Special Report Transcript Episode 85, Section 2, Time 22:31

Professor Giliomee … // Well I’ve got trouble with Donald Woods’ assertion that people know when they hear the truth or not. I think as a newspaper editor I think he probably will say no that is not quite true. The point is that, certainly in the case of the Biko case we have had revelations, slightly more than what we’ve had after reading your book, which is very good by the way. But the point is I would like to know how could you actually say that it brings about reconciliation if only one fifth of the South African population believes so. Secondly, in terms of the Chilean commission. Yes, the proceedings were secret but the report was respected and now we have here a Truth Commission, one of them saying that they want to write a publicly sanctioned history. Now, there’s no historian on the Truth Commission, there’s no political scientist on the Truth Commission. It seems to me a totally mistaken … // Is that good or bad? // To say that you’re going to write a publicly sanctioned history, I mean that is the kind of stuff that one hears… // No I’m talking about the political scientist and the historian. // Well I think they have a certain approach, I am a historian. I think historians, political scientists, novelists have a certain approach. I’m terribly scared of a commission headed by priests and lawyers. I think it is a terrible combination. No one of them talk about the processes, they talk about moral or secular guilt. And if you want to establish guilt why don’t you go about it in the right way and establish guilt according to the only way that we know it namely cross examination, proper cross examination. // Well that certainly is the case in the amnesty process. I mean we have seen George Bizos spending days and weeks cross examining people like Clive Derby-Lewis and the other way around. // Max, I have agreed that the Amnesty Commission performed well until they gave that collective amnesty to the ANC leadership.

Notes: Max du Preez; Herman Giliomee

References: there are no references for this transcript