SA Presidency accused of hiding Zim violence report

By Alex Bell
29 May 2009

The South African Presidency has been accused of deliberately hiding a suspected controversial report on the Zimbabwe security forces role in last year’s deadly post-election violence.

President Jacob Zuma’s office has rejected numerous requests for the report, which was compiled last year by retired army generals, to be made public. The Presidency has made claims that former President Thabo Mbeki, who appointed the army generals to undertake the investigation, never received a written report. Instead, the then SADC appointed mediator in the crisis apparently only received oral feedback from the retired generals.

The Southern African Centre for Survivors of Torture, the South African Litigation Centre and the official opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, recently invoked the ‘Promotion of Access to Information Act’ to force the President’s Office to release the report. The groups insist that the report paints a ‘devastating’ picture of state-sponsored violence, which apparently shifted Mbeki's perceptions on the situation in Zimbabwe.
“The report is believed to have been hard-hitting and instrumental in the evolution of subsequent negotiations leading to the September Global Political Agreement,” they said in a combined statement.
But former Presidency Director-General Frank Chikane has since denied that the former generals appointed by Mbeki made any written report to the former leader, or were given any documents for the purpose of compiling the report.

The Presidency’s claims have been met with anger and disbelief by the non-governmental organisations that have supported the application for access to the report. Director of the South African History Archive (SAHA), Piers Pigou, on Friday said the Presidency is lying and is ‘setting itself up to be questioned.’ He said the details in the report are crucial to prompt the transformation of Zimbabwe’s military, and prevent future abuses.

This is not the first time that the South African government has refused to publicise reports related to the crisis in Zimbabwe. In 2002, then President Mbeki appointed Judge Sisi Khampepe and current Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke to observe the Presidential election in Zimbabwe, but their report has never been released. More recently, the government asked the Constitutional Court not to publicly release a secret 60-page report containing correspondence between the South African and Zimbabwean governments. The request was made during a legal bid to prove that the Presidency did not abandon South African farmers during Zimbabwe’s land grab.