TRC Final Report

Volume 1

Chapter 6

Part Appendix2

Subsection 6

Historical periods

25 The Commission’s mandate period covered four major historical periods, from 1960 to 1994. The graph below shows that most violations reported by deponents took place in the period after the unbanning of political parties (1990-1994) followed closely by the years in which states of emergency were in force (1983-1989).

26 The lower number of reported violations in early periods is partly a consequence of the different political climate during those years, but is also partly due to the fact that people from that time were either too old to come the Commission, or had passed away.

27 A significant point is that violations reported to have taken place in the period after the unbannings were more commonly reported by women. This is because the nature of the violence changed dramatically in that period, during which whole communities were indiscriminately affected.

Concluding remarks

28 The Commission did not try to carry out a census of violations of human rights. It had neither the time nor the resources to do so. Consequently, we will never know exactly how many people suffered during the mandate period.

29 Instead, the Commission appealed to South Africans to come forward to tell the Human Rights Violation Committee what had happened to them. By the end of the Commission’s lifespan, 21 000 people had come forward, women and men, old and young, and told the Commission about nearly 38 000 gross violations of human rights. In the process, the broad outlines of the past emerged with undeniable clarity. Ninety percent of those who came forward were black. Most of them were women. The greatest number of these approached the Commission on behalf of dead men to whom they were related.