Apartheid victims to get modest compensation

By M.S. Prabhakara

CAPE TOWN, FEB. 23. The victims of gross human rights violations during the apartheid regime in South Africa are finally to receive some modest financial reparation.

The Budget for 2000-01 presented by the Finance Minister, Mr. Trevor Manuel, to Parliament in Cape Town on Thursday allocated rand 500 million to the President's Fund for payment of reparations to victims of gross human rights violations identified by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The Fund, which presently has rand 323 million, will thus have Rand 823 million in total for payment towards reparations. According to the Estimates of National Expenditure of the Justice Ministry, the line function ministry of the TRC, ``such payments will amount to about rand 40,000 per recipient, depending on the number of people who qualify.''

Referring to the ``unfinished business'' of the TRC's recommendations of reparations, Mr. Manuel said in his budget speech that these payments would be ``once-off settlements'', which would be concluded over the next two years. The process is expected to get going when the Amnesty Committee completes its deliberations and the TRC itself reconvenes to complete its final report - all in the course of the next few months. The allocation falls short of the TRC's recommendations in this regard - less than one third of the over rand 2.8 billion recommended by the TRC.

The TRC's report, published in October 1998, identified 22,000 victims of gross human rights violations. It recommended that these victims should be given annual individual reparation grants calculated for each beneficiary according to a formula it had worked out.

The annual payments over a period of six years were to be twice a year. ``Based on the given policy and formula, and estimating 22,000 victims, the total cost of this policy will be rand 477,400,000 per annum, or rands 2,864,400,000 over six years. However, these funds of over rand 2.8 billion were to be mobilised not merely from the national fiscus but also from ''international and local donations and earned interest on the funds''. But little of this has been forthcoming. References to this ``unfinished business'' only provokes sullen indifference from South African big business which benefited immensely from apartheid.

Indeed, even a modest initiative by some sensitive whites to secure an acknowledgement that the white people did benefit from apartheid has provoked only hostility towards ``weepy bleeding hearts''.

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Section  : International
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