TRC ROULETTE : Declassified document shows ANC were favourable to offering indemnity to apartheid-era crimes

{JSON.stringify(article.attachments[0], null, 2)} --> Minutes reveal former apartheid president FW De Klerk told his final Cabinet meeting that an agreement with Nelson Mandela and the ANC on indemnity for apartheid crimes was reached 48 hours before the 1994 election — igniting accountability questions.

Two days before millions of South Africans prepared to vote in the country’s first historic democratic elections in 1994, then president FW de Klerk and his minister of justice Kobie Coetsee told the Cabinet that the ANC, led by Nelson Mandela, had been in favour of granting indemnity from prosecution for apartheid-era ‘politically motivated crimes’.

At a final special meeting of the country’s last white Cabinet on 25 April 1994, just 48 hours before about 20 million South Africans would queue for hours across the country at polling booths, then president FW de Klerk announced to his colleagues that this “agreement” had been concluded in the interests of “national reconciliation”.

The recently declassified minutes of that meeting, attended by the full Cabinet (apart from Minister of Finance Derek Keys), noted “the President and the Minister of Justice [Kobie Coetsee] informed Cabinet of discussions held with Mr Nelson Mandela regarding the further granting of indemnity from prosecution for politically motivated crimes.

“It appears that the leadership of the ANC, at this stage, are positive about the indemnity process as part of national reconciliation”.

This is a highly significant document as it highlights accusations of early discussions regarding a secret potential “political settlement” or “deal”.

At the time, the clock was ticking. It was five minutes to midnight with tens of millions poised to mark their X on the ballot for the first time in their lives. Political pragmatism had been an early opening gambit the perpetrators of human rights abuses were hoping would be future-proof.

The minutes were declassified only in February 2026, after the Khampepe Commission of Inquiry into possible political interference in the delay of post-TRC prosecutions sought to investigate claims that these early “secret negotiations” set the scene for what witnesses and authors Michael Schmidt (Death Flight) and German scholar Ole Bubenzer have termed a “Pact of Forgetting”.

The revelation was made public on Thursday at the inquiry, chaired by retired Constitutional Court Justice Sisi Khampepe, joined on the panel by retired Northern Cape Judge President Frans Kgomo and advocate Andrea Gabriel.