawuli Godolozi and Champion Galela, who all disappeared together in May 1985. The cases of these three men came up recently in the trial of Eugene de Kock, a former commander of a South African police counter-insurgency unit, who is on trial for 117 counts, including nine for murder.

Elizabeth Hashe, the wife of Charles Hashe, broke down in tears during her testimony, saying she approached the commission because she wanted the truth to be known.”I want to be able to explain my feelings, I want you to understand what I went through … It is my plea, I want people to understand,”she said.

The commission also heard from Karl Andrew Webber. Webber, a white man, told the commission how he was present in a bar in the Highgate Hotel just outside East London in 1990 when gunmen burst into the bar and sprayed the crowd with automatic gunfire. As a result of the attack, reputed to be politically motivated by anti-apartheid activists, Webber had an arm amputated and has only 60 percent use of the other arm.

Webber said he would encourage people to come forward with their stories to the commission.”It is a step towards a new beginning,”said Webber.

Tutu and co-chairman Dr. Alex Boraine, a former Methodist minister, said the hearings would continue despite the security concerns and attempts to halt the proceedings through the courts.

The commission faces at least two legal challenges that threaten to halt the proceedings. One lawsuit has been brought by lawyers representing alleged perpetrators set to be named soon in the hearings. Another was brought by families of some victims, including Steve Biko’s widow, arguing that the commission hearings will mean they will not be able to pursue financial compensation from the state.

Tutu, commenting on the first day of the hearings, said,”I think it went very well except for the drama of the bomb threat this morning. I was deeply moved by what I heard today.” Some 28 witnesses will speak this week in East London, after which the commission is scheduled to move to other parts of the country. Testimony of perpetrators applying for amnesty will not be heard until later.

MJP END FLEMING