Deon Rossouw breaks down why it is dangerous to apply the 'innocent until proven guilty' rule in non-court contexts when there are serious allegations of unethical or illegal conduct.
Since the dying days of apartheid in the mid-1990s, and at several pivotal moments since, South Africans have yearned for some measure of accountability for the ravages of apartheid. After all, the end of a system declared a crime against humanity by the United Nations had to yield an inevitable reckoning and accountability, especially for its victims. The first opportunity for accountability for apartheid crimes in democratic South Africa came with the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), released in 1998 and 2003. The universal expectation was that those denied amnesty at the commission for apartheid-era atrocities, or those who refused to appear before it, would be held accountable by the criminal justice system.