Ex-President Approved Extension Of Secrecy

In his final days in power, former President F.W. de Klerk approved papers blocking public access to minutes from his Cabinet meetings for 10 additional years.

The action, taken secretly, would keep the Cabinet minutes under wraps until the year 2034, instead of the normal 30-year period.

Government officials said new legislation would be submitted to parliament next year to rescind the order and cut to 20 years the embargo on public access to the documents, the Sunday Times newspaper reported.

In the meantime, the minutes can be used only in court cases.

The extension was the third secret act by de Klerk in the week before the nation’s first all-race election in April 1994, which brought Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress to power. De Klerk is now in Mandela’s Cabinet under a power-sharing agreement.

De Klerk also granted blanket amnesty to 3,500 people, including former Cabinet ministers Adriaan Vlok and Magnus Malan, for unspecified offenses.

Malan and 19 others were charged Dec. 1 with murder in connection with the killings of 13 ANC sympathizers, including 10 children, by hit men trained by the South African military while he was defense minister.

Mandela, now the nation’s first black president, and other government and ANC officials have said the amnesties would be ignored because they were issued in secret and the offenses being pardoned were not revealed.