Verisoph story dossier
How two nations investigated their own wounds: Kenya's TJRC, the Waki and Kriegler commissions on the 2007-08 violence, the Ndung'u land and Goldenberg inquiries...
How two nations investigated their own wounds: Kenya's TJRC, the Waki and Kriegler commissions on the 2007-08 violence, the Ndung'u land and Goldenberg inquiries; and South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the Marikana and Seriti inquiries, and the Zondo Commission on state capture. What they found, and what was done with it.
The apartheid government appointed a commission under Justice Petrus Cillie to investigate the causes of the June 1976 Soweto uprising and the unrest that followed. The commission took evidence for over three years before reporting.
The Cillie Commission's report on the 1976 Soweto uprising was tabled in parliament, recording 575 deaths in unrest up to February 1977, of which 451 were attributed to police action. The commission found the police were largely unprepared for the scale of the protests but stopped short of blaming either the police or the students, a conclusion later widely criticised as evasive. Death and injury figures in the report were disputed at the time as too low.
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Kenyan security forces rounded up thousands of men of the Degodia Somali clan at Wagalla airstrip during a disarmament operation, detaining them without food or water for several days before many were killed. The government initially described it as an operation against armed bandits and for years gave an official death toll of 57, while survivors and rights groups said the true number was in the hundreds or low thousands. No commission of inquiry was published at the time; the government publicly acknowledged wrongdoing by security forces only in October 2000.
President F. W. de Klerk appointed the Commission of Inquiry Regarding the Prevention of Public Violence and Intimidation, chaired by Justice Richard Goldstone, under a 1991 law negotiated between the apartheid government and liberation movements. Over three years it produced 47 reports on incidents of political violence during the negotiations period.
Early Goldstone Commission reports had found no proof of a coordinated 'third force' fomenting violence against the ANC, pointing instead to political intolerance and social conditions. In early 1994 the commission's investigators raided a covert Military Intelligence unit and uncovered evidence of a secret operations centre running a destabilisation campaign against the ANC, prompting President de Klerk to dismiss 23 senior army officers implicated in the operation.
The Goldstone Commission wound up after three years of investigating political violence in the run-up to South Africa's first democratic election. Its final findings on covert security-force involvement in violence fed directly into the case for a truth commission to examine the apartheid era as a whole.
South Africa's parliament passed the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act, creating the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to investigate gross human rights violations committed between 1960 and 1994. The Act empowered the TRC to grant amnesty to perpetrators who made full disclosure of politically motivated crimes.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu was sworn in as chairperson of the TRC, alongside deputy chair Alex Boraine and fifteen other commissioners. The TRC operated through three committees: Human Rights Violations, Amnesty, and Reparation and Rehabilitation.
The TRC's Human Rights Violations Committee opened its first public hearing in East London, taking testimony from victims of apartheid-era abuses. Hearings were broadcast on national television and radio and continued around the country over the following two years, gathering statements from more than 21,000 victims and witnesses.
The TRC's Amnesty Committee began hearing applications from perpetrators of politically motivated crimes committed under apartheid. Amnesty was granted only where an applicant made full disclosure and showed the act was carried out for a political objective; the committee received more than 7,000 applications and eventually granted amnesty in under 1,500 cases.
President Daniel arap Moi appointed a judicial commission under Justice Akilano Akiwumi to investigate ethnic clashes in Kenya between 1991 and 1998, particularly the 1997 violence in Coast Province. Over eleven months the commission heard testimony from more than 200 witnesses.
Archbishop Tutu handed the first five volumes of the TRC's final report to President Nelson Mandela. The report found the apartheid state, principally through its security forces, was responsible for the great majority of gross human rights violations, and also found the ANC and other liberation movements responsible for abuses, including of detainees in ANC camps. The report described apartheid itself as a crime against humanity.
The Akiwumi Commission submitted its report to President Moi, finding that senior ruling-party politicians had incited and fuelled ethnic clashes since 1991 and recommending that several former cabinet ministers and officials be investigated and prosecuted. The government kept the report secret; it was only released by the Attorney General on 18 October 2002, more than three years after it was submitted.
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The Kibaki government set up a judicial commission of inquiry chaired by Justice Samuel Bosire to investigate the Goldenberg scandal of the early 1990s, in which the state paid fraudulent export compensation for gold and diamonds that were never actually exported. Over nearly two years the commission heard 102 witnesses.
The remaining two volumes of the TRC's seven-volume final report were published, completing the commission's record after the Amnesty Committee finished its outstanding cases. The volumes included further victim findings and a list of individuals denied amnesty.
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The new Kibaki government appointed the Commission of Inquiry into the Illegal/Irregular Allocation of Public Land, chaired by Paul Ndung'u, to investigate decades of irregular allocation of government, trust and public land, largely under the Moi era. The commission comprised 20 lawyers, civil servants and other prominent citizens.
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The Ndung'u Commission presented its report to President Mwai Kibaki, documenting widespread and systematic irregular allocation of public land, including forest land, road reserves and land set aside for schools and other public use, benefiting politically connected individuals across successive administrations. The report recommended repossession of illegally acquired land and reform of land administration, though implementation was subsequently slow and partial.
The Bosire-led Goldenberg Commission submitted its report, finding that KSh 158.3 billion had been transacted through the scheme involving 487 companies and individuals, with billions of shillings transferred abroad and never returned. The report said former President Daniel arap Moi, who was never called to testify, should be further investigated over an alleged shareholding in Goldenberg International; the report was made public in February 2006.
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Kenya held a disputed general election in which incumbent President Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner over opposition leader Raila Odinga amid widespread allegations of vote-rigging. The disputed result triggered weeks of ethnic and political violence across the country.
The Kenyan government established the Independent Review Commission, chaired by South African judge Johann Kriegler, to examine the conduct of the 2007 general election, particularly the disputed presidential count. Commissioners were sworn in on 20 March 2008.
The Commission of Inquiry into Post-Election Violence, chaired by Court of Appeal judge Philip Waki, was established to investigate the violence that followed the disputed December 2007 election, in which more than 1,100 people were killed and hundreds of thousands displaced.
also in Kenya's post-election violence: 1992/1997 and 2007-08
The Kriegler Commission released its report on the 2007 election, concluding that the vote count was so compromised it was impossible to determine who had actually won the presidential race. It found politicians across the political spectrum had incited violence and recommended sweeping reform of the electoral commission and the creation of a special tribunal to try those responsible for election-related violence.
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The Waki Commission delivered its final report on the 2007-08 post-election violence to President Kibaki and Prime Minister Odinga, documenting the role of organised militias, police use of excessive force, and planning of attacks by politicians and businessmen. The report recommended establishing a special tribunal to prosecute those most responsible and, failing that, that a sealed list of suspects be handed to the International Criminal Court.
Because Kenya's parliament failed to establish the special tribunal the Waki Commission had recommended, the sealed envelope containing the commission's list of suspected organisers of the post-election violence was handed to Kofi Annan, who had mediated the crisis, as agreed under the terms of the report.
Kenya's parliament passed the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Act, creating a commission to investigate gross human rights violations and historical injustices, including land grievances, committed between independence in 1963 and the end of the post-election violence in 2008. The mandate was later extended back to 1895 to cover colonial-era abuses.
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Kofi Annan handed the sealed 'Waki envelope', along with six boxes of supporting documents compiled by the Waki Commission, to International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo. The material formed the basis of ICC investigations that led to cases against several senior Kenyan political figures, including Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, all of which were later withdrawn or collapsed for lack of evidence and witness intimidation.
The Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission, chaired by Bethuel Kiplagat, was formally inaugurated. Kiplagat's own alleged links to past state abuses, including the Wagalla massacre, drew controversy and calls for his removal from the chairmanship during the commission's early years.
The TJRC conducted public hearings in counties across the country, taking testimony on colonial-era abuses including the suppression of the Mau Mau uprising, and on later injustices such as extrajudicial killings, land grabbing, and ethnic violence under successive post-independence governments.
President Zuma appointed the Arms Procurement Commission, chaired by Judge Willie Seriti, to investigate allegations of corruption in South Africa's 1999 multi-billion-rand arms deal, following years of separate criminal and civil litigation over the affair.
South African police shot dead 34 striking mineworkers and wounded many more at the Lonmin platinum mine in Marikana during a wage dispute, in the deadliest use of force by South African security forces since the end of apartheid. Ten other people, including two police officers, had been killed in the preceding days of unrest.
President Jacob Zuma appointed the Marikana Commission of Inquiry, chaired by retired judge Ian Farlam, to investigate the deaths at the Lonmin mine, including the conduct of police, the mining company, and unions.
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The TJRC delivered its final report to President Uhuru Kenyatta, documenting historical injustices spanning the colonial period to 2008, including massacres, torture, land dispossession, and economic marginalisation of particular regions and communities. The report recommended reparations for victims, land restitution, and prosecutions in some cases, but the government was slow to table and act on the report, and implementation remained largely stalled years later.
The Farlam Commission's report was made public, finding that a decision by senior police commanders the night before the shooting was the decisive cause of the deaths, and that Lonmin had failed to adequately engage striking workers or meet housing commitments made years earlier. The commission largely cleared political figures, including then-Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, a Lonmin non-executive director, of directly causing the police operation, a conclusion that victims' representatives and some analysts disputed as too lenient. It recommended further investigation of individual police officers and strikers involved in the killings.
The Seriti Commission released its final report concluding that no evidence had been placed before it showing bribes were paid to officials or cabinet members in the arms deal, and that the equipment acquired was properly utilised and justified. Anti-corruption campaigners and opposition parties condemned the findings as a whitewash, pointing to the commission's refusal to admit key documentary evidence, including an independent investigation into arms company Ferrostaal, and its failure to pursue leads from foreign investigations.
President Cyril Ramaphosa formally established the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into State Capture, chaired by Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, following the release of the Public Protector's 2016 'State of Capture' report. It was tasked with investigating allegations of systemic corruption and undue influence over state institutions during Jacob Zuma's presidency, particularly involving the Gupta family.
The Zondo Commission began public hearings, ultimately hearing testimony from more than 300 witnesses over four years, including former ministers, executives of state-owned enterprises, and members of the Gupta business network, on the capture of institutions such as Eskom, Transnet and SARS.
The Pretoria High Court set aside the Seriti Commission's 2016 findings, ruling it was 'inexplicable' that the commission had ignored evidence pointing to corruption, improper influence and fraud in the arms deal. The ruling effectively invalidated the commission's central conclusion that the deal was clean.
The Zondo Commission delivered the final part of its multi-volume report to President Ramaphosa, completing a series of submissions made between January and June 2022. The report found that state capture had caused massive financial losses to South Africa, implicated former President Jacob Zuma in facilitating undue influence by the Gupta family over government appointments and contracts, and recommended further criminal investigation of numerous former officials and business figures; Zuma and others named in the report disputed its findings.