Special Report Transcript Episode 42, Section 2, Time 11:34

OK Gail Reagon. // Reparation, exactly that. Increasingly there is an impression from people that for them a major part of reparation would be full disclosure, right. And if you listen to some of the comments that the National Party for instance has made around the Truth Commission process. I’m wondering, how are you as a Commission going to go beyond confirmation of what is known? How are you going to satisfy the very real need out there to hear from the people who were handling the former government, that they were responsible for some of these atrocities? You’ve had a second resubmission from some of the political parties. Is that taking us any closer towards the full picture? // The tension that exists between victims and perpetrators is a tension that will be held in place for some time. You need other stakeholders like the Afrikaner churches creating a climate for disclosure because unless you have all those groups pushing and assisting people to kind of say that reconciliation depends not on the side of the victims only but on the side of the victims knowing fully what took place, as victims indeed have said several times. If we knew the truth fully and if we knew who actually did this we will have a forgiving kind of condition and I think that tension is going to be with us for some time. // Can I ask a very direct question about reparation? There is this perception that the R & R Committee, as it’s known, has done very little for victims the past year. What is the R & R Committee doing at the moment for victims and what has it done the past year? // First of all the process of R & R coming out with a specific policy had to take a number of months because it’s like writing a dictionary before the language is being spoken. So we had to go through some of the experiences and begin to identify policy out of the utterances of the people. The most urgent things have been like the health of the people who are coming up, shelter for instance and also dealing with psychological and emotional issues. But that policy has now been put in place, the urgent interim reparations have been put in place. … to put it forward to the implementing body with the government that they can actually comment on it. So far …

Notes: Max du Preez; Gail Reagon; Reverend Mcebisi Xundu (Eastern Cape Region)

References: there are no references for this transcript