Pretoria, South Africa
South Africans who were tortured or unjustly imprisoned under apartheid will receive a one-time government payment, President Thabo Mbeki said this week. About 22,000 people—or their survivors, in the cases of those killed by the racist former regime—are to receive about $4,000 each. Victims’ rights groups vowed to reject the sum, saying it was far too little. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a body set up in 1996 to investigate the crimes of the apartheid era, recommended that businesses that profited from apartheid should pay for the reparations, but Mbeki said he’d seek the funding elsewhere.
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