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EditorialThe Truth and Reconciliation CommissionJohn Daniel

The predominant portion of gross violations of human rights wascomm itted by the former state through its security and law-enforcementagencies. Moreover, the South African state in the period from thelate 1970s to early 1990s became involved in activities of a criminalnature when, am ongst other things, it know ingly planned, undertook,condoned and covered up the commission of unlawful acts, includingthe extra-judicial killings of political o pponen ts and others, inside andoutside South Africa. In pursuit of these unlawful activities, the stateacted in collusion w ith certain other political groupin gs, mo st nota blythe Inkatha Freedom Party. (TRC's primary finding, 1998, vol 5, ch6:212)...the majority of the victims of the South African government'sattempts to m aintain itself in power we re outside of South Africa. Ten sof thousan ds of people in the region died as a direct or indirect resultof the South African government's aggressive intent toward itsneighbours. The lives and livelihoods of thousands of others weredisrupted by the systematic targeting in some of the poorest natio ns inthe world. (TRC finding on gross human rights violations comm ittedoutside South Africa, 1998, vol 2, ch 2:42)

Part of the genius of South Africa's transition from apartheid to democracylay in the numerous constitutional and institutional innovations devised asa means to either unjamming the roadblocks to change or assuaging thedesire for vengeance or retribution. Amongst these were the government ofnational unity - the power-sharing arrangement which covered the firstfive years of the transition - and a number of tribunals short-term andpermanent established to deal either with specific grievances (land,human rights abuse),or the societal disadvantages confronting suchgroupings as youth and women.

TRANSFORMATION 42 (2000) ISSN 0258-7696

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Of these instruments, probably none h as impacted as much on the p ublicconsciousness or been as controversial as the Truth and ReconciliationCommission. Few in this country are neutral about the TRC. It evokespowerful emotions in even the normally apathetic. Vilified in some quarte rs,despised in others, it has also its admirers and passionate pa rtisans. R arelyout of the news since its inception in 1996, it still today evokes pow erfulpassions and strident editorials as its amnesty committee passes down aseries of controversial decisions.

Like many things South African, it is an instrument probably morewidely admired abroad than at home. It has won for this country muchcredit and admiration for the attempt to wrestle with an hideous past, a taskfor which few o ther societies - even those with the m ost palpable need -have had the stomach. Others willing to take the plunge have sought tolearn from the TRC experience. Recently a 3 5-strongIndonesian delegationspent three weeks in South Africa as part of the preparation for theestablishment in that country of a commission to come to terms with itsdecades of horror at the hands of its military rulers. Elsewhere fromNam ibia and Burundi in Africa to Bosnia and Kosovo in the Balkans, thoserecently freed from authoritarian tyranny demand truth commissions onthe South African model.

This edition of Transformation focuses on aspects of the TRC's work.It does not pretend to be an all-inclusive and comprehensive look. Thatwould in any event be too large a task for a journal of modest editions, aswell as probably premature given the still ongoing nature of the amnestyand reparations processes. What it seeks to do is highlight aspects of theTR C's w ork and its finding in regard to the state and th e ANC, as w ell asassess its contribution to the development of international law and theresponsibilities of nations in the arena of accountability for gross humanrights abuse.One of the most extraordinary features of the TRC process in SouthAfrica has been the volte face in the attitude of the ANC governm ent to theCommission. Very much its progenitor, the African National Congress(ANC) seems now to wish it away, perhaps even to regret it ever brou gh tit into being. It increasingly gives off an impression of regarding it as awearying m illstone around its neck . But it was not always so. First m ootedas an idea by Professor K ader Asm al in his inaugu ral lecture as P rofessorof Human Rights Law at the University of the W estern Cape in 1992, theproposal was embraced by the ANC and became a key component of its

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early post-apartheid legislative program m e. After a gruelling 18 months orso in comm ittee, the Promotion of Na tional Unity and R econciliation Actwas passed in late 199S and its first public session in the Eastern Cape(selected because of its role as 'the womb of apartheid res ista nc e', as theS A B C ' s An nalies Burgess put it in one of her broadcasts) in early 1996 wasan occasion of mu ch national and international fanfare.Virtually alone of the major po litical parties, the A NC initially embracedthe TRC. Defending it from its Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and whiteright-wing detractors, the ANC leadership blazed the trail. Its seniorpolitical and military leaders appeared willingly in public before theCommission, volunteering information on its past actions and acceptingresponsibilty for past m isdeeds. Hitherto secret documen tation was passedover to the Comm ission and extensions in time to the Co m m ission's tenurewere easily granted.But that attitude changed as the time neared for the publication of theCom m ission's report in October 1998 and the TRC provided - as was itslegislated requirement - advance notice to the AN C of some of its findingson the organisation. Failing to take advantage of the again legislatively-

ordained opportunity to respond through written submissions to thesepreliminary findings, the ANC first demanded a meeting to discuss thefindings and then when that failed, sought on the very eve of the release ofthe report a court injunction to prevent publication. Tha t failed too and theresult was a very strained public handover to President M andela of the firstfive vo lumes of the report. W hat should have been a celebratory occasion,a hum an rights landmark in the arena of accountability, turned instead intoa case of sour grapes.Little has changed on the part of the AN C since that day. H aif a year onfrom the repo rt's release, Parliamen t assigned a paltry half day to a debateon the report which produced nothing of substance. Few of the speakersseemed to have read even a part of the adm ittedly lengthy docum ent and thedebate comprised largely choreographed recitations of party-politicalpos itions. Significantly, no comm ent was passed negative o r positive on even one of the many recommendations contained in the report.N ot a single prosecution has arisen out of the rep or t's findings and none

is likely, even though the Directorate of National Prosecutions claimedsoon after its incep tion to have set up a special TRC un it within it. Th is isperhaps less surprising than the extraordinary meanness the governmenthas displayed to the paying of the modest and affordable (for the state

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fiscus) financial reparations recommended by the Commission to thosefound to have been victims of apartheid abuse.The recen t public furore over the Helderberg air crash we ll illustrates thegov ernm ent's disdain for, or ignorance of, the con tents of the TRC report.The TRC conducted in- camera hearings on both the Helderberg c rash andthe air accident which killed President Samora Machel of Mozambique.Two chapters of the report (Vol 2, ch 6&7) were given over to these twoinvestigations. In regard to both , it found that there were sufficient groun dsfor disquiet over the inquests - both conducted by the late Justice CecilMargo - to merit new investigations. It took revelations by the Beeldnewspaper, of all sources, to seemingly make the government even awareof the Commission's finding and the existence of a significant body ofevidence to justify a re-open ing of the case. The penny has not yet droppedin regard to the Machel aircrash and M argo's possible role in bo th.In our lead article, Janet Cherry, who was a member of the TRC'sresearch department and who worked on the liberation m ovem ents, takesa fresh look at the TR C 's findings on the AN C. It was the TRC 's criticismof aspects of the AN C's conduct of its armed strugg le and of its treatm entof detainees in its Angolan camps which so outraged elements of theANC's leadership and led to the souring of relations between it and theTRC. After an extensive review of the TR C 's position and a discussion ofboth the AN C's critique and those of others like An thea Jeffery, Cherryconcluded that the TR C's findings were both sound in terms of internationallaw and correct in terms of the Com mission's interpretation of the 'justicein war' thesis.In retrospect, it is hard to understand the vehemence of the ANC's

response to the findings on it. As the quote at the head of this editorialindicates, the TRC did not hold all parties to the conflicts of the mandateperiod equally culpable and assigned primary responsibility to the NationalParty government and its security agencies and allies like the IFP . It alsoaccepted the international law position that apartheid was a 'crime again sthum anity' and the A N C's argument that its struggle against apartheid was'a jus t wa r'. Th e gist of its criticism was simply that a distinction existedbetween means and ends and that 'a just cause' did not exempt anorganisation from always employing jus t means. W hat makes the A N C 'sattack on this commonsensical position so exraordinary is the fact thatthose acts which the TRC found to be 'unjus t' were the very ones for wh ichmany ANC and MK mem bers applied for amnesty.

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reaching attempt by an official body to come to terms w ith the hum an rightsabuses comm itted by a previou s governm ent anyw here in the wo rld sincethe Nuremburg trials of the late 1940s'. The report itself he describes as 'amajor historical docum ent' and 'a s full a description as we are ever likelyto have of individual hum an rights abuse in regard to the period 19 60 -94'.

W hile he discusses numerous aspects of the Co m m ission's wo rk and itsconclusions, one of Ellis' prime concerns is its findings in regard toapartheid South Africa's destabilisation of the region. He clearly concurswith the second of the findings cited at the head of this editorial, noting'tha t the struggle for contro l of the South African state was actua lly foughtto a large extent outside of South Africa's b ord ers'. E ven so, Ellis is critica lof the insufficient space accorded to this regional dimension in the reportwhich he feels, overall, was excessively centred on events inside thecountry. He laments the lack of detail accorded to the fact that the P retoriagovernment was 'involved in a great deal of fighting or other forms ofviolence in other countries where the vast majority of combatants andvictims were not South Africa ns'. By so do ing, Ellis suggests that the T RC'could be said to have dive rted attention from some of the greatest abu sesof human rights inflicted by the Sou th African sta te', and created thereb ya risk of 'perpetuating a version of history w hich fails to attach due weigh tto the regional dim ension '.

The editors of this journal share this concern, and the alarm at thegrowing xenophobia of South Africans towards particularly theirneighbo urs. Hence our decision to reprint this important essay, it is crucial,we believe, for South Africans to know that the worst massacres of theapartheid era were no t comm itted at Sharpeville, Boiphatong or Sw anievillebut at Kassinga and Chetequera in Angola; and that five times as manyAngolans died at the hands of the SADF or its UNITA allies between ^B O -SS than were killed inside South Africa as a result of security force actio nin the entire apartheid era of some 46 yea rs.

The TRC has begun to spawn a literature, as well as other media forms,around its wo rkings and findings. In this latter regard, M ax du Pre ez 's 81'Special Re ports' - produced for SABC TV and amounting to som e 100hours of docum entary tim e are a priceless treasure. A lso emanating fromthe SABC's archives is Anjie Kapelianis' remarkable six-volume CDcollection of audio highligh ts from the thousan ds of ho urs of radio re po rtson the TRC process.

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No table as these con tributions are, it is doubtful that they will attain theinternational acclaim accorded Antjie K rog' s Country of My Skull publishedby Random House in 1998. Based on the 18 months of human rightsviolations hearings which Krog covered for the SABC, this is a notuncon troversial work w hich has nonetheless picked u p m ore national andinternation al awards than any other recen t South African literary work. Asour fourth contribution, we reprint a shortened version of a look at theT R C 's final report through a very post-modernist analysis of K rog 's bookby the American scholar, Mark Sanders. Based at Cornell University,Sanders spent some time in South Africa in 1997 researching theCom mission. A longer versio n of the article appeared originally in the USjournal Modern Fiction Studies.Our final article is a com men tary piece structured around an interventionby the US-based hum an rights group, Human Rights W atch, at the time ofthe medical visit to South Africa in late 1999 by the former Ethiopiandictator Mengistu Haile Mariam. Written at the time of the detention inEngland of the former Chilean dictator, General Augusto Pinochet, theintervention takes the form of a plea to the South African governm ent to actsimilarly against Mariam . Written by the Director of the Africa division ofHum an Rights W atch, Peter Takirambudde, a one-tim e refugee from theAmin tyranny in Uganda and former Dean of the Law School at theUniversity of Botswana, the letters to the South African Ministers ofJustice and Foreign Affairs amount to a powerful plea for the South Africangovernm ent to meet its obligations in terms of international hum anitarianlaw. They fell, however, on deaf ears and were not even accorded thecourtesy of an official response. As we note in our introduction to thecommentary, the result was a missed opportunity to strike a telling blowboth for human rights practice in this continent and in regard to Africa'swretched human rights record.

The Truth C omm ission process has been a powerful m oment in SouthAfrica's post-apartheid experience. It impacts daily on the lives of SouthAfricans and will continue to do so for months and years to com e. Despiteits flaws and shortcom ings, it achieved, in our view, mu ch. At an ind ividuallevel, the relatives of numerous victims of ap artheid's outrages now knowthe truth of wha t happened to their loved ones. The parents of the murderedAN C cadre Phila Portia Ndw andwe now know that their daughter was notan agent and died at the hands of apartheid's assassins true to her beliefsand principles; the three young children of Petros and Jabu Ny awose, who

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witnessed their parents die in a car-bomb explosion in Swaziland, nowknow the identities of their killers. I personally experienced their satisfactionat learning that truth after a wait of 17 years.I can personally testify too, to the relief of Patricia Beech w ho ha d be enhaunted for close on 18 years by a lie put out by the SADF that her son,Robert, killed in a cross-border raid into Zimbabwe in 1982, had b een ona 'private trespassing mission'. Words cannot capture her feelings whenM inister Lekota personally visited her hom e in January this year to presen ther with a statement of exoneration of her so n's action and to ackn ow ledgethat he died in the line of duty, however m isplaced that was. I can im aginetoo, that the parents of assassinated SW APO activist A nton L ubow ski feelmuch the same way after the TRC found that their son had not, as theNational Party alleged at the time of his death, been their agent. As theAm erican journa list, James North, put it "The Truth Com mission crushedthat l ie ' . And so one could go for a huge numb er of such cases. The fact ofsuch truths revealed must count for something.In a celebrated article in Index on Censorship in 1996, the Canadianjournalist Michael Ignatieff argued that all that truth commissions could

achieve was 'to winnow out the solid core of facts upon which society'sarguments with itself should be con ducted' and that the function of truthcommissions was 'to purify the argument, to narrow the range of perm issiblel ies ' . W hether that is true or not is deba table, but the fact is that as a resultof the Truth Com mission process , it is no longer possible for the apo logistsof National Party rule - be they Pik or PW Botha, FW de Klerk or NielBarnard - to deny that the Party in which they Were central figures did no tventure into the realm of criminality and that it was not state policy in theirtime in office extra-judicially to neutralise or permanently remove fromsociety or eliminate or, to put it simply, kill certain of its politicalopponents. That is now an established factual truth and in the wider con textof South African history that must be worth something too.