Reconciliation via Truth? A Study of South Africa's TRC

Abstract

Within the transitional justice literature, there is much speculation about the relationship between truth and reconciliation, yet little concrete empirical evidence. This is perhaps unsurprising, as measuring this relationship and proving causation poses significant challenges. Focused on South Africa's truth and reconciliation commission (TRC), the aim of this article is not to definitively answer the question of whether truth leads to reconciliation but rather to explore possible ways of gauging and assessing this. To this end, it poses and engages with three subquestions: Is truth-telling healing for victims, how much truth is needed for reconciliation, and is it enough that people simply accept the truth? The article's principal argument concerns the third of these questions. It proposes that for reconciliation to take place, acceptance of the truth is not sufficient. The truth must penetrate society to the extent that it helps to bring about fundamental changes in the way that people live their daily lives and relate to one another. Hence, in order to measure whether truth aids reconciliation, one possible approach is to focus on the practical and attitudinal effects of truth within a society. The impact of truth on behavior and outlook is an important area for future research. This is an empirical study that draws upon 15 semi-structured interviews conducted in South Africa in July and August 2010.

Acknowledgments

Janine Natalya Clark is a lecturer in the Politics department at the University of Sheffield, United Kingdom. Her research interests include post-conflict societies, ethnic conflict, and transitional justice processes (in particular criminal trials). Her work focuses mainly but not exclusively on the former Yugoslavia.

I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions, as well as Professor Richard Hiskes for his support and encouragement during the revision process.

Notes

1. Tepperman notes that at the first TRC hearing, “a huge banner hung from the wall reading ‘Truth: The road to reconciliation’” (2002: 134).

2. Recognizing the importance of clearly defining reconciliation at the outset, Gibson conceptualizes the term as “the extension of dignity and esteem to those of other races and cultures, through understanding, trust and respect” (2004b: 202).

3. According to Daly, “It is increasingly characteristic of transitional governments to be infatuated with the truth. They ascribe to it all manner of curative powers and jump headlong into a serious relationship, without pausing to consider the sacrifices that will be required, the consequences that might not all be salutary or alternative suitors that might bestow similar outcomes” (2008: 23).

4. South Africa is a very violent society. Fifty people are reportedly murdered every day (Altbeker 2007: 36), and every year more than 50,000 cases of rape are reported (Russell 2009: 228). Hence, it is not an easy country in which to carry out fieldwork, particularly for a lone white female. The townships are sprawling, dangerous places that cannot be safely visited without a local guide; public transport is limited and seldom used by white people and in many areas it is not advisable to walk around alone, even during the daytime. All of these restrictions made the research process both difficult and frustrating.

5. During the first round of the survey in 2002–2003, 57.5 percent approved of the amnesty process (Backer 2010: 450). During the second round in 2008, however, only 20.4 percent supported amnesty (Backer 2010: 450, 453).

6. One of the most controversial aspects of the South African TRC was its power to grant amnesty (see, for example, Bell, with Ntsebeza 2003). The former TRC national research director, however, insists that “Amnesty was what we paid for peace. All these people who have wonderful romantic ideas about international human rights and who say there should be no impunity do not understand the nature of a political struggle. That's the price we paid—simple as that” (author interview, Cape Town, August 10, 2010).

7. Author interview, Cape Town, August 6, 2010.

8. Author interview, Cape Town, August 17, 2010.

9. According to Hamber, “for the majority of victims, the TRC began a process it was unable to complete. Many victims felt let down and no closer to the truth than before they told of their suffering” (2002: 65).

10. Without any empirical evidence, for example, Allan and Allan contend that “the TRC contributed to the healing of many survivors” (2000: 469) and “was relatively successful as a therapeutic tool” (2000: 474). As Hayner observes, “Though little scientific evidence is available on this question, it is clear that this notion of healing may be overstated” (2010: 4–5).

11. Stanley, for example, notes that “despite the innovative ‘carrot and stick’ approach, offering amnesty in exchange for perpetrators’ detailed stories, yet threatening prosecution for those who remained silent, the majority of perpetrators have not come forward” (2001: 531). Only 7,115 amnesty applications were made, and 1,167 people were awarded amnesty while a further 145 received partial amnesty. What is more, it was mainly members of liberation movements who applied for amnesty, rather than members of the security forces. According to research by the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR), “amnesty applicants from non-state political parties constituted 68% of the total number, of which the ANC [African National Congress] and the IFP [Inkatha Freedom Party] represented the most common party affiliations. The state security forces and others constituted 32%” (Abrahamsen and Van der Merwe 2005: 5).

12. Author interview, Cape Town, August 13, 2010.

13. According to a report by the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) and the Khulumani Support Group, based on 11 workshops in 1997 and 1998 with 560 members of the Khulumani Support Group (in Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Northern and North West Province), “The TRC process was largely considered by the victims/survivors in the workshops as weighted towards the perpetrators” (CSVR and Khulumani Support Group 1998: 5).

14. “Over the months we've realized what an immense price of pain each person must pay just to stammer out their story at the Truth Commission. Each word is exhaled from the heart, each syllable vibrates with a lifetime of sorrow” (Krog 1999: 152–153).

15. Author interview, Cape Town, August 13, 2010. Those victims—the vast majority—who provided only written statements did not have access to counselors, “unless it transpired that they were in a very serious state of psychological illness. In that situation, we had the opportunity to refer them to the professional bodies that helped us” (author interview with Mary Burton, Cape Town, August 13, 2010).

16. According to Krog, “in terms of repairing and healing the trauma of the victims, the TRC itself was the first to declare that this was, singularly, its biggest failure” (1999: 447–448). Some commentators, however, question whether TRCs—as fact-finding bodies with limited resources, limited mandates, and a limited lifespan—should in fact be responsible for victims’ psychological welfare. Hayner, for example, maintains that “Given the great number of victims who provide statements and the short deadline they have to complete their work, truth commissions are not well placed to offer serious psychological support services” (2010: 151).

17. The TRC was very much a compromise, a “third way” between general amnesty and criminal trials. As its chairperson has explained, “We … had to balance the requirements of justice, accountability, stability, peace and reconciliation. We could very well have had retributive justice and had a South Africa lying in ashes—a truly Pyrrhic victory if ever there was one” (Tutu 1999: 27).

18. Author interview, Cape Town, August 10, 2010.

19. Author interview, Trust Feed, August 3, 2010.

20. Author interview, Cape Town, August 6, 2010.

21. Khulumani (which means “Speak Out”) has launched a “Red Card Campaign” to expose those companies that kept the apartheid government afloat. The companies involved in Khulumani's lawsuit in New York are Daimler, Ford, General Motors, IBM, and Ryan Metal.

22. Author interview, Pretoria, July 18, 2010.

23. Author interview, Pretoria, July 18, 2010. A recent decision by South Africa's Constitutional Court can thus be viewed as an important and welcome development. In November 2007, South Africa's then President, Thabo Mbeki, initiated a Special Dispensation for Presidential Pardons for Political Offences, according to which those whose crimes under apartheid were motivated by a political agenda could apply for a presidential pardon. The president received approximately 2,500 applications and set up an ad hoc committee in parliament, consisting of 15 representatives from different political parties. The Khulumani Support Group immediately began lobbying this committee, which did not represent victims; “Victims were not permitted to testify and there was no access for victims at all. The process rigidly excluded victims, as if they were all expected to be dead” (author interview with Marjorie Jobson, Pretoria, July 18, 2010). Of the 2,500 applications made, the committee recommended that 121 perpetrators should be pardoned. Before the president could issue these pardons, however, the Khulumani Support Group—unable to secure an audience with the committee—brought an urgent interdict in court to stop the process. The interdict was granted but one of the applicants subsequently instructed his legal counsel to take the case to the Constitutional Court. Again Khulumani, which arranged for victims to be present during these legal proceedings, won the case. On February 23, 2009, the Constitutional Court, in a unanimous ruling, held that “given our history, victim participation in accordance with the principles and values of the TRC was the only rational means to contribute towards national reconciliation and national unity” (cited in Du Toit 2010: 4).

24. According to the 2009 Outreach Report of the International Criminal Court, for example, “The Outreach Unit communicates its messages using a bottom-up approach, taking into account the specific information needs of each of the target audiences. By working in this way, the Outreach Unit aims to give these communities ownership, rendering it an institution that works for them and in their name” (International Criminal Court 2009: 27–28).

25. Author interview, Johannesburg, July 13, 2010.

26. In order to qualify for amnesty, an individual was not required to show any remorse or to ask for forgiveness. His or her crimes, however, had to have been politically motivated and committed during the period covered by the TRC's mandate (1960–1994).

27. Van der Merwe and Abrahamsen's research involved face-to-face interviews with 27amnesty applicants in the Western Cape, the Eastern Cape, and Gauteng province. The interviews were conducted between January and June 2003.

28. For victims too, however, there were important constraints. Wilson, for example, notes that “Over the life of the Commission, there were five successive versions of the statement forms, or ‘protocol’, until by the end the protocol had become a highly structured questionnaire. The protocol also was altered to give designated statement-takers less room to make ‘mistakes’ and to force them into the ‘cold facts’ approach desired by the Investigation Unit” (2001: 44).

29. Author interview, Cape Town, August 10, 2010.

30. Boraine, however, insists that “South Africa gained more information and more knowledge of what happened during the apartheid era from the perpetrators’ evidence than it did from witnesses’ stories” (2009: 139).

31. For reconciliation to take place, “As a critical first step, guilt needs to be recognized with the acceptance of responsibility for atrocities or other events symbolizing intercommunal and interpersonal relations” (Jeong 2005: 156).

32. Author interview, Cape Town, August 6, 2010.

33. Author interview, Cape Town, August 13, 2010.

34. According to Daly, “Often the truth that victims and others most want to hear is not the forensic truth, not the historical or dialogic truth, but the psychological truth. Why did the perpetrators do this? Why did the government try to erase my people? How could the world stand by and let it happen?” She claims, however, that “To these questions, there are no answers. No truth commission report can explain in a satisfying and convincing way the mysteries of human nature, the banality of evil. The most important part of the story may very well remain untold” (Daly 2008: 27).

35. Author interview, Mpophomeni, July 30, 2010. Emphasizing that KwaZulu-Natal was one of the most difficult areas for the TRC, Burton recalls that “The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and its leader turned their faces against the Truth Commission, which meant that members of the IFP really felt completely unsafe to come and talk to us. It was only towards the very end of the statement-taking period that we tried so hard to talk to the IFP leadership. We told them that as we saw the situation developing, the only people who were going to get reparations were those who came to the Truth Commission and were found by the Truth Commission to be victims, and that if IFP members did not come forward they were going to be excluded from that process. We also told them that the potential of this situation to create greater violence was enormous; if IFP members were not receiving reparations while members of all other political parties were, this was going to be a real flashpoint.” At the last minute, therefore, the TRC had a huge campaign to take statements from people within the KwaZulu-Natal area, but Burton admits that the statement-takers were not well trained, “and so we had some dreadfully incomplete and inadequate statements, all pouring in at the last minute when we did not have the investigative capacity to corroborate them.” Reflecting back, Burton thus concludes, “I don't think that we did anywhere near enough in KwaZulu-Natal, and so especially in that province I think there might be a need to continue the TRC process” (author interview, Cape Town, August 13, 2010).

36. According to Wilson, the TRC “interacted with local communities primarily through progressive mainstream church networks” (2001: 227).

37. That is to say that the respondents agreed with the following three statements: Apartheid was a crime against humanity, the state committed horrific atrocities against antiapartheid activists, and South Africa has great income differences today because in the past blacks were not given the same opportunities as whites.

38. As Daly underlines, “A commission's report may be authoritative for some but it cannot be the last word on the history of a country for all” (2008: 29).

39. Author interview, Cape Town, August 17, 2010.

40. Author interview, Howick, July 30, 2010. Such views have a long history. During the workshops organized by the CSVR and the Khulumani Support Group in the late 1990s, for example, the participants “often spoke of ‘whites’ as not willing to reconcile or being absent from the reconciliation process.” Furthermore, “The absence of white people both at the hearings and from many other TRC related activities was viewed by many as indicating a lack of interest on their part” (CSVR and Khulumani Support Group 1998: 5).

41. Author interview, Cape Town, August 11, 2010.

42. According to Sooka, “When victims testified, white people who were interviewed said that the victims were exaggerating and when the perpetrators testified, white South Africa claimed that it had not known” (2009: 32).

43. Author interview, Cape Town, August 11, 2010.

44. Foster observes that “In South Africa writ large, continued de facto racial segregation remains the norm. This factual lack of meaningful close contact and persistent informal segregation must be regarded as a substantial impediment to reconciliation” (2006: 83).

45. According to the results of the 2009 Reconciliation Barometer, when respondents were asked to name the biggest division in South Africa, the most common answer (27 percent) was class. Race was only the third most common answer (18 percent), after political parties (24 percent) (Institute for Justice and Reconciliation 2009: 14).

46. In 2009, South Africa's Gini coefficient stood at 0.70 per capita income (Woolard, Leibbrandt, and McEwen 2009: 99). The Gini coefficient measures inequality within a country, with 0 representing perfect equality and 1 representing perfect inequality.

47. According to Asmal, “The crucial requirement of the South African transition is the need to reconstruct society and to abolish the horrendous inequalities which were produced by the apartheid system” (2000: 11).

48. Author interview, Cape Town, August 13, 2010.

49. Hayner notes that by mid-1998, “the commission realized that its initial claims of achieving full reconciliation had been unrealistic. Archbishop Tutu began to argue that a more reasonable goal for the commission was to ‘promote’ reconciliation, rather than to achieve it, as indicated in the name of the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act that created the commission” (2010: 184).

50. Author interview, Pietermaritzburg, August 3, 2010.

51. The author's interviews in Trust Feed supported this.