South Africa

Today marks the 10th anniversary since the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).  The TRC was set up in terms of the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act No. 34 of 1995 with a mandate to "bear witness to, record and in some cases grant amnesty to the perpetrators of crimes relating to human rights violations, reparation and rehabilitation."

 

In theory the commission was empowered to grant amnesty to those charged with atrocities during Apartheid so long as two conditions were met: The crimes were politically motivated and the entire and whole truth was told by the person seeking amnesty. No one was exempt from being charged...5392 people were refused amnesty and 849 were granted amnesty, out of 7112 petitioners (Wiki)

 

As a South African I know many whites were and still are in denial regarding the horrors of apartheid. I am not talking about some sort of revisionist history that has taken place.....it is, how do I say this, just not spoken of. It is acknowledged as having happened, it is acknowledged that it was bad but there is virtually zero acceptance of personal complicity in what happened. There is a twisted joke that floats round South Africa in that "you can never find a single white person who voted for the Apartheid Government." Ever. This is the denial I am talking about, it is like 1994 rolled round and suddenly the consciences and memories of millions of white South Africans were washed clean. For black South Africans it is the opposite struggle -- a struggle to get acknowledgment for what they suffered and continue to suffer due to the residues of the apartheid system. When I talk about acknowlegement I am not talking about the government of the day making hollow speeches in Parliament, but real acknowledgement. BEE and affirmative action have been the two most visible efforts of the ANC to adjust the status quo and address the mistakes of the past. These efforts have in some ways addressed the financial and economic residue of apartheid but haven't come close to addressing the core "emotional" problems of apartheid.

 

Let me explain this in a different way. After the Second World War the two defeated nations of Japan and Germany took very different paths towards reconciliation and atoning for their past wrongs. The Germans fully acknowledged their guilt for the crimes they committed and made substantial efforts to mend relations with the peoples they had wronged. The Japanese did much the same although they seemed to stop at the final step, they allowed aspects of their militarised and imperialistic past to exist (the Americans bear complicity in this). That is part of the reason why we see protests breaking out all over Asia when Prime Minister Koizumi visits the Yasakuni shrine (containing the remains of convicted wall criminals). Or the recent massive protests in Korea and China over newly released Japanese school textbooks that sanitised Japan's wartime record. None of these things have happened in or with Germany. Sure you have the fringe group neo-nazi groups but nothing that approaches the mainstream like you have in Japan.

 

This brings me back to SA. Like Germany and Japan, white South Africa has made an effort to give back both financially and economically to black South Africans. However, I don't think the majority have taken that final step and made the connection between themselves and what happened under Apartheid. Whether consciously or not they have not made peace with the past.

 

This is why I believe the TRC was the most important organisation to grow out of the post-apartheid government. People needed to see and feel what happened to fellow South Africans under apartheid, the needed to be taken to the torture cells, they needed to be shown the inner working of Vlakplaas, they needed to feel the rage, sorrow and hate that those times caused so many people. One of the best books I have read about the TRC was Country of my Skull by Antjie Krog, an emotional and honest book that I think comes close to summing up what the TRC meant to many people. For others it was an inconvenience "let bygones be bygones, why bring up the past", the people who said this were 99.9% of the time people had the least knowledge about apartheid really was or the evil it represented. Soon many of them were singing a different tune when they started hearing the atrocities that were committed in their names.

 

Many today still question the whether the TRC was a good idea. Undoubtedly, it did have many problems but I think with the amount of ground it had to cover and the subject matter it dealt with it did a fine job. If anyone failed it was the government who ultimately seemed to lose interest and the drive to see things to an effective conclusion.