RIGHTS AFRICA: Will the Whole Truth Ever be Known?

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis Gumisai Mutume

JOHANNESBURG, Apr 22 1998 (IPS) - As the Truth and Reconciliation Commission approaches its end, South Africa appears to have more questions than answers about the full history of apartheid atrocities.

The term of the TRC — a Nuremburg Trials-styled body investigating gross human rights violations perpetrated during apartheid — ends in July and South Africa is taking stock of two and a half years of horror stories of murder, rape, torture and chemical warfare.

One of the main questions that lingers on is whether the trauma of digging into this ghastly past was worth the soul- searching.

“We are left with more questions than answers,” says Commissioner Hlengiwe Mkhize. “Will the story of apartheid atrocities ever be complete? Millions of South Africans chose not to interact with the TRC … why?”

“Some joked about victims’ tears, referring to the commission as the ‘Tissue Commission’, some were quick to call for reconciliation and called on victims to move on and forget.”

The TRC’s purpose was to facilitate a truth-recovery process aimed at reconciling South Africans with the past and to make amends to victims through granting of reparations and rehabilitation.

South African history is marked by extreme violence and the TRC sought to establish as clear a picture as possible of the causes, nature and extent of gross human rights violations during the period between March 1960 and December 1993.

“…the TRC, by creating an accurate picture of the past, could liberate individuals and broader society from a skewed view of humanity constructed solely around the inhuman legacy of South African society,” notes Brandon Hamber of the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation.

“Furthermore, by creating a realistic perspective of human rights abuses individual and collective cognitive recovery could be aided by allowing survivors to accept what happened to them and deal with their resultant emotional responses,” adds Hamber in a paper on the workings of the TRC.

But has the process of telling the truth been fair and just to the victims and survivors, especially when it appeared that perpetrators were not willing to appear before the commission or let out the secrets of apartheid?

How will the mainly black victims reconcile with the mainly white South Africans who benefitted from apartheid, especially when the leader of the former apartheid state, P.W. Botha, refuses to appear before the TRC and says he did what he did for the sake of the country.

Despite the ostensibly noble motivations for national reconciliation, will the black majority that suffered under the yoke of apartheid come to terms with how a handful of security officers detained, tortured and killed some 10,000 South Africans and how 3.5-million others were uprooted by forced removals?

What is also surprising in a nation that purports to be reconciling and admitting its wrongs is the extent of denial within the white community.

Other than those in politics and the military, Whites generally do not publicly admit that they voted for the National Party — the architects of apartheid who ruled the country from 1948 to 1994 — or that they supported apartheid.

And many wonder why, if there is good faith in the camp of the former rulers, were 135,000 security police files destroyed in the run-up to the elections as discovered by the Goldstone Commission?

The truth surrounding these files has not emerged during TRC proceedings.

“As victims we are not satisfied with the TRC,” says Alegria Nyoka of the Khulumani Support Group. “As individuals we thought that truth was going to be a pre-condition for reconciliation. Immediately you do not know the truth, it becomes difficult for you to reconcile with the perpetrator.”

Nyoka lost a brother to apartheid security forces, who entered their house one August evening in 1987, went straight to his room and pumped 12 bullets into his head.

In post-war Germany, the vehicle for the recovery of the truth was the series of public criminal prosecutions known as the Nuremburg Trials.

In sensitively negotiated settlements such as in Latin America, on the other hand, judicial Truth Commissions were set up to uncover the past without jeopardising the settlement with extensive prosecutions. Similarly, it is unlikely that there will be any extensive prosecutions in South Africa, nor are there attempts to jeopardise the settlement.

“How has the national process benefited the individuals it purported to serve?” queries Nomfundo Walaza of the Trauma Centre in Cape Town. “Was it a political trade-off for the settlement in South Africa?”

South Africa’s negotiated settlement brought about what is dubbed the Rainbow Nation — a country where people of all colours would live in harmony. It, however, still has to transfer economic power to the hands of Blacks who constitute 75 percent of the population from Whites, who make up 12 percent.

Walaza says the TRC process may have been “a double-edged sword” cutting at the emotions of victims and giving them little in return, and it eventually “may lead to bitterness and a desire to revenge”.

At the end of it all, symbolic reparations will be granted to victims. Government is still debating the nature of such benefits and who would be eligible.

Estimates by an economist commissioned by the TRC may mean that victims will receive 4,200 dollars over a six-year period, says Mkhize. There will also be educational, psychological and medical assistance programmes.