TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSIONER IS COMMENCEMENT SPEAKER

   COLUMBUS -- A high-ranking member of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) will deliver the commencement address during The Ohio State University’s spring ceremony on June 11.

   Approximately 4,700 graduates will receive degrees during the ceremony, to be held on the Oval this year because of renovations at Ohio Stadium. Commencement begins at 9:30 a.m.

   Dumisa Ntsebeza, a human rights lawyer who served as acting chair of the TRC in Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s absence, also headed the commission’s Investigative Unit.

   A former teacher, Ntsebeza joined the law firm Sangoni Partnership in 1982 and became well-known for his defense of the politically persecuted. He was founder president of the National Association of Democratic Lawyers, established in 1988. In December 1998, he was appointed as an acting judge in the South Africa judiciary.

   Ntsebeza is described by the Mail & Guardian of South Africa as “largely unsung as a hero of the struggle,” and as someone who “suffered detention, trial, banishment and dirty tricks” during the apartheid era.

   He was appointed to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established in 1995 to investigate apartheid-era human rights abuses committed by all sides between 1960 and 1994.

   The commission released a 3,500-page report in October 1998 that, according to the South African Press Association, “blamed the former apartheid state responsible for institutionalized violence but has also held all political groupings accountable for the decades of conflict in the country.”

   The report’s findings held the former apartheid state and its allies responsible for the major part of the gross human rights violations committed against the South African people.

   The commission’s objectives were to promote national unity and reconciliation by establishing as complete a picture as possible of the causes, nature and extent of the human rights violations through investigations and hearings; facilitating the granting of amnesty to those who disclosed facts relating to acts associated with a political objective; and establishing and making known victims’ fates or whereabouts and restoring their human and civil dignity by giving them an opportunity to relate their own accounts of the violations, and recommending reparation measures.

   The commission’s duties concluded in October 1998, but its Amnesty Committee continues to hold hearings. The committee considers applications for amnesty for human rights violations and grants amnesty when it determines that the offense was associated with a political objective and took place during apartheid rule, and after full disclosure has been made.

   Ntsebeza’s appearance at Ohio State is made possible with assistance of the Ronald H. Brown Foundation, which is making travel arrangements.

Contact: Ruth Gerstner, University Communications, (614) 292-8424