---
title: "What would Mandela do? Lessons for Mbeki and SA in confronting the past"
description: "Former presidents Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma have launched several legal actions aimed at delaying testifying before the Khampepe Commission of Inquiry into delayed post-Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) prosecutions for apartheid-era perpetrators. What would Mandela have done?"
type: "NewsArticle"
publisher: "Daily Maverick"
site: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za"
section: "KHAMPEPE COMMISSION"
author: "Marianne Thamm"
author_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/author/mariannethamm/"
canonical_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-09-15-what-would-mandela-do-lessons-for-mbeki-and-sa-in-confronting-the-past/"
published: "2026-09-15T20:18:40"
lang: "en-ZA"
word_count: 1749
---

# What would Mandela do? Lessons for Mbeki and SA in confronting the past

> Former presidents Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma have launched several legal actions aimed at delaying testifying before the Khampepe Commission of Inquiry into delayed post-Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) prosecutions for apartheid-era perpetrators. What would Mandela have done?

By Marianne Thamm · Published 15 September 2026, 22:18 SAST

## Key points
- The Khampepe Commission is probing decades‑long delays in post‑TRC prosecutions; former presidents Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma are fighting subpoenas and using legal manoeuvres to stall testimony as the inquiry runs until December.
- Hearings have revived gruesome apartheid-era crimes – from Griffiths Mxenge to Steve Biko – and exposed how victims’ families were repeatedly denied justice, underlining how brutal truth was buried rather than confronted.
- The probe is wrestling with missing dockets, an alleged moratorium on prosecutions and hints of a last‑minute “indemnity” deal in declassified minutes – while Mbeki and Zuma insist they didn’t interfere.
- “What would Mandela do?” frames the moral test: Would leaders meet the commission as Mandela once faced scrutiny, or further entrench the myth of a clean transition? The verdict could reframe how South Africa remembers and reckons.

## Content

Contempt for the black body and details of the gruesome sadism meted out over the apartheid era have resurfaced over the past 90 days the Khampepe Commission has been sitting. This inquiry – a metaphorical full stop to South Africa’s apartheid-era political hangover – is due to wrap up in December.

For those who claim the first president of the democratic South Africa, Nelson Mandela, “sold out”, the commission has offered a renewed glimpse into the “heart of darkness” that lurked and what the newly unbanned ANC leadership – itself accused of abuses – was up against as non-racial, constitutional democracy shimmered on the horizon.

[READ MORE

Apartheid generals threatened and blackmailed TRC investigators, inquiry hears

May 7, 2026 ![Image](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/F_fNFggyDYAhDPyTMpZnB9zEE4k=/450x0/smart/file/attachments/orphans/thamm-tienie_497890.jpg)](https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-05-07-apartheid-generals-threatened-and-blackmailed-trc-investigators-inquiry-hears/)

### **The horror recalled**

Activist and lawyer [Griffiths Mxenge](https://sahistory.org.za/people/griffiths-mlungisi-mxenge), 46, was in the prime of his life when he was killed and mutilated with three hunting knives and a wheel spanner on 19 November 1981 by Vlakplaas policemen Dirk Coetzee, Almond Nofomela, Joe Mamasela, Brian Ngqulunga and David Tshikalange.

We must not be squeamish decades later about the details of what was done or to stare down what the perpetrators were capable of.

Mxenge’s ears were practically hacked off, his throat slit and his stomach ripped open. He sustained 45 lacerations that pierced his lungs, liver and heart. Three of his killers were granted amnesty in 1997.

For a God-fearing nation, as those who supported the Nationalist government claimed to be, the “monster” that was Eugene de Kock, the commander of Vlakplaas, and his ilk who later exposed the depths of depravity, the reflection in the mirror was not pretty.

[READ MORE

The Judas goat — Eugene de Kock’s journey from Prime Evil to ailing witness

March 26, 2026 ![Image](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/sYlEwLkq69U6aUw_xOTggl_3jxI=/450x0/smart/file/attachments/orphans/DSC_3917copy_789604.jpg)](https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-03-26-the-judas-goat-eugene-de-kocks-journey-from-prime-evil-to-ailing-witness/)

Many recoiled in denial.

Veteran lawman Dumisa Ntsebeza, testifying at the inquiry, described the later suppression of TRC cases as “a terrible stain” on South Africa’s history.

He told the panel that families of victims who had spent over three decades seeking accountability from perpetrators who were never held to account were entitled to this \[the Khampepe\] independent commission of inquiry, “not just as a matter of law, but as a moral imperative”.

That these issues had not been faced before had “enabled the myth of a fairytale transition in South Africa to be widely disseminated across the world, yet how long will this last? If the past is not dealt with, it will return to haunt us,” he stated.

![P12 Thamm cultural 1976](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/ARgP_AJcd_r-XScZd6TUZydefy0=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/2993/12AV_00007446_600204.jpg)

*Steve Biko having a smoke with Mamphela Ramphele, circa 1970s. (Photo: Gallo Images / Daily Dispatch)*

### **Biko’s ghost**

In the reopened inquest into the murder during security police detention of Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko, the autopsy performed afterwards recorded multiple old and fresh open wounds, necrosis in parts of the brain, damage to the lungs, signs of kidney failure, abrasion to the skin, head injuries, a swollen brain and several small haemorrhages.

There were also burn marks on his body.

Specialist forensic pathologist Dr Shakeera Holland has testified at the inquest that these injuries were inflicted at different times, with some sustained hours and others several days before Biko’s death on 12 September 1977 at the age of 30.

[READ MORE

Biko’s injuries point to repeated, brutal assaults over days, inquest hears

September 1, 2026 ![Image](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/W3gD42kP858NUKmsODk9xfdlBpU=/450x0/smart/file/attachments/2997/Photo5_440847_422706.jpg)](https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-09-01-bikos-injuries-point-to-repeated-brutal-assaults-over-days-inquest-hears/)

### **When empathy mattered**

Make no mistake, white bodies too were harmed – blown to bits in bomb blasts – like the eight-year-old Cornio Smit. The little boy was out with his grandparents in the pre-Christmas rush of 1985 when a bomb ripped through the Sanlam shopping centre in Amanzimtoti on 23 December.

The 19-year-old boy bomber, Andrew Zondo, an Umkhonto weSizwe operative, was arrested shortly afterwards and hanged in September 1986 for five counts of murder.

Later, in a moment that – in these angry times where empathy is viewed by some as a weakness – Cornio’s father [Johan Smit,](https://www.justice.gov.za/trc/hrvtrans/methodis/smit.htm) shocked fellow white South Africans when he told the TRC in 1996 that he thought his son died a hero.

Of his meeting with the young Zondo’s parents, Smit said: “It was a great relief seeing them and expressing my feelings towards them that I felt glad that I could tell them that I felt no hatred for them. I bore them no grudge. And there was no hatred in my heart.

“I mean it was actually a rebellion, it was war, in war things happen that the generals don’t plan, nobody plans it, it just happens.”

### **The Mandela effect**

Smit’s statement to the TRC remains one of several outlier testimonies of how ordinary people caught in the crossfire dealt with loss and grief. Smit began by describing his journey to the mortuary to identify his young son’s body.

“We went to see him the following morning, but I didn’t want to believe that it was my son that was lying there.

“I asked them to take him out of the glass case so that I could see his chin. Under his chin he had a small little cut which he got when I accidentally dropped him when he was a child. I still really didn’t want to believe it, and my wife and my father had to convince me it was my child.

“Then after that we came up to Pretoria. We buried him in Pretoria. I told newspapers that I thought my son was a hero because he died for freedom for people that – I would prefer to speak Afrikaans.

“He died in the cause of the oppressed people. A lot of people criticised me for this. They thought that I was a traitor and they condemned me, but I still feel that way today.

“I feel that few white people in this country would ever have...(tape ends) they really struggle, they’d buy small amounts of paraffin and really didn’t have much money. I would never have come to this awareness otherwise.”

![ThammPretorius](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/QTtfQumjNMcllSjROkb2wE9aTrg=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/orphans/ED_466267_164723.jpg)

*Dr Wouter Basson speaks at a South African Teachers’ Union symposium in Gqeberha in September 2023. Basson gave a talk to more than 1,000 educators on how to deal with pressure. (Photo: Gallo Images / Die Burger / Lulama Zenzile)*

### **Justice delayed**

The families of victims like 23-year-old student Nokuthula Simelane, as well as those of the “Cradock Four” and others have never given up on unearthing the truth about delayed post-TRC prosecutions and why so many high-profile cases were delayed.

The commission has heard of missing dockets, ageing perpetrators, a legal run-around with a key allegation that a secret deal between the ANC and the former Nationalist government for indemnity had taken place.

Certainly, a recently declassified memo of the meeting of the last white cabinet on 25 April 1994, 48 hours before the country’s first historic democratic elections points to a behind-closed-doors agreement on “indemnity”. But critically, the memo, in Afrikaans, does use the phrase “for now”.

[READ MORE

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

August 16, 2026 ![Image](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/NCYNJgWUiL4IYUmEP8cmsyLTqtA=/450x0/smart/file/attachments/orphans/GettyImages-91120664_669351.jpg)](https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-08-16-declassified-document-shows-anc-were-favourable-to-offering-indemnity-to-apartheid-era-crimes/)

Whether a line can be drawn from this statement to the moratorium that was called on post-TRC prosecutions from 2003 onwards will be for retired judge Sisi Khampepe and her fellow panellists Justice Frans Kgomo and advocate Andrea Gabriel to decide.

That the celebrated cardiologist, Wouter Basson, the man who headed the regime’s chemical and biological warfare programme, recently delivered a “lecture” to a packed 400-seater AfriForum theatre in Pretoria, is evidence of the festering wound of the unfinished TRC business. [Basson](https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2013-01-30-meet-sas-new-motivational-speaker-dr-death/)has enjoyed playing to these audiences for years.

Reverend Frank Chikane, who was poisoned in 1989 with chemicals manufactured by Basson’s unit, has testified that “Dr Death”, as he has come to be known, could have been held accountable for countless atrocities.

However, Basson remains a free man after being acquitted of charges of murder and fraud. He was accused of murdering hundreds of South West African People’s Organisation (Swapo) members who were drugged and tossed out of an aircraft into the deep ocean.

[READ MORE

Wouter Basson could have been charged for atrocities, Rev Frank Chikane tells inquiry

May 19, 2026 ![Image](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/K4nJZ1CVrcRo9XkCc8Nlsli2XHw=/450x0/smart/file/attachments/orphans/ED_609420_208846.jpg)](https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-05-19-wouter-basson-could-have-been-charged-for-atrocities-rev-frank-chikane-tells-inquiry/)

### **WWMD**

Both former presidents Mbeki and Zuma have denied any political interference in post-TRC prosecutions. This they have steadily maintained as they have sought to delay proceedings.

[READ MORE

Mbeki and Zuma: Two presidents, one commission and the lawfare over TRC accountability

March 8, 2026 ![Image](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/F-Dj6BqTG-Wu9rdEAhbP0gClTYk=/450x0/smart/file/attachments/orphans/thammsisi_817181.jpg)](https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-03-08-mbeki-and-zuma-two-presidents-one-commis-one-commission-and-the-lawfare-over-trc/)

How would Mandela have seized this moment? What would Mandela do (WWMD)? We can only imagine by evaluating his walk, and not just his talk.

Mandela was first South African head of state to be subpoenaed to testify in court in 1998 to justify an executive decision to investigate allegations of racism and corruption in Louis Luyt’s South African Rugby Football Union. He went.

Could Mbeki rise to an occasion that would correct the contemporary understanding of history and that Mandela and the ANC “sold out”?

Perhaps the only grand sell-out, in the end, was when organised crime began infiltrating state law enforcement institutions, beginning with Glenn Agliotti and former National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi. Many of the corrupt in the old guard, including the former “homelands”, were “integrated” into a new order and arrived with their old tricks of the trade.

Could Mbeki set aside legal requirements and whatever it is the state and the ANC are kicking back against, to set out the uncertain, violent terrain at the time with a far-right minority armed to the teeth, determined to hold onto power and unafraid of violence and stoking racist venom?

He could remind us that the former military generals were not going to roll over like puppies for a tummy rub. Mandela *and* the ANC saved the day and a precarious future.

For South Africans born after 1994 and later, this is “old history”, perhaps the equivalent of a flickering black-and-white movie or some VHS clip about long ago, a distant past.

Somehow, through this all, South Africa has clung by its fingernails to the Constitution collectively forged based on the ideals of the Freedom Charter, as set out by distinguished historian Professor André Odendaal in his book [Dear Comrade President.](https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2022-09-07-we-live-in-a-broken-system-where-the-government-is-either-powerless-or-reluctant-to-act/)

All through State Capture I (The Gupta Years) and version II, now unfolding at the Madlanga Commission, our path to this moment has been deeply flawed, but it still holds.

The Khampepe Commission will have to determine whether the families who have brought these matters this far are entitled to the redress they seek, and whether there was indeed a dirty bandage placed over a festering wound that will never heal. **DM**