Special Report Transcript Episode 74, Section 4, Time 35:33

I was sitting in my room in the office in Pretoria at the University, early last year in January, at peace with the world not thinking even of the TRC when the phone rang. I picked up the telephone and if I remember correctly it went like this. Hi Piet it’s Desmond speaking, are you sitting down? Then he told me that the commissioners were appointed to the Truth Commission by government, by the president, but that they were given the opportunity to add a number of committee members. And he said to me that it is a problem that nobody representing the Afrikaner community, the church community, ‘die Afrikaanse kerke,’ so-called and that my name is being circulated and found acceptable by all. And then he said to me over the phone, you know of course I am the Archbishop of Cape Town and I can speak for the Lord God and the Lord says you have to come, but you have three days to decide. So here I am. I came and it started in a sense one of the most difficult but also one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. The most important part of the work of a Reparation and Rehabilitation Committee is to draft policy for reparation for the victims, which meant that during the past months we had to listen carefully to the harm, the circumstances of the people and to rewrite all the needs of the people into policy form. We are very grateful that our policy has been adopted now by the TRC; it’s been given through to the Government and they are rewriting it in regulation form to promulgate it and we seriously hope that when the Truth Commission closes its door that the victims could fall in line for reparations.

Notes: Prof Piet Meiring

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