14 April 1990 – ANC Admits to the use of Torture

Nelson Mandela admits that dissident guerrillas were tortured by the African National Congress (ANC) during a statement given on 14 April 1990, but says that those responsible have already been punished.

During the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings, witnesses came forward to document their treatment by the ANC at the Morris Seabelo Rehabilitation Centre (otherwise known as Quatro camp) an ANC detention centre in Angola.

One such witness told the Commission he was "detained for over four years in Quatro camp and subjected to various forms of torture". The witness was "one of the 'Soweto generation' who left South Africa in 1976 to join the ANC. He spent the following twelve years in Angola [and] became an MK Commander."

The same witness told the TRC that his torture included "being given electric shocks, being suffocated with gas masks, hit with broom sticks all over his body, hit with a coffee tree branch on the buttocks continuously for a whole day, … forced to chop down a tree full of bees and to climb a tree full of wasps; forced to undress and lie on the ground among ants, and forced to pull a water tank." The TRC was also told how food deprivation lead to the death of two of his colleagues.

The TRC reached the following conclusions:
"On the basis of the evidence available to it, the commission finds that the ANC, particularly its military structures which were responsible for the treatment and welfare of those in its camps, were guilty of gross violations of human rights in certain circumstances and against two categories of individuals - suspected 'enemy agents' and mutineers.

"The commission finds that 'suspected agents' were routinely subjected to torture and other forms of severe ill-treatment and that there were cases where such individuals were charged and convicted by tribunals without proper attention to due process being afforded them, sentenced to death and executed. The commission finds that these were acts in which the individuals so affected had their human rights grossly violated. Likewise, the commission finds that the failure to communicate properly with the families of such victims constituted callous and insensitive conduct.

"The commission also finds that all mutineers who were executed after conviction by military tribunal, irrespective of whether they were afforded proper legal representation and adequate due process, suffered gross violations of their human rights.

"With regard to allegations of torture, the commission finds that, although it was not ANC policy to use torture, the security department of the ANC routinely used torture to extract information and confessions from those being held in camps, particularly in the period 1979-89. The commission has taken note of the various forms of torture … and finds that they amounted to the deliberate infliction of pain and/or severe ill treatment in the form of detention in solitary confinement and/or the deliberate withholding of food and water and/or medical care and, as such, amounted to the perpetration of gross violations of human rights.

"The commission finds further that adequate steps were not taken in good time against those responsible for such violations."

_{All quotes from Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report, as presented to President Nelson Mandela on 29 October 1998.}