ABOUT 18 years ago, as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission prepared to hand over its report to then president Nelson Mandela, the new president of the ANC, Thabo Mbeki, brought an interdict to halt it. Commissioners were first astonished, then outraged. One of them, Dumisa Ntsebeza, described it as "bizarre, but indicative of things to come"."In spite of the Freedom Charter, and in spite of what is reflected in the Constitution, the values … for which people had lost their lives, and the values enacted through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission … the government [attempted] to muzzle this coming into the open."Ntsebeza was one of 13 former commissioners I interviewed for a series of podcasts called History for the Future, commissioned by Primedia. Most of them pinpointed that as the moment when accountability began to slip.The ANC did not want the report released because the Truth and Reconciliation Commission had mentioned the party in relation to some of the human rights a...
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