South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa is setting up a judicial commission of inquiry to establish whether attempts were made to prevent the investigation or prosecution of apartheid-era crimes, his office said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The move is the outcome of settlement discussions in a\u00a0court case brought by families of the victims of political killings and disappearances that happened decades ago, who say post-apartheid governments never properly investigated those crimes.<\/p>\n
“Allegations of improper influence in delaying or hindering the investigation and prosecution of apartheid-era crimes have persisted from previous administrations,” the presidency said in a statement.<\/p>\n
“Through this commission, President Ramaphosa is determined that the true facts be established and the matter brought to finality.”<\/p>\n
After apartheid ended in 1994, South Africa set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to help uncover human rights violations perpetrated under white minority rule.<\/p>\n
The TRC handed over a list of several hundred cases to state prosecutors for investigation, but many were never pursued.<\/p>\n
The 25 family members and survivors who filed the case in a Pretoria court in January are also seeking about 167 million rand ($9 million) from the state in damages.<\/p>\n
The government will ask for their application to be suspended pending the commission’s findings, the presidency said. It did not give a time frame.<\/p>\n
The Foundation for Human Rights, an NGO supporting the families, said that they welcomed the establishment of a commission of inquiry but opposed the president’s move to delay a ruling on their damages claim.<\/p>\n
“Instead of entering into mediation, he has decided to offload the declaration of rights and constitutional damages onto a commission of inquiry, which has no authority to deal with it,” it said in a statement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa is setting up a judicial commission of inquiry to establish whether attempts were made to prevent the investigation or prosecution of apartheid-era crimes, his office said on Wednesday. The move is the outcome of settlement discussions in a\u00a0court case brought by families of the victims of political killings and disappearances […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9413,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2362,33,34,30],"tags":[1114,218,122],"class_list":["post-16160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-politics","category-society","category-southern-africa","tag-apartheid","tag-cyril-ramaphosa","tag-south-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16160\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}