Dear Dr de Wee,

Thank you for your acknowledgement of receipt of the SACTJ submission of public comments on Regulations 282.

We note that the acknowledgement was received within 7 days of submission of the comments of the SACTJ.

While we appreciate receiving an acknowledgement of receipt of the comments of the SACTJ, we are deeply concerned that there is no response to our request for an urgent meeting to discuss the submissions prior to any finalisation of regulations by the DOJ.

We are humbly requesting that this meeting take place prior to any finalisation of regulations and we would deeply appreciate a response to this request within the coming 7 days.

We note that the Deputy Minister of Finance in his acceptance yesterday, June 15, 2011, of the Memorandum about Special Pensions concerns and complaints from members of the Uitenhage Victims of Apartheid Support Group in Market Square, Port Elizabeth, indicated that a reply to their Memorandum would be forthcoming within 7 days. We hope to receive a similar commitment from yourselves.

As was requested by yourself, we have appealed to the political leadership on these matters. The delegation that went to Luthuli House on June 3, 2011, as they had been directed to do on a number of occasions by yourselves and by the operators of the Presidential Hotline, were informed that a resolution had been issued on this matter. We have received no evidence of this resolution to date despite two return visits to Luthuli House. We have provided the requested evidence of the track record of Khulumani Support Group in its efforts to engage the political leadership on the matter of comprehensive reparations.

Today, June 16, 2011, 450 Khulumani members in the Western Cape have signed a petition and have marched to Parliament to table their opposition to the present reparations regulations proposals. In our engagements in other provinces since the issuing of the draft regulations in May 11, 2011, people harmed through apartheid gross human rights violations have indicated that they are ready to organise national marches. We would rather resolve these matters through dialogue.

We are aware that special remedies have been created for military veterans and for former political prisoners and detainees. Many political detainees are struggling to be recognised for Special Pensions because the National Archives demands that each applicant pay R75.00 prior to any search in the Archive and the end-result is a one-line statement that this person was detained on a particular date and released on another date. Apparently, many Special Pensions adjudicators have been reluctant to accept this limited information. The process remains very fraught because of concerns about the independence of those who make the decisions.

In Khulumani's presentation to the Portfolio Committee on Defence and Military Veterans on March 31, 2011 in which Khulumani advocated for the equal recognition of military veterans and human rights victims, Members of Parliament revealed that they had assumed that human rights victims were qualifying for Special Pensions. This is not the situation. They also seemed to have extremely limited knowledge of the challenges related to Special Pensions.

It seems to those of us who have been involved in a very prolonged struggle for justice for victims of human rights violations, that the assumption that the book could be closed on victims and survivors of gross human rights violations, while the book remains open for military veterans and political prisoners from apartheid, is profoundly discriminatory. It is this unfair discrimination that victims and survivors are committed to challenging.

The evidence remains that second and third generation survivors of the Holocaust are still receiving psychsocial rehabilitation at twenty-five AMCHA clinics, set up with funds derived from Holocaust claims, 66 years after the Holocaust, while no specialised services exist in South Africa for the reahabilitation of survivors of apartheid atrocities. We find this very difficult to comprehend and we are concerned at the drive for a selective amnesia of the harms that thousands of individuals suffered in South Africa during apartheid.

Of major concern is the idea that a victim of a gross human rights violation is ONLY a victim if the TRC dealt with the case. The recognition by the TRC that its processes were very limited and that there were many flaws in the processes, is in our view the basis for ensuring that the harms suffered by those who legitimately meet the criteria for recognition as a victim of a gross human rights violations, are repaired in order to restore a future to all those who suffered in the struggle to bring to birth our constitutional democracy.The adoption of a comprehensive reparations programme as described in the meeting with yourselves on 13 December 2011, would begin to facilitate the socioeconomic transformation of the lives of those who have suffered and sacrificed the most. Their time has come.

Sincerely,

Marjorie Jobson