When Thamsanqa Zitha returned to SA after more than a decade in exile‚ he reached out to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)‚ hoping to gain an audience. Zitha‚ a former operative for the ANC and Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) military wings‚ was kidnapped and tortured by Eugene de Kock’s death squad in 1984.He should have been entitled to compensation for the crimes committed against him by the former government‚ but now Zitha is one of an estimated 80‚000 people who have not benefited from a special reparations fund that currently holds more than R1.5bn‚ according to the Khulumani Support Group. The Department of Justice has refused to divulge what exactly the money will be used for.The President’s Fund was established — under the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act (34 of 1995) — after the TRC recommended that reparations be paid out to apartheid victims who had made successful submissions to the commission.By 2005, nearly 17‚000 people had received at lea...
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