Mbeki urges quid pro quo for Vlok prosecution, arousing suspicion of a new attack on ANC deputy president

Some leaders and other senior members of the ANC-led tripartite alliance fear that prosecutions for apartheid-era crimes could be used to hobble those not in President Thabo Mbeki's camp - and that Jacob Zuma in particular might be one of those targeted.

Their concerns flow from the recent prosecutions of Adriaan Vlok, a former minister of law and order, and four former policemen, for attempting to murder Frank Chikane, now the director-general of the presidency, in 1989. Vlok and the others received suspended sentences in exchange for pleading guilty.

Zuma, the current deputy president of the ANC, is working hard to get himself nominated as president of the ANC at the party's national conference in December and, consequently, as the next president of the country.

But if Zuma were to be found guilty of a crime for which the sentence would be more than minor, he would not be able to hold public office.

The anxiety of the tripartite leaders has surfaced in the wake of an ANC national executive committee meeting on July 27 and 28. Insiders claim that, towards the end of the two-day meeting, Mbeki spoke passionately of the need for there to be a quid pro quo on the part of ANC members in response to the Vlok prosecution.

Mbeki is believed to have pointed out that the ANC had not chosen "group indemnity" at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and that it was therefore possible that some members of the party could be charged by the National Prosecuting Authority, which now has the power to charge and to arrange plea bargains for politically related offences committed before May 11 1994.

The president reportedly said that the ANC had lawyers standing by and that, if any members of the party were charged by the NPA for "apartheid-era atrocities", they needed to give serious consideration to choosing the option of a plea bargain.

Zuma, who attended the NEC meeting but had to leave early for KwaZulu-Natal before Mbeki "took control of the discussion", is understood to have argued that he would never plead guilty to any action he had taken as part of the struggle.

Zuma adherents say that the incident being talked about "in ANC circles" as one for which Zuma could be prosecuted relates to the death in November 1989 of Thami Zulu within a week of his release from detention by ANC security officials.

Thami Zulu was the nom de guerre of Mzwakhe Ngwenya, a Soweto-born man who was the commander of the ANC guerrilla campaign in Natal in the 1980s. TZ, as he was known, was detained as a suspected South African government spy in June 1988 and held in solitary confinement in Lusaka for 17 months.

The suspicions of the ANC security department that the "Natal main machinery" - as the forces under TZ were referred to - had been infiltrated by an enemy agent were aroused after ANC combatants suffered a series of calamitous defeats at the hands of government security forces.

As the ANC's commission of inquiry - on which ANC stalwart Albie Sachs, now a constitutional court judge, served - noted, TZ was a robust young man when he was detained but emerged skeletally thin and seriously ill. Post-mortem tests showed traces of diazinon and beer in his stomach - diazinon being a highly poisonous substance soluble in beer.

With acknowledgements to Jeremy Gordin, Patrick Laurence and The Sunday Independent.