Reparations grants await victims
Matome Sebelebele
2 November 2004
Government has urged 1 800 South Africans, who have appeared before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and have been declared victims, to come forward and claim their reparations grant.
Already more than 16 000 apartheid victims have been paid their grants of at least R30 000 with those still outstanding yet to come forward, prompting authorities to make the appeal.
The victims were identified by the TRC in its final report handed to President Thabo Mbeki last year with recommendations that included paying victims of apartheid a once-off amount for the suffering endured under the apartheid regime.
But many of these claimants have proven difficult to trace, primarily due to incorrect addresses, or a change of address and in some instances some victims may have died.
The government has set up a telephone line - (012) 315-1292/1425/1286/1786 - for these beneficiaries to call.
An official in the Justice Department,
Farouk Hoosen, an administrator of the President's Fund responsible for grant disbursement, said "only specific people on the list" ought to make the call.
"It must be people who have appeared before the TRC, and who have been allocated a TRC reference number (TRR no)," he said.
Hoosen said government wanted to ensure that everyone who has been identified as a victim by the TRC was awarded the reparations.
"We urge anyone who has not yet received their R30 000 to make contact urgently."
Speaking in Parliament after receiving the recommendation last year, Mbeki said government hoped the money would offer "some relief" since many of the victims and the general public were not in the struggle to make money but to liberate the nation from the jaws of apartheid.
"We do so with some apprehension, for as the TRC itself has underlined, no one can attach monetary value to life and suffering nor can an argument be sustained that the efforts of millions of South
Africans to liberate themselves was for monetary gain," he said.
The commission, led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, was set up in 1995 to investigate human rights violations and atrocities committed during the apartheid years and made recommendations on reparations.
Source: BuaNews
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