South Africa Anti-Apartheid Freedom Struggle – History (1) 8.2th

Humanities 9 – Social Movements

Facing the Truthwith Bill Moyers1999

Context: Questions of justice, oppression, evil, and forgiveness are eternal ones, and South Africa. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission exposed the painful legacies of apartheid. Bill Moyers hosts and narrates the this two hour PBS documentary, Facing the Truth. On July 19, 1995, South Africa established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission(TRC) with separate committees on human rights violations, amnesty, and reparation and rehabilitation. Its mission was based on the belief that “to achieve unity and morally acceptable reconciliation, it is necessary that the truth about gross violations of humans rights must be: established by an official investigation unit using fair procedures; fully and unreservedly acknowledged by the perpetrators; made known to the public, together with the identity of the planners, perpetrators, and victims.” Amnesty would be granted only to those who applied for it and fully disclosed their misdeeds. In a trial, the focus is on the perpetrator. At the hearings the TRC would hold, the focus would be on the victims and their families. As Alex Bouraine, who served on the TRC, said at an international conference, “To ignore what happened to thousands of people who were victims of abuse under apartheid is to deny them their basic dignity. It is to condemn them to live as nameless victims with little or no chance to begin their lives over again.” With the TRC the testimonies help people gain power from telling their stories. In order to heal people were able to identify the importance of confronting the truth, the value of justice, and identify the difference between forgiving and forgetting. People defined and understood the meaning of courage. The legacies of this history for other countries impacted generations to come in South Africa and the world. These stories and people’s testimonies were powerful in order to heal and in order to have the truth told. Many whites did not want to believe the atrocities. As a result, Justice Richard Goldstone, justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, discussed how so many white South Africans did not believe the heinous acts against blacks in their own country. Goldstone stresses the important role the TRC played in exposing the truth of apartheid. He explained:

In 1990, I would guess the majority of South Africans did not believe that the South African Security Forces were murdering people, poisoning people, torturing people,

burning their bodies and all the rest of it. There was skepticism. People didn't want to believe it. It wasn't in their interest to believe it, and for many people it strained their imaginations; they didn't believe it.

There were two histories. Black people knew that this was happening because they were the victims. White people didn't want to believe it, and didn't believe it. And they believed the fabrications that were put out by the security forces. People weren't tortured to death in police cells, they stepped on a piece of soap and died from head injuries caused in falling. That was a very common story that was put out to explain tens of deaths in the Johannesburg Police cells.

So the Truth Commission has really put an end to that, in that there is one history people saw in South Africa on television, and those of you who have seen the Facing History Bill Moyers film will understand the shock it was to many South Africans to see the perpetrators themselves convicting themselves out of their own mouths. And so we have that wonderful opportunity now in our schools to teach that history.

“They came to tell their stories.”CENTRAL QUESTION: How does a nation’s past affect its ability to move forward?

When asked about the purpose of storytelling and the TRC, Archbishop Desmond Tutu explained:

The past has a way returning to you. It doesn’t go and lie down quietly….We’re not seeking to humiliate [anyone of the perpetrators], we’re not seeking to belittle them, we’re not even seeking to prosecute them. We’re just saying that this is a moral universe, and you’ve got to take account of the fact that truth, and lies, and goodness, and evil, are things that matter, and that we’ve got to acknowledge them.... I thought I knew the awfulness of apartheid. But you see, when it ceases to be statistics, and it is a real, live human being who says "this, that, and the other happened," that devastates you.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

It has been said that the last battles fought in every struggle are over memory—over the way that struggle will be remembered. Tutu also said that words become “a real live human being who says this, that, and the other happened.”

Another young victim of violence testified at a special TRC hearing for children. While she was there, she met children from other parts of South Africa who suffered as well.

When recalling her experience, she said:

It was healing to see that other people had problems, too, some even more than mine. I thought there were many more children who had stories like mine who did not get to speak, so we called ourselves lucky that we were included in the hearings. It helped me to speak there. Usually the people who went before the TRC looked hurt when they were talking, but afterward, because they told many other people, they looked relieved. This is how I felt.

“I wish to go back to collect my soul.”Thandi Shezi was one of many women who were victims of torture, rape, and other acts of violence during apartheid. Shezi has chosen to publicly tell her story even though she may never learn the names of the policemen who raped her. She described how she is regained her voice through her work with a theater troupe in Johannesburg, which retells some of the stories brought to the TRC. CENTRAL QUESTION: Is healing possible after an atrocity? By testifying publicly, Shezi came to see herself not as a victim but as an actor, assomeone who can educate others. In the telling, she transformed a story about shame and humiliation into a portrait of pride and dignity, of healing and recovery.

Shazi said:

It was the play, and we’ve got this Khulumani survivor support group, where all the victims of apartheid came together and we sit around and we all talk about our past experiences, for we understand that talking is healing. The more you talk about your pain, the more you get relieved.

Stories like Thandi Shezi’s were fragments, or parts of a person’s life. They were not thewhole story of her life. They were not even representative of her life. Yet because more was not known about her, these fragments became central to her experiences from a listener’s perspective. Some wonder why she revealed such powerful fragments of their life to strangers.

“I was doing my job.”CENTRAL QUESTION: Why is it important to hear both the stories of the victims and the perpetrators? What does each add to our understanding of not only what happened but also why it happened and what it meant?

During the Truth and Reconciliation Commission a group of mothers talked about their sons who disappeared in 1986. Only when the police officers responsible for their deaths apply for amnesty did the mothers and the world learn what happened to the boys. The mothers traveled to the site of the murders and to try to find the remains of their children. They failed to the remains and they left believing that they did not yet know the “real truth.” The killers defended themselves by claiming they were just doing their job. The "Pebco Three" were a trio of community grassroots leaders who were tortured and killed. The perpetrators or killers testified in their native languages.

They explained:

Perpetrator 1: They [the activists] were given coffee into which the sleeping drug had been poured, and then the people were taken out of the garage one-by-one and they were eliminated.

Perpetrator 2: The burning of a body to ashes takes about 7 hours. While that happened, we were drinking and even having braii [barbeque] next to the fire.

Perpetrator 1: …What I’m saying is that we didn’t kidnap them to interrogate them. We kidnapped them to kill them.

Narrator: In the disappearance of the “Pebco Three,” a trio of community grass roots leaders, their widows would learn not only what happened to their husbands, but where. Post Chalmers Farm, owned by the state; a kind of torture, or killing, farm where many eastern cape activists were taken. These so-called “Truth Rooms” were all over the country. The victims were often told by their tormentors, “You can shout or cry as loud as you want to. Nobody will hear and nobody will ever know.”

Perpetrator 2: The wood was placed in a large pile in the backyard. The people were carried to the wood, put on top of it—all three of them, yes—and it was set alight and diesel was poured over.

[During the testimony a woman left the courtroom. The story was too much for her to handle. She went to the bathroom and wailed uncontrollably. Other women tried to calm her down.]

The South African government conducted violent actions especially between 1984 and 1989—the years P.W. Botha was prime minister and later president. Botha refused to testify before the TRC. However, F.W. de Klerk, the last President of apartheid South African (1989-1994) testified but denied that murder and assassination were government policy. The men who carried out the murders and the assassinations disagree. They insisted that they were following orders.

CENTRAL QUESTION: Where does guilt lie—with those who give the order, those who carry it out, or those who allow it to happen? Where does responsibility lie?

In his testimony, F.W. de Klerk acknowledges that the government permitted “unconventional strategies” and “extraordinary measures.” The groups who carried out those strategies and measures were known as the “Security Police” and the “Special Forces.” During F.W. de Klerk’s testimony, he admitted:

“I stand before you neither in shame or in arrogance.”

In reflecting on de Klerk’s testimony, Judge Richard J. Goldstone of South Africa’sConstitutional Court wrote:

To apologize meaningfully for apartheid, President de Klerk would have had to admit that there was no justification at all for the policy he helped implement during the whole of his political career, and which his father (also a Cabinet member) had implemented before him. He would have had to admit that it was a morally offensive policy. He did neither of those things. I do not believe that his apology sprang from his perception that apartheid was a mistake, not because it was morally offensive but because it failed and that it was well meant in the interests of all South Africans.

Judge Richard J. Goldstone

“Is it something worth doing?”Freedom fighters also testified. Albie Sachs, a justice on South Africa’s Constitutional Court, expressed optimism about the TRC and the future of South Africa. He served as a judge on South Africa’s Constitutional Court. As a white activist, Sachs opposed apartheid and was exiled from South Africa for 23 years. While in exile, Sachs survived an assassination attempt. He lost sight in one eye and an arm when a bomb was placed in his car. He continue to devote his life to helping South Africa. Albie Sachs was asked about revenge when he testified.

When asked the question, “Was there a moment after what happened to you when you lusted for revenge?” Sachs answer was, “Never.” He elaborated:

Never. But I think there’s something wrong with me. But afterwards it stood me in very good stead. You keep your eye on the prize, and that’s freedom and transformation, and for me to do to someone else what they did to me, that’s not going to make my arm grow, but for me to live in a free society, I feel that there are roses and lilies growing out of my arm. I feel liberated, I feel it wasn’t for nothing, it was for something.

Albie Sachs

“Look me in the face.”The “St. James Massacre” took place in 1993 in a suburb of Cape Town. It left 11 people dead and 68 injured. The killings occurred at a time when the political parties were negotiating the nation’s first free elections. CENTRAL QUESTION: Why is it important to the victims that the perpetrators to look at them? At the TRC and amnesty hearing for the three men responsible for the massacre, Dawie Ackermann was given a chance to talk about how the loss of his wife affected him and his family. From his seat near the murders, he asked them questions.

Ackermann: This is the first opportunity we’ve had to look each other in the eye…I want to ask Mr. Makoma who entered the church. My wife was sitting by the door wearing a long blue coat. Do you remember it? You shot her. It’s important to me.

Makoma: I don’t remember who I shot. I just pointed my gun at the people.

Ackermann: I want to look you in the eye and hear you say you are sorry for what you’ve

done.

Makoma: We ask you to forgive us. We can see the results [of the attack] today.

“We are responsible for the future.”The poet Don Mattera and students at the Randfontein Public School outside Johannesburg explored the promises of and opportunities in the “new South Africa.” CENTRAL QUESTION: How do we as individuals and as citizens break “chains around the mind”? Don Mattera told the students that “the chains around the mind are the dangerouschains.” The poem Don Mattera read the students was one of many he wrote to celebrate the beauty of South Africa.

For me the collective responsibility for the terror and the horror has not sunk in into the minds of white people. They suffer from forgetfulness. The South Africans refuse to look at the inquisition of their souls - white South Africans. They fear to look at themselves and say, "Yes, but we were privileged. Yes, we did have this kind of life. Yes, we remained silent when others were dragged out at night. Yes, we remained silent when children walked around with bloated stomachs, suffering from malnutrition. Yes; now what is our collective responsibility to these people?" In response to the question , “How do five million white people say, collectively, ‘I’m sorry?’” Mattera answered:

But they can. Sorry is not just a word, it’s a deed. It is an act. Contrition is not "Bless me father, for I have sinned," contrition is "I have taken from thee, therefore I give thee back. I have hurt thee, therefore I help to heal your pain. Listen, your children walk barefoot thirteen kilometers to come to the school, can I help in some way to provide a free bus for them? Can I help to provide shoes? Can I help to give soup and food?" Each human individual has to decide seriously what their role must be to the collective, to the collective reconstruction of our country.

“We have to deal with racism.”The TRC allowed people to have series of conversations about issues of race and class in the “new South Africa.” Bongani Linda, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and a group of white students at the University of Stellenbosch spoke about race. CENTRAL QUESTION: What are the obstacles to reconciliation and how can they beremoved? In a speech to the National Assembly in May, 1998, Thabo Mbeki, the DeputyPresident of South Africa, stated:

South Africa is a country of two nations. One of these nations is white, relatively prosperous. . . . The second and larger nation of South Africa is black and poor. . . . The longer this situation persists . . . the more entrenched will be the conviction that the concept of nation-building is a mere mirage, and that no basis exists, or will ever exist, to enable national reconciliation to take place. I am convinced that we are faced with the danger of a mounting rage to which we must respond seriously.

Thabo Mbeki

Desmond Tutu understood the huge economic gap between white and black South Africa, even after the apartheid government ended and 4 passed. Tutu explained:

Aren't they amazed that four years down the line black people live in shanty towns--many, many, many, but a very, very few white people of any who live in shacks. These black people wake up in the morning in these depressed conditions, no running water, no street lighting, no nothing. They wake up, they get on whatever means of transport they have, they go off to some of the most salubrious, the most affluent parts of South-Africa, which are the former white enclaves. They work in a beautiful house. They clean, they cook, they wash, and everyday, from all of the splendor they go back into the squalor...I am amazed and I would say to our white compatriots: "Don’t you want to wake up and realize that it is in fact in your interest that transformation happens?"