The African National Congress, Introductory Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (August 19, 1996)

In 1995, Nelson Mandela, the first postapartheid president of South Africa, appointed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to help his country make the transition from an oppressive apartheid regime to a democratic multiracial state. The TRC was charged with establishing “as complete a picture as possible of the nature, causes, and extent of gross violations of human rights” committed in South Africa between 1960 and 1994. The commission spent two and a half years evaluating more than 21,000 statements from apartheid victims and perpetrators, and subpoenaed hundreds more, to learn the full extent of the crimes that took place. The TRC’s charge was to investigate the crimes in a way that would promote national unity and reconciliation rather than continued bitterness and hatred. The TRC offered amnesty from prosecution for perpetrators who testified about past crimes and provided restitution to victims. In this excerpt, the African National Congress (ANC), a political organization that had lobbied against apartheid since 1912, introduces its statement to the TRC by outlining the need for national reconciliation and the protection of human rights.

From African National Congress’s Web site: www.justice.gov.za/trc/hrvtrans/submit/anctruth.htm#2.

Introduction

As part of the process of the transformation of our country, the ANC had to consider its approach to the difficult but critically important question of what the new South Africa should do with those among our citizens who were involved in gross human rights violations during the struggle for our emancipation.

The choices we had to make can be stated in a simple and straightforward manner.

We could have decided to hold our own Nuremberg Trials.

We could have decided that all that should be done should be to forgive everything that has happened in the past.

We, however, reached the conclusion that neither of these would be the correct decision to take.

In considering the correctness or otherwise of this conclusion, the point needs to be borne in mind that we are in transition from an apartheid to a democratic society.

This is not a single event but a protracted process.

What this speaks to is an unjust cause on one side and a just cause on the other.

Inherent to the system of white minority domination, in this and all other countries where it occurred, was the philosophy and practice of the use of force to ensure the perpetuation of the system.

Force and violence by the dominant against the dominated, the contraposition of power to powerlessness, the attribution of mystical possibilities of retribution to the governors who can visit their wrath on the third and fourth generations of those who hate them, the suspension of all social norms, to enable the state and servants of the state to resort to the unbridled use of violence—all this, and more besides, sustains the continuity of colonial rule.

To maintain its internal integrity, coherence and rationale, this system could not but integrate in its world vision the concept of humans with a right to govern and sub-humans privileged to be governed.

Among other things, this paradigm allows those who enjoy the right to govern the ethical framework which permits them to use maximum force against any sub-human who would dare question his or her duty to accept the sacred obligation to respect the need to be governed.

The simultaneous and interdependent legitimization of the two inherently anti-human concepts of racial superiority and the colonial state as the concentrated expression of the unlimited right to the use of force, of necessity and according to the inherent logic of the system of apartheid, produced the gross violations of human rights by the apartheid state which are the subject of part of the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

It was as a result of the correct understanding of the nature of the system of apartheid that the United Nations characterized the system itself, and not merely its logical results, as a Crime Against Humanity.

With regard to the narrower context within which the TRC is considering this matter, the theoretical foundation of the enquiry would be the matter we have referred to, the legitimization of the use of force in general but especially against those who would dare challenge the system.

This has two consequences.

One of these is the elevation of the state organs of repression above all other state structures, their exemption from all norms of common law consistent with limitations on the use of force, the conferring of powers on individuals to mete out violence as they deem fit and the consequent brutalization of such individuals so that the perpetration of violence becomes their second nature.

The second of these consequences is the demonizing by the state of those it seeks to destroy and against whom therefore, it permits the maximum use of force. . . .

National Reconciliation

The most important issue in this regard is that the grief of particular individuals, important as it is to the affected individuals and the nation, is relevant also to the extent that it contributes to the achievement of the larger goal of national reconciliation.

National reconciliation will only have meaning if it addresses the historic conflict in our country between black and white.

Through centuries of this conflict, the names of the players have changed continuously, regardless of their color and the causes they served.

What never changed was the character of the conflict, which was between the white colonizing forces and a black liberation movement, based on a social system which elevated the white at the expense of the black.

National reconciliation has to be between black and white.

Without transformation to end the disparities of privilege and deprivation which are the legacy we have inherited from our colonial and apartheid past, but which continue to define the present, national reconciliation is impossible.

Whichever way the TRC interprets its mandate, it cannot avoid the conclusion that the ghost that needs to be laid to rest is—the ending of the domination of the black by the white, in all spheres of social existence.

If our society does not achieve this, racial conflict will continue. The goal of national reconciliation will not be achieved.

Clearly, this objective cannot be achieved by the TRC alone.

It also emphasizes the obligation that rests on the Commission to make its own recommendations as to what the larger and varied society from which it is drawn might do, to contribute to the realization of the goal of national reconciliation.

Protection from Gross Violations of Human Rights

Systematic violations of human rights are a manifestation of a social system, rather than the exceptional faults of particular individuals.

To ensure that our country and people are never again exposed to such systematic violations of human rights as occurred under apartheid, it is necessary that we construct a constitutional, political, and socioeconomic order which inherently protects human rights, and has the means to defend itself against any tendency to limit or violate those rights.

The mandate for the construction of such a system of course rests with bodies other than the TRC. As a movement, we are convinced that these institutions are carrying out their mandate.

But we also believe that the TRC has an important role to play in helping to ensure that the specialized institutions established by the apartheid regime to carry out a campaign of repression are completely dismantled.

We refer here not to normal state organs, such as the police, the Defense Force, and the intelligence services, but to other clandestine structures established under the National Security Management System, some of which continue to operate as part of the “third force.”

The exposure and destruction of these structures is important to ensure that they are stopped from actually or potentially engaging in any acts of destabilization.

This is particularly important in light of the fact that persons who belong to these structures have been trained and motivated as anti-democratic operatives and, in many instances, will not have changed their ideological colors.

It is also important that the nation as a whole should be familiar with this machinery as part of the process of raising the level of national vigilance so that it is difficult for any government in [the] future to create similar structures for use against the people of our country. . . .

Conclusion

The ANC is committed to doing everything in its power to help the TRC and the nation to know as much as is possible about the events of the period the TRC is mandated to investigate.

We believe that the TRC should conclude its work as quickly as possible so that we do indeed let bygones be bygones and allow the nation to forgive a past it nevertheless dare not forget.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS