Harms Commission

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The Harms Commission (English: Harms Commission of Inquiry ) was an investigative body founded in 1990 by the South African government. It was under the direction of the judge Louis Harms.

Objective and structure

The commission was set up by Justice Minister Kobie Coetsee on January 31, 1990 after reports of assassinations by the Vlakplaas police unit became known in November 1989 . The establishment came at a time of great upheaval: a few days later, President Frederik Willem de Klerk lifted the ban on several opposition groups, including the African National Congress (ANC), and Nelson Mandela was released. The commission's task was to investigate alleged murders and other unlawful acts by the South African security authorities, including the South African Police and the South African Defense Force (SADF). However, the Commission only wanted to investigate acts that had taken place domestically.

Course and results

Interviewees included Dirk Coetzee , a former secret police officer who masterminded attacks by the Vlakplaas unit, who had fled South Africa and testified before the commission in London .

Due to the restriction to domestic incidents, acts of violence perpetrated by South African security authorities abroad, including numerous assassinations of opposition South Africans, could not be investigated for the time being.

The hidden operating Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB), a division of the SADF, which was responsible for numerous assassinations, was indeed unmasked and dissolved in August 1990, but the prosecution did not take place.

Numerous witnesses appeared with wigs or other masking and did not have personal papers. The senior police officer Hermanus de Plessis, who was involved in the investigation as a commissioner, later turned out to be the mastermind behind a 1981 murder attack on an ANC member. Dirk Coetzee's statements were not believed, as senior police officers disagreed. Overall, the work of the commission was viewed as a failure, since the upper echelons of the security authorities in particular thwarted the work of the commission, so that numerous cases remained unsolved for the time being and the security authorities, with the exception of the CCB, were considered to be innocent according to the final report of November 1990. The violence, also fueled by the security authorities, did not decrease in 1990. As a result, the Goldstone Commission was set up in July 1991 , which had expanded rights and served until October 1994.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e The year 1990 in South Africa on the Human Rights Watch website , accessed July 14, 2013
  2. ↑ Report on Dirk Coetzee at sahistory.org.za (English), accessed on July 14, 2013
  3. ↑ Information from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Hermanus de Plessis from 1998 (English), accessed on July 14, 2013
  4. ↑ Information from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on the David Webster case from 1998 , accessed on July 14, 2013