TRC Final Report

Volume 1

Chapter 5

Subsection 13

■ RESPONSIBILITY AND RECONCILIATION

101 The emergence of a responsible society, committed to the affirmation of human rights (and, therefore, to addressing the consequences of past violations), presupposes the acceptance of individual responsibility by all those who supported the system of apartheid (or simply allowed it to continue to function) and those who did not oppose violations during the political conflicts of the past.

102 It is, therefore, not only the task of the members of the Security Forces to examine themselves and their deeds. It is for every member of the society they served to do so. South Africa’s weapons, ammunition, uniforms, vehicles, radios and other equipment were all developed and provided by industry. South Africa’s finances and banking were controlled by institutions that went so far as to provide covert credit cards for covert operations. South African chaplains prayed for ‘victory’ and South African schools and universities educated for war. The media carried propaganda and the enfranchised white community voted the former government back into power, time after time, with ever-increasing majorities.²⁸

103 This moral responsibility goes deeper than legal and political accountability. Such individual and shared moral responsibility cannot be adequately addressed by legislation or this Commission. What is required is that individuals and the community as a whole must recognise that the abdication of responsibility, the unquestioning obeying of commands (simply doing one’s job), submitting to the fear of punishment, moral indifference, the closing of one’s eyes to events or permitting oneself to be intoxicated, seduced or bought with personal advantages are all essential parts of the many-layered spiral of responsibility which makes large-scale, systematic human rights violations possible in modern states. Only this realisation can create the possibility for the emergence of something new in South African society. In short, what is required is a moral and spiritual renaissance capable of transforming moral indifference, denial, paralysing guilt and unacknowledged shame into personal and social responsibility.

104 At the practical level, the vexed issue of apartheid as a crime against humanity impinges perhaps more directly on moral than on legal culpability. A simple focus on the criminal culpability of isolated individuals responsible for apartheid can ignore the broader responsibilities presently under discussion. It is not enough merely to identify a few high-profile ‘criminals’ as those responsible for the atrocities of the past – and thus give insufficient attention to a deeper analysis of the underlying nature, cause and extent of apartheid. The essential nature of a crime against humanity, suggests Professor Denys Schreiner, does not lie in the detail or nature of the actual deeds involved in a particular system that is judged to be a crime.²⁹ Rather, it relates to the political structures which result in sections of the society being seen as less than fully human. It condemns the identified group to suffering and violence as a matter of birth, over which the individual concerned has no influence, control or escape. It excludes a section of the population from the rights afforded to others. It denies that same group participation in the selection of government and in government itself. It facilitates the promotion of extra-legal actions by the dominant group further to suppress those judged to be the ‘enemy’ - whether Jews, slaves or blacks. Finally, it promotes moral decline within the dominant group and the loss of a sense of what is just and fair. Briefly stated, it involves systematic racial discrimination which, by definition, constitutes the basis of apartheid.

105 A pertinent question is the extent to which individual South Africans can be regarded as responsible for the premises and presuppositions which gave rise to apartheid. The kindest answer consists of a reminder that history suggests that most citizens are inclined to lemming-like behaviour - thoughtless submission rather than thoughtful accountability. This is a tendency that needs to be addressed in ensuring that the future is different from the past and serves as a reminder that the most penetrating enquiry into the past involves more than a witch-hunt. It involves, rather, laying a foundation against which the present and all future governments will be judged.

106 The need for political accountability by the leaders and voters of the nation, and the varying degrees of moral responsibility that should be adopted by all South Africans, have (both by design and default) not been given sufficient emphasis by the Commission. These issues must be addressed if South Africans are to seize the future with dedication and commitment.

107 One of the reasons for this failure of emphasis is the fact that the greater part of the Commission’s focus has been on what could be regarded as the exceptional on gross violations of human rights rather than the more mundane but nonetheless traumatising dimensions of apartheid life that affected every single black South African. The killers of Vlakplaas have horrified the nation. The stories of a chain of shallow graves across the country, containing the remains of abducted activists who were brutalised, tortured and ultimately killed, have left many South Africans deeply shocked. The media has understandably focused on these events - labelling Eugene de Kock, the Vlakplaas commander, ‘Prime Evil’. The vast majority of victims who either made statements to the Commission or who appeared at public hearings of the Human Rights Violations Committee to tell their stories of suffering simply did not receive the same level of public attention. Indeed, victims of those violations of human rights that were not included in the Commission’s mandate received no individual public attention at all.

108 This focus on the outrageous has drawn the nation’s attention away from the more commonplace violations. The result is that ordinary South Africans do not see themselves as represented by those the Commission defines as perpetrators, failing to recognise the ‘little perpetrator’ in each one of us. To understand the source of evil is not to condone it. It is only by recognising the potential for evil in each one of us that we can take full responsibility for ensuring that such evil will never be repeated.

109 A second reason for the insufficient focus on moral responsibility beyond the narrow, direct responsibility of specific perpetrators of gross human rights violations was the widespread failure fully to grasp the significance of individual victims’ testimony before the Commission. Each story of suffering provided a penetrating window into the past, thereby contributing to a more complete picture of gross violations of human rights in South Africa. The nation must use these stories to sharpen its moral conscience and to ensure that, never again, will it gradually atrophy to the point where personal responsibility is abdicated. The challenge is to develop public awareness, to keep the memories alive, not only of gross violations of human rights, but of everyday life under apartheid. Only in this way can South Africans ensure that they do not again become complicit in the banality that leads, step by step, to the kinds of outrageous deeds that have left many ‘good’ South Africans feeling that they can never be expected, even indirectly, to accept responsibility for them. In the words of President Nelson Mandela:

All of us, as a nation that has newly found itself, share in the shame at the capacity of human beings of any race or language group to be inhumane to other human beings. We should all share in the commitment to a South Africa in which that will never happen again.³⁰

110 Thus, a key pillar of the bridge between a deeply divided past of “untold suffering and injustice” and a future “founded upon the recognition of human rights, democracy, peaceful co-existence, and development opportunities for all” is a wide acceptance of direct and indirect, individual and shared responsibility for past human rights violations.

111 In this process of bridge building, those who have benefited and are still benefiting from a range of unearned privileges under apartheid have a crucial role to play. Although this was not part of the Commission’s mandate, it was recognised as a vital dimension of national reconciliation. This means that a great deal of attention must be given to an altered sense of responsibility; namely the duty or obligation of those who have benefited so much (through racially privileged education, unfair access to land, business opportunities and so on) to contribute to the present and future reconstruction of our society.³¹