applied for amnesty, they, too, said that Botha and de Klerk had given or-
ders to kill.38
The TRC subpoenaed Botha and de Klerk. Botha refused to comply;
everything he did was in defense of South Africa against international
communism, and he would never apologize for apartheid: "I've said many
times that the word apartheid means good neighborliness. "39
Unlike
Botha, de Klerk sent two written submissions and accepted his invitation
to attend the commission. He gave a half-hearted apology for apartheid
but insisted that he had never authorized and had not even been aware
of the brutal activities of the police and military units. De Klerk never
budged from that position, and the exasperated commissioners were con-
vinced that he was Iying.f? Buthelezi also accepted the commission's invi-
tation, but he used the occasion to denounce the TRC and put all the blame
for violence on the ANC. In their report, the commissioners found that
Botha and Buthelezi were responsible for gross violations of human rights
and that de Klerk was an accessory to such violations.f!
Although white supremacists linked to the former government had
been responsible for a vast majority of the violence reported to the TRC,
the liberation forces, too, had committed a substantial number of grave