S. Africa's truth commission cannot bring back the dead

JAKARTA (JP): It was the new government's promise to improve South Africa's shameful human rights record during the apartheid era that prompted the birth of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 1995.

"... a commission is a necessary exercise to enable South Africans to come to terms with their past on a morally accepted basis and to advance the cause of reconciliation," said Dullah Omar, former minister of justice.

However, at the end of its two-year inquiry into human rights abuses under the former white minority government, the report split the nation by condemning both white rulers and black movements of crimes against humanity. Members of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) were livid at the accusations and even tried to prevent publication of the report that was chaired by Nobel Peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu and presented to Nelson Mandela, father of the nation, in October 1998.

Mandela accepted the report, "As it is. With all its imperfections, as an aid that has helped us to reconcile and build our nation".

Macmillan, publisher of the 3,500-page report, describes it as one of the most significant documents of our time as it has broken the silence surrounding those terrible years. Compiled from the evidence of over 21,000 witnesses who are both perpetrators as well as victims, the report is a record of 34 years under apartheid, when black Africans who are two thirds of the population were restricted to rural reservations or in urban townships, tightly controlled by white people.

It was after the victory of the white-dominated National Party in the 1948 general election that the policy known as apartheid, which in Afrikaans means "apartness", came into force. All populations in South Africa classified by the government as non- European would now be governed separately and be subordinate at every level to white South Africa.

The TRC accuses the country's judiciary, religious leaders and media for appeasing or directly supporting apartheid. Although most of the blame is directed against the white rulers, especially former president P.W. Botha, who used the nation's police force, killed opponents and sponsored bombings to preserve apartheid.

It was actually president de Klerk, who served from 1990 to 1994 and is also held to be guilty for abuses, who first recognized the urgent need to bring the black majority into mainstream politics. He held secret talks with the imprisoned Mandela and lifted the ban on the ANC. He removed restrictions on the media and prepared for a new multiracial constitution, pledging to investigate alleged human rights abuses by the security forces. He ordered the release of Mandela, then 77, in 1990 and after 27 years in prison. But the celebration on the streets was short-lived.

Blacks who had been unanimous in their demand for Mandela's release now differed sharply on how to deal with past injustices. Militant black consciousness leaders rejected Mandela's proposals for a multiracial government. They asked for total black control. Others disobeyed Mandela's conciliatory approach and insisted on continuing the armed struggle. Above all, Mandela was expected to deal in a just manner over accusations of abuse and brutality against his ANC. Political moderates were attacked around the country for being too compromising.

Old and young liberation fighters quarreled with each other even as the end of apartheid approached, while de Klerk faced a line of divided followers of his own. Conservatives accused him of defending minorities and wanted him to step down. Both Mandela and de Klerk had to repeatedly reassure their respective constituencies that they were determined to set aside the past and to work peacefully for a better future. The two traveled abroad constantly, seeking political and economic support.

This was the South Africa of the early 1990s, very similar to the Indonesia of today where demands have also been heard for a similar TRC.

Speaking at a public discussion on "Transforming Society Through Reconciliation: Myth or Reality" last year in Cape Town, chairwoman Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela said that reconciliation was an exploited term at the core of which is the overcoming of animosity. She felt that wanting to reform meant being able to consider all the challenges involved in the process. Another speaker pointed out that throughout the TRC's process the interest of the individual, of the personal, was in tension with the collective, the national, and very often to the detriment of the individual.

To be able to accept that no commission can bring the dead back or wipe out the trauma of victims still alive and that life has to go on with or without it, is yet another tip from one who was involved with the TRC in South Africa, a country where problems are far from over. (Mehru Jaffer)