Let's remember what is convenient to forget about the TRC

Some people called Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu an "Archangel of Revenge".

Some people called Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu an "Archangel of Revenge".

Published Apr 25, 2016

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The ways in which we choose to remember the work of the TRC today says more about this society than they do about the TRC or its legacy.

Many of those who shunned the work of the commission when it was in operation now quote its work as proof of national forgiveness and the need to move on and forget apartheid.

It is indeed convenient to forget that Die Burger and other newspapers waged a full-on assault on the TRC as it began its work, even branding Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu an “Archangel of Revenge” from their largely intact platforms of white privilege.

It is convenient too to forget that some of the most prominent white political leaders at time, including FW De Klerk and Constand Viljoen, voiced public misgivings about the idea of conditional amnesty, seeming to favour impunity as a way towards reconciliation.

De Klerk also missed an opportunity at the TRC to issue an apology for apartheid that convinced black South Africans. As a result, South Africans still labour under an unfinished national conversation.

We are still waiting for a public and humble embrace of the black hand of friendship in ways that would speak directly to, and concretely impact on, the lives of ordinary black South Africans. The TRC was never mandated to effect forgiveness or to urge South Africans to deny their past. Its core task, set out in the act, was the opposite: to make sure we never forgot, and that forgiveness, in cases where it did happen, would not come cheap.

On the other hand, it is also convenient nowadays to cast the TRC as a sell-out or cover-up of apartheid structural violence. This helps to feed the narrative pleading for a more radical and aggressive policy of black redress, outside constitutional confines, if necessary. It aims to discredit the transition from apartheid to democracy as “fake”, forgetting the enormous shift in political power.

It also ignores the creation of institutions that are able, even in opposition to the most powerful in society, to guarantee at least some justice. And it discredits the many vast and far-reaching social delivery and economic empowerment processes which have in fact improved the lives of many since 1994.

Few would argue that the South Africa of today falls far short of the expectations that we had for it 22 years ago, but too often we conflate our assessment of the TRC with more general governance failures, such as inconsistency in the implementation of economic policy and the half-hearted approach in which we combat corruption and maladministration.

The contribution of the TRC was anything but superficial. Arguably, it was the very first, and perhaps only, statutory body ever in South Africa to not only acknowledge apartheid as a crime against humanity, but also powerfully and publicly illustrate this in ways that ordinary South Africans could understand.

Listening to the stories of those who suffered most under white rule made it impossible for anyone to deny the horrors of apartheid. As a result, our research at the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IJR) shows the TRC was responsible for the creation of a consensus across racial groups that apartheid was a crime against humanity and that the country is in need of racial reconciliation and justice to the victims of apartheid. In this way too, it contributed massively to the case for social justice and redress.

Regrettably, the TRC process did not end well, largely due to government neglect.

Whereas perpetrators gained amnesty in exchange for the truth, ultimately victims were left with very few concrete gains.

If the 45 pages of recommendations contained in the first two volumes of the report had been taken seriously, the country would have seen a series of high-profile apartheid-era prosecutions, largely of those who had snubbed the TRC and failed to qualify for amnesty.

The 21 000 victims identified by the TRC would have received a lifetime pension and medical and health benefits almost immediately. Schools across the nation would have taught the lessons learnt in the TRC about our past and what this says about how we ought to build our future.

And business would have been engaged robustly to consider a once-off capital amount to radically boost the public funds available for restitution at all levels.

None of this happened.

After advocate Vusi Pikoli’s revelations, we now know that for years, the Mbeki and Zuma administrations not only lacked political will to keep the bargain with the victims; they actively opposed it.

And this was perhaps due to the ANC’s ideological differences with nuances within the TRC report which equated all human rights violations on principled grounds, arguing correctly that even in a just war, unjust acts can be committed.

Now that the TRC, our collective engagement with the memory of apartheid, has itself become a memory, we need to teach those who did not have the privilege to see the TRC in action, the truth about what actually happened, warts and all.

The TRC has rightly been criticised for not enough emphasis on broader patterns of violence in society, including gender and other forms of cultural and structural violence and for letting the “big fish” get away.

But it has served the nation well indeed in making one single fact the cornerstone of our collective consciousness: apartheid was a crime against humanity.

Reconciliation then became the rallying cry for integration and co-operation as the most effective and responsible way towards justice for all.

This all means that if the other commission operating alongside the TRC had done their respective jobs better, the Land Commission, the RDP offices, the Gender Commission, and so on, we would not now blame the single most successful commission for all the ills of society.

It is precisely because of the relative success of its actions that the TRC is held responsible for all that is wrong in current-day South Africa.

* Dr du Toit is the executive director of t he Institute for Justice and Reconciliation

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