FACING UP TO A VIOLENT PAST

By Bruce W. Nelan

IN THE NEW SOUTH AFRICA, DOUBTS REmain about the degree to which the white minority has truly been rooted out of power. Last week there was more evidence that it has been, as former Defense Minister Magnus Malan and 19 other former military leaders and security officials stood in a Durban courtroom, where they were charged with murder. The indictment did not claim that all the men were present on the night in 1987 when 13 people, including seven children, were shot to death in a Zulu village. But it accuses them of "planning, training, authorizing and funding" the secret squad of gunmen who allegedly committed those and other crimes.

Malan claims he has nothing to answer for, and Deputy President F.W. De Klerk, who shared a Nobel Peace Prize with President Nelson Mandela in 1993, jumped to the generals' defense. He said if Malan and his colleagues were not granted immunity, then senior government figures like the present Defense Minister, Joe Modise, should lose the amnesty they have been granted for having ordered A.N.C. guerrillas to carry out armed attacks and bombings. Mandela dismissed De Klerk's comments as "a joke"; De Klerk's National Party snapped back that Mandela was a con artist.

The indictments came only two days after Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, another Nobel laureate, was named head of the 17-member, multiracial Truth Commission, which will investigate crimes of the apartheid era. The panel will have the power to recommend amnesty or prosecution in each case, but to be eligible for amnesty, individuals will have to come forward and admit their guilt. Malan will have no part of this and will take his chances in court.

--Reported by Peter Hawthorne/Cape Town

With reporting by Peter Hawthorne/Cape Town