South Africa: Truth and Reconciliation Commission

South Africa: Truth And Reconciliation Commission

From 1948-1994, South Africa experienced one of the darkest periods in the country’s history. During this time, racial discrimination and horrific human rights violations were rampant across South Africa. There were beatings and tortures, massacres and police murders. The cruel injustices experienced during these years were due to a political system known as apartheid. In 1994, South Africa was given a way to free themselves from the vice grip of apartheid by using their nation’s first democratic elections to elect a man with a vision and desire for freedom and equality stronger than South Africa had ever seen before; this man was Nelson Mandela. Mandela and his democratically elected South African government were handed the onerous task of rebuilding a nation devastated by the cruelties of apartheid. By navigating a course that ran between the violent, punitive Nuremburg Trials and the impossible folly of completely forgetting their troubled past, the new government brought forth the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), a commission that was ultimately beneficial to both the victims and the perpetrators of the crimes committed under apartheid. By addressing both sides of the equation and ignoring neither, the TRC paved a new road for South Africa and for the world. Apartheid as an official system dates to 1948 and the election of Afrikaner Daniel Francois Malan and the National Party. The purpose of apartheid (from the Afrikaans apart apart + heid – hood) was to maintain white superiority in South Africa while continually widening the racial gap between the whites and the non-whites in terms of education, economy, and rights. Unfortunately this tactic was very successful for many years. The South African Parliament, dominated by wealthy, white South Africans, would pass law after law, further diminishing the rights of non-whites every time.
One of the most influential laws passed by D.F. Malan and his government was the Bantu Education Act of 1953. (South Africa Overcoming) This law forced all schools in black or colored communities to teach their students not the traditional form of education, the education the white children were receiving, but rather a form of education that parliament thought would be more fit for the non-white children of South Africa. With this Act, these children were taught only the skills they would need to know to do the labor work society funneled them into doing. The government wanted to ensure that they were prepared to work after their “education” was done and they had nowhere else to turn but the labor work the government prepared them to do. The Minister of Native Affairs at the time, Dr. Hendrik F. Verwoerd, described the “benefits” of the Act as follows: “Until now, he (the “Native”) has been subjected to a school system which drew him away from his community and misled him by showing him the greener pastures of European Society where he is not allowed to graze.” (South Africa Overcoming) This style of education the blacks and colored children received was one of the many reasons they could never get out of the vicious poverty cycle so many of them were stuck in. Although the Truth and Reconciliation Committee did not directly deal with improving the inadequate education provided to the blacks and colored people in South Africa, it did work to amend the relationship between the whites and the blacks, which in turn has given the blacks more opportunity to pursue a higher form of education. Another area of society where blacks and colored South Africans found themselves facing cruel injustices was in justice itself. The police force was to blame for many of the worst offenses during the apartheid era. Parliament also contributed to the grave injustices of apartheid, not by physically abusing non-white South Africans, but by seriously limiting their rights and their opportunities. In 1953, parliament passed two laws, the Public Safety Act and Criminal Law Amendment Act, both of which seriously offended the rights of the blacks and the colored people. These acts gave the government the right to call for a state of emergency at any point in time with very little cause. They also allowed any police officer to detain a black or colored person for six months without filing a charge against them. Lastly, they imposed severe penalties for anyone who was brave enough appeal a court ruling or protest the passing of a law. These penalties could range from a fine to imprisonment and beatings. The government took the opportunity to exercise their new rights in 1960 when they declared a state of emergency at what is known as the Sharpeville Massacre for 156 days because a group of black men were refusing to carry their passbooks, something legally required of them. The government proceeded to kill 69 people and injure 190 more in the 156-day “state of emergency.” (Noguchi) Many other unsolved cases during the apartheid era point to police abuse as well. In the infamous Cradock Four case, the police intercepted four black boys at a roadblock, two of whom were targeted for assassination, kidnapped them and proceeded to beat them and then burn their bodies. In the Pebco Three case, the police took three African National Congress party members to an abandoned police station where they were beaten by three or four officers at one time until they eventually died. (Tutu) This, as in the Cradock Four case many other cases of its nature, had no closure, no perpetrator was ever charged simply because who was going to charge them, the people responsible for the crime were the same people supposedly upholding the judicial system. In a testimony at the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, a man who worked for the Security Police testified, “The purpose of the Security Police is not just to kill people and get out… The idea is to inflict as much pain as possible.” (Tutu pg. 132) These are the kind of injustices the blacks and colored people in South Africa faced during the long 46 years of apartheid. These are the kind of people who were supposed to be protecting them, the people that were supposed to stand for justice but instead stood for injustice and cruelty. This is what South Africa had to recover from. In essence, these crimes committed by the apartheid government against their own people is what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was built to reform.
Sadly, the struggles for equality and opportunity the blacks and colored people longed for did not stop at education and violence. The gap between the whites and non-whites in South Africa was evident in almost every aspect of life. A poll taken in 1978 showed that there were 19 million blacks living in South Africa to only 4.5 million white South Africans, yet the white population made up 75 percent of the national income while the blacks income made up less than 20 percent. This statistic shows the lack of equality and the prejudice held against the blacks by the government, not being allowed equal opportunities with the whites. In that same poll, the reported number of doctors to patients was 1 to every 400 white South Africans in comparison to 1 doctor for every 44,000 black South Africans. The blame for this enormous lack of doctors in the black community again falls on the shoulders of the government. There was no way for black or colored people to get an education that would properly prepare them for giving medical attention to the people in their community who needed it, and many people did. The only people that could receive a proper education preparing them for being a successful doctor were the whites, and few whites were willing to provide aid to the blacks, particularly in such an interactive manner as being a doctor. The grave injustices, the inequality experienced by the non-whites in South Africa, and the cruel actions administered by the South African government during the apartheid era, spanning from 1948-1994, left a wounded nation begging for freedom and equality, but not with a clear idea of how they would achieve their goals. After lengthy discussion of what the best course of action was, considering options like the Nuremburg Trials or simply trying to forget the terrible things that happened to them, the South African government, under the leadership of Nelson Mandela, decided to create a medium of sorts between the two prior considerations. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is what was decided upon.
The Nuremberg Trials were military trials after the end of World War II where prominent officials from Nazi Germany were convicted of human rights violations and crimes against humanity. In this case, many of the people convicted were hanged rather than given amnesty like the perpetrators in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Out of the 24 major war criminals put on trial, half of them were put to death while three more were given life imprisonment. These are not the actions South Africa wanted to reconstruct their country off of. They felt as if they chose to punish the predominantly white perpetrators in a traditional judicial system, they would only be creating more animosity and tension between the whites and non-whites. If as soon as some black South Africans got power, they used it to punish the white South Africans, they would be simply reversing their role with the whites and would continue to fuel the anger felt between the racial groups. This would accomplish nothing and possibly move South Africa away from a more unified country. Instead, South Africa decided to show forgiveness and amend the wounded relationship between the whites and blacks in South Africa. On the opposite end of the spectrum, some South Africans wanted to completely forget about the past and move on from the horrors of what happened during apartheid. They thought that forgetting what happened would help people move on from whatever thing of the past was still haunting them. This approach was not accepted simply the South African government did not agree with this method of healing. In fact they believed just the opposite. The South African government agreed with the philosophy held by highly acclaimed poet and novelist George Santayana that, “Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.” Instead they wanted to remember the past through the trial hearings and testimonies of those who felt the wrath of apartheid. They wanted to create a commonly accepted view of the past that could not be argued with so that everyone, whites, blacks or coloreds, could accept what happened, see the terrible things they had done or may have had done to them in a bigger picture and learn from it. By describing to many of the whites what truly transpired under apartheid and at they same time show they forgiveness was a powerful tool in reconciling South Africa because it was a way to rekindle the relationship between the whites and non-whites. After the South African government established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and their image of how it would work, they still had to put it to the test. How effective the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, TRC for short, would be was yet to be determined. The TRC was attempting to accomplish this by using terrific feat by giving the victims of apartheid the voice that they had been deprived of for so long, allowing them to tell their story. In many cases though, it was not only the victim that was haunted by what ever had happened to them, but the perpetrator as well. The crimes many of the perpetrators committed would haunt them long after the actual act of the crime, similarly to the victim. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was also used to avoid creating further tension between the whites and non-whites through the power of forgiveness and unwillingness to respond with the same kind of hatred the blacks faced under apartheid. One of the main focuses of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was to create a commission that benefitted both the victim and the perpetrator, and it did just that. The victim in most of the politically motivated crimes (the only type of crime the TRC would hear) during the apartheid era where black or colored people who had not only been oppressed physically for so long, but they were also kept from speaking out against the brutal crimes they had faced. They victims and the families of victims had to bottle up the anger, hatred, sorrow, and anguish they felt because there was no place for them to turn. There was no place for them to seek justice for the crime they were weeping over was considered justice. The TRC was able to give these victims a voice, a chance to tell their story and finally tell the world what happened to them, a chance to finally come to terms with what happened and find peace within themselves. In one instance at a TRC hearing, a woman said, “We do want to forgive, but we don’t know whom to forgive.” (Tutu pg. 149) She said this only after she gave the description of how her father was brutally killed and her mother harassed by the Security Police. For some victims, this was the only thing they really wanted, to forgive the people who did them wrong in an attempt to free themselves and their perpetrators from the shackles of the past holding them down. Other victims needed to tell the world what happened to them or their loved ones to validate the pain and suffering they went through and describe just how horrible apartheid was to them and South Africa. The victims, however, were not the only people that were liberated by telling their story and what they had done or what had been done to them. In many cases, the perpetrator was carrying just as much pain as the victim. Not every perpetrator was a bad person; in fact many of them were simply following orders. Although this does not in any way excuse the heinous acts they may have committed, it is understandable how they could have gotten caught up in the cruel society apartheid created. Colonel Horst Schobesberger, one of the officers involved in the Bisho Massacre that resulted in the death of 28 protestors, said at his TRC hearing, “I say we are sorry. I say the burden of the Bisho Massacre will be on our shoulders for the rest of our lives…try and understand also the pressure they (the other soldiers involved in the shooting) were under.” (Tutu pg. 150-151) This is the kind of pain the perpetrators are living with. The are living with a dirty soul that would continue to haunt them unless they sought forgiveness from the people they harmed, an option provided to them by the TRC. When the soldiers opened fire on the protestors, they were simply following orders from their commanding officer. Without the TRC, these soldiers might never have been able to explain their actions, understand them as fruits of a spoiled system, and seek forgiveness from those they harmed.