TRC Final Report

Volume 1

Chapter 1

Subsection 6

■ RECONCILIATION

68 Some have been upset by the suggestion that the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission could have resulted in making people angrier and race relations more difficult, as indicated by a recent survey. It would be naïvein the extreme to imagine that people would not be appalled by the ghastly revelations that the Commission has brought about. It would have been bizarre had this not happened. What is amazing is that the vast majority of the people of this land, those who form the bulk of the victims of the policies of the past, have said they believe reconciliation is possible.

69 The trouble is that there are erroneous notions of what reconciliation is all about. Reconciliation is not about being cosy; it is not about pretending that things were other than they were. Reconciliation based on falsehood, on not facing up to reality, is not true reconciliation and will not last.

70 We believe we have provided enough of the truth about our past for there to be a consensus about it. There is consensus that atrocious things were done on all sides. We know that the State used its considerable resources to wage a war against some of its citizens. We know that torture and deception and murder and death squads came to be the order of the day. We know that the liberation movements were not paragons of virtue and were often responsible for egging people on to behave in ways that were uncontrollable. We know that we may, in the present crime rate, be reaping the harvest of the campaigns to make the country ungovernable. We know that the immorality of apartheid has helped to create the climate where moral standards have fallen disastrously.

71 We should accept that truth has emerged even though it has initially alienated people from one another. The truth can be, and often is, divisive. However, it is only on the basis of truth that true reconciliation can take place. True reconciliation is not easy; it is not cheap. We have been amazed at some almost breathtaking examples of reconciliation that have happened through the Commission. Examples abound in the chapter on reconciliation. I want to make a heartfelt plea to my white fellow South Africans. On the whole we have been exhilarated by the magnanimity of those who should by rights be consumed by bitterness and a lust for revenge; who instead have time after time shown an astonishing magnanimity and willingness to forgive. It is not easy to forgive, but we have seen it happen. And some of those who have done so are white victims. Nevertheless, the bulk of victims have been black and I have been saddened by what has appeared to be a mean-spiritedness in some of the leadership in the white community. They should be saying: “How fortunate we are that these people do not want to treat us as we treated them. How fortunate that things have remained much the same for us except for the loss of some political power.”

72 Can we imagine the anger that has been caused by the disclosures that the previous government had a Chemical and Biological Warfare Programme with projects that allegedlly targeted only black people, and allegedly sought to to poison President Nelson Mandela and reduce the fertility of black women? Should our land not be overwhelmed by black fury leading to orgies of revenge, turning us into a Bosnia, a Northern Ireland or a Sri Lanka?

73 Dear fellow South Africans, please try to bring yourselves to respond with a like generosity and magnanimity. When one confesses, one confesses only one’s own sins, not those of another. When a husband wants to make up with his wife, he does not say, “I’m sorry, please forgive me, but darling of course you too have done soandso!” That is not the way to reach reconciliation. That is why I still hope that there will be a white leader who will say, “We had an evil system with awful consequences. Please forgive us.” Without qualification. If that were to happen, we would all be amazed at the response.

■ APPRECIATION

74 It has been a distinct honour and privilege to have been asked to preside over and participate in the crucial process of attempting to heal a traumatised and deeply divided people. We want to say thank you to the President, Mr Nelson Mandela, for having appointed us to this noble task. He has been an outstanding example and inspiration for the work of reconciling our alienated and polarised people.

75 We owe a great debt of gratitude to the Minister of Justice, the Honourable Mr Dullah Omar, who has been readily accessible and wonderfully supportive of us all in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It has been a great pleasure to have worked under the auspices of his department. He and his staff have spared no efforts in assisting us.

76 The Department of Safety and Security and the South African Police Services (SAPS) have been efficient in providing security to our buildings and personnel as well as at our various hearings. They have proved friendly and efficient and a splendid example of the kind of transformation we would like to see. They have increasingly become friends of the people.

77 We also want to express our appreciation to various other government departments at national, provincial and local levels.

78 Our difficult work would have been even more so had it not been for the outstanding contributions of the various faith communities, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and other organisations of civil society, so many of whom have facilitated our work at different levels and in all kinds of ways. We have benefited from the participation of many volunteers and we want them to know that we are deeply indebted to them for their invaluable contribution.

79 We have been fortunate that the media, both print and electronic, have helped to carry the Commission and its work into every corner of our own land and other lands. We are particularly grateful for the work of SABC (South African Broadcasting Corporation) radio, which communicated in all our official languages to ensure that even the illiterate did not miss out. We want to mention, too, the special television programme that was broadcast on Sunday evenings - giving a summary of the previous week’s events at the Commission and a preview of the coming week’s events. No wonder these television and radio programmes won prestigious awards - on which we congratulate them. The media helped to ensure that the Commission’s process was as inclusive and as non-elitist as possible.

80 I am honoured to express our gratitude to all those over 20 000 persons who came forward to tell us their stories - either at the public hearings of our Human Rights Violations Committee or in the statements recorded by our statement takers. They were generous in their readiness to make themselves vulnerable; to risk opening wounds that were perhaps in the process of healing, by sharing the often traumatic experiences of themselves or their loved ones as victims of gross violations of human rights. We are deeply in their debt and hope that coming to the Commission may have assisted in the rehabilitation of their human and civil dignity that was so callously trampled underfoot in the past. We pray that wounds that may have been re-opened in this process have been cleansed so that they will not fester; that some balm has been poured on them and that they will now heal.

81 We want to thank the various organisations, professional bodies and individuals who made written submissions as well as those who appeared before the Commission during the special institutional hearings. We are disappointed that certain bodies rejected our invitation to make submissions and are particularly distressed that judges refused to appear before the Commission, although a significant few did send written submissions. We have not been persuaded by the judges’ arguments as to why they did not appear.

82 We are grateful, too, for the support we have received from the international community - in personnel as well as financial aid. Our work would have been severely hampered had it not been for the generosity of foreign donor nations. They provided us with experienced police officers and investigators who strengthened our Investigation Unit quite considerably. They gave us funds to help to pay for the live radio and television broadcasts that made the Commission so much a part of the South African landscape. We are equally grateful to them for the generous donations they have already made to the President’s Fund from which reparations will be disbursed.