Writing for Others in South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Abstract

Truth Commissions are a global transitional justice instrument for dealing with past atrocities. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, active from 1996 to 2002, is regarded to be an influential role model in this field for the way it put an emphasis on the publicity of the process. However, it also established a temporary, complex administration which processed many more cases of human rights violations than were publicly heard or seen. This led to the perception of two separate operative spheres: While the public proceedings were dominated by oral speech, the non-public procedures tended to be in written form. In order to establish institutional authority within the TRC, procedures that implemented triadic structures (like advocacy, representation, parrhesia, or translation) were of particular significance. One central operative feature emerged from the first encounter that a witness of human rights violations would have with the TRC when giving a statement: the situation of a statement taker writing down the oral statement given by a witness. The article claims that this transmission of oral knowledge is a specific variation of “advocacy” and could be termed “writing-for.” It amalgamates the triadic nature of advocacy (Campe) with the specific media technology of writing something down. The triad consists of the witness, the statement taker, and the statement form. The statement taking scene relied on a well-known aspect of the South African juridical administration, which is the Commissioner of Oaths. By adopting specific features of the Commissioner of Oaths and of affidavits, the testimony and the TRC gained authority. “Writing for others” served as a political form of care-taking, and authorized both the temporary institution and the testimony of the witness.

Keywords:

• TRC
• truth commissions
• South Africa
• media technology
• cultural technology
• media transmission
• advocacy
• transitional justice
• orality
• protocol

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Exemplary for many other critical reviews of the TRC, cf.: Anthea Jeffrey, The Truth about the Truth Commission (Johannesburg: South African Institute for Race Relations, 1999); Mahmood Mamdani, “The Truth According to the TRC,” in The Politics of Memory: Truth, healing and Social Justice, ed. Ifi Amadiume and Abdullahi An-Na’im (London: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 176–83; Mahmood Mamdani, “A Diminished Truth”, in After the TRC: Reflections on Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa, eds. Wilmot James and Linda van de Vijver (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2001), 58–61; Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert, “Truth without Reconciliation”, in After TRC: Reflections on Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa, ed. Wilmot James and Linda van de Vijver (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2001), 62–72; Deborah Posel and Graeme Simpson, eds., Commissioning the Past. Understanding South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 2002); Jeremy Sarkin, Carrots and Sticks. The TRC and the South African Amnesty Process (Antwerp/Oxford: Intersentia, 2004).

2 More prominent examples are South Korea (Presidential Truth Commission on Suspicious Deaths, 2000–2003), East Timor (Comissão de Acolhimento, Verdade e Reconciliação de Timor Leste, 2001–2005), Peru (Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación, 2001–2003), Sierra Leone (Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 2002–2004), Rwanda (Gacacas, since 2002), Morrocco (Instance Equité et Réconciliation, 2004–2006), Liberia (Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 2006–2009), Ecuador (Comisión de la Verdad para impedir la impunidad, 2007–2010) or Brazil (Comissão Nacional da Verdade, 2011–2014). For an overview of all truth commissions, see: United States Institute of Peace, “Truth Commission Digital Collection”, http://www.usip.org/publications/truth-commission-digital-collection (accessed November 1, 2018).

3 Cf. Department of Justice and Constittuional Development, Republic of South Africa, “Promotion of National Unity and Reconcilation Act No. 34 of 1995”, http://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/acts/1995-034.pdf (accessed October 18, 2018). [hereafter: “TRC Act No. 34 of 1995”].

4 Foucault defines the dispositif as follows: “(…) un ensemble résolument hétérogène, comportant des discours, des institutions, des aménagements architecturaux, des décisions réglementaires, des lois, des mesures administratives, des énoncés scientifiques, des propositions philosophiques, morales, philanthropiques, bref : du dit, aussi bien que du non-dit. Le dispositif lui-même, c’est le réseau qu’on peut établir entre ces éléments” (Michel Foucault, “Le jeu de Michel Foucault ,” in Dits et écrits. Tome III: 1976–1979, eds. Daniel Defert and Francois Ewald (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), 298–329, 299).

5 Denzil Potgieter (former TRC staff member, Cape Town office: commissioner), interview by TRC Oral History Project, November 8, 2004, A2985, interview no. 40, South African History Archive (SAHA) / Historical Papers of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

6 Cf. Albrecht Koschorke, “Ein neues Paradigma der Kulturwissenschaften,” in Die Figur des Dritten. Ein kulturwissenschaftliches Paradigma, eds. Eva Eßlinger et al. (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2010), 9–34, 11f.

7 Anne Fleckstein, “‘establishing as complete a picture as possible’: Medien- und Wahrheitstechniken in der südafrikanischen Truth and Reconciliation Commission” (PhD diss., Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, 2016).

8 Rüdiger Campe, “An Outline for a Critical History of Fürsprache: Synegoria and Advocacy”, Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 82 (2008): 355–81; Rüdiger Campe, “Kafkas Fürsprache,” in Kafkas Institutionen, ed. Arne Höcker and Oliver Simons (Bielefeld: transcript, 2007), 189–212.

9 Only 10% of almost 22,000 testimonies about human-rights violations and approximately 35% of about 7,000 amnesty applications were heard publicly. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report, vols. 1–7 (Cape Town: Juta Press, 1998–2003) [hereafter: TRC Report], vol. 1, 276, 284.

10 There were also individual cases of written submissions in the form of letters or applications. Based on the author’s viewing of material and interviews, it could not be established whether there was a standard procedure for processing these documents, whether they would be transferred to a form and then captured in the database, or whether they formed the basis for an interview.

11 Rüdiger Campe has coined the term “scene of writing” (German: Schreibszene) for a process in which writing as a cultural technique signs the body with language and/or instruments are part of the semantic production. Rüdiger Campe, “Die Schreibszene: Schreiben,” in Paradoxien, Dissonanzen, Zusammenbrüche: Situationen offener Epistemologie, ed. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and K. Ludwig Pfeiffer (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1991), 759–72, 760.

12 Frank Mohapi (former TRC staff member, Cape Town office: statement taker, information manager, statement taking trainer), interview by the author, October 8, 2011, Johannesburg, audio file/transcript with the author.

13 Lindiwe Mthembu-Salter (former TRC staff member, Cape Town office: counsellor, statement taker, Cape Town Office), interview by TRC Oral History Project, August 31,2004”, A2985, interview no. 33, South African History Archive (SAHA) / Historical Papers of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

14 Janice Grobelaar (former TRC staff member, Johannesburg office: head information manager), interview by the author, April 1, 2009, Pretoria, audio file/transcript with the author.

15 Cf. John Aitchison and Anne Harley, “South African illiteracy statistics and the case of the magically growing number of literacy and ABET learners,” Journal of Education 39 (2006): 89–112.

16 Cf. Alex Boraine, A Country Unmasked: Inside South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Desmond Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness: A Personal Overview of South Africa‘s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (London: Image, 1999).

17 Rüdiger Campe, “An Outline for a Critical History of Fürsprache: Synegoria and Advocacy,” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 82 (2008): 355–81, 379.

18 Rüdiger Campe, “Kafkas Fürsprache,” in Kafkas Institutionen, ed. Arne Höcker and Oliver Simons (Bielefeld: transcript, 2007), 189–212, 189.

19 Michel Foucault, “L’écriture de soi,” in Dits et écrits. Tome II: 1977–1988, ed. Daniel Defert, Francois Ewald, and Jacques Lagrange (Paris: Gallimard, 1983), 1243–9.

20 Michel Foucault, Le souci de soi: Histoire de la sexualité: Tome III (Paris: Gallimard, 1984).

21 „11. When dealing with victims the actions of the Commission shall be guided by the following principles:

(a) Victims shall be treated with compassion and respect for their dignity; […] (c) procedures for dealing with applications by victims shall be expeditious, fair, inexpensive and accessible;” “TRC Act No. 35 of 1995”, Section 11.a-c.

22 According to Rüdiger Campe’s analysis, advocacy (Fürsprache) creates self-affection through affection and thus enables the advocate to empathize with the client in order to appropriate the client’s concerns and convince the judge. Rüdiger Campe, “An Outline for a Critical History of Fürsprache: Synegoria and Advocacy,” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 82 (2008): 355–81, 379.

23 Thulani Grenville–Grey (former TRC staff member, Cape Town office, Reparation & Rehabilitation Committee, Amnesty Committee: debriefer, investigator), interview by the author, October 6, 2009, Johannesburg, audio file/transcript with the author; Frank Mohapi, interview by the author, 2011.

24 The explanation of the TRC mandate by the statement takers often led to misunderstandings, especially at the beginning of the TRC’s operating period. Some statement takers made false promises about reparations and the mandate of the TRC. The long periods it took to process the testimonies and applications caused an especially great amount of frustration among witnesses and statement takers. Cf. Janice Grobelaar, interview by the author, 2009; Lindiwe Mthembu-Salter, interview by TRC Oral History Project, 2004.

25 Ivan Evans, Bureaucracy and Race: Native Administration in South Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 1.

26 Richard A. Wilson, The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: Legitimizing the Post-Apartheid State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 39.

27 Peter Becker, “Formulare als ‘Fließband’ der Verwaltung? Zur Rationalisierung und Standardisierung von Kommunikationsbeziehungen,” in Eine intelligente Maschine? Handlungsorientierungen moderner Verwaltung (19./20. Jh.), eds. Peter Collin and Klaus-Gert Lutterbeck, (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2009), 281-98, 298.

28 Srikant Sarangi and Stefaan Slembrouck, Language, Bureaucracy and Social Control (London: Longman, 1996), 48f.

29 Becker, “Formulare als ‘Fließband’”, 294f.

30 Officially, there were eight different versions of the “protocol”: While one of the first versions comprised eight pages, six of which were for recording free speech, at end of 1997 one of the final versions had more than 20 pages with only 1 ½ pages of free text. Lars Buur states that there were probably more versions in circulation than the eight official ones. Cf. Lars Buur, “Institutionalising Truth: Victims, Perpetrators and Professionals in the Everyday Work of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission” (PhD diss., University of Aarhus, 2000), 143ff.

31 This seems to confirm Max Weber’s claim that bureaucracy is most efficient after eliminating any personal, irrational, or emotional elements. Weber calls this “dehumanisation.” However, this ignores the thought that empathy and proximity might be necessary in order for a structure to be addressed and accepted in the first place. Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie, 5^th ed. (Tübingen: Mohr, 1980), 129.

32 Michael Niehaus and Hans-Walter Schmidt-Hannisa, “Textsorte Protokoll. Ein Aufriß”, in Das Protokoll. Kulturelle Funktionen einer Textsorte, ed. Michael Niehaus and Hans-Walter Schmidt-Hannisa (Frankfurt a.M: Peter Lang, 2005), 7–26, 7f.

33 Niehaus and Schmidt-Hannisa, “Textsorte Protokoll,” 8.

34 “Der Akt des Aufschreibens und das Aufschreiben eines Aktes stützen sich wechselseitig. Sie schließen sich zur Wahrheit des Aufgeschriebenen zusammen, zu einem Wahrheitskartell, das so gut wie unzerschlagbar ist. Nur auf dem Boden der Protokoll-Wahrheit, nur als Verfahrensfehler beim Aufschreiben, nicht als inhaltlich falsche Mitschrift läßt sich ein im Protokoll faktizierter Akt überhaupt angreifen.” Cornelia Vismann, “Action writing: Zur Mündlichkeit im Recht,” in Zwischen Rauschen und Offenbarung: Zur Kultur- und Mediengeschichte der Stimme, ed. Friedrich Kittler, Thomas Macho, and Sigrid Weigel (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2008), 133-52, 137.

35 The Commissioner of Oaths is an official notary public. The position is customary in Anglo-saxon common law. In common law, notarial tasks can also be executed by officially designated persons who are not lawyers (as in contrast to e.g. German civil law). The Commissioner of Oaths is the lowest functionary in the notarial hierarchy and is assigned to juridically determined positions in specific institutions but also in private companies. He (or she) is in charge of a geographical area and thus supports its courts and public offices as well as its citizens, who would otherwise have to visit the nearest institutional office. Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, Republic of South Africa, “Justices of Peace and Commissioners of Oaths (Act No. 16 of 1963),” http://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/acts/1963-016.pdf (accessed October 20, 2018).

36 Today, the Commissioner of Oaths still fulfils an important function in South Africa. Since the first democratic elections in 1994, the selection of designated people has been changed and updated regularly. See Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, Republic of South Africa, “Designation of Commissioners of Oaths under Section 6 of the Justices of the Peace and Commissioners of Oaths Act, 1963 (Act No. 16 of 1963),” Government Gazette, 11 July 2014, http://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/notices/2014/2014-07-11-gg37806_rg10230_gon546-oaths.pdf (accessed October 20, 2018).

37 “Justices of the Peace and Commissioners of Oaths Act No. 16 of 1963,” section 6 (5).

38 Apart from the legally designated individuals who can act as Commissioners of Oaths ex officio, it is also possible to apply for an appointment. Department of Justice and Constitutional Development of the Republic of South Africa, “Truth and Reconciliation Website: Forms/Commissioners of Oaths,” http://www.justice.gov.za/forms/form_oaths.html (accessed October 15, 2018).

39 While the only official languages during Apartheid were English and Afrikaans, the interim constitution from 1993 instituted eleven official languages in South Africa: “Afrikaans, English, isiNdebele, Sesotho sa Leboa, Sesotho, siSwati, Xitsonga, Setswana, Tshivenda, isiXhosa and isiZulu shall be the official South African languages at national level, and conditions shall be created for their development and for the promotion of their equal use and enjoyment.” Department of Justice and Constitutional Development of the Republic of South Africa, “Constitution of the Republic of South Africa Act No. 200 of 1993,” ch. 1, par. 3(1), http://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/acts/1993-200.pdf (accessed November 1, 2018).

40 Wessel Janse van Rensburg, email correspondance with author, October 3–25, 2013.

41 The exact criteria for when and under what circumstances an affidavit is necessary or admissible in South African criminal proceedings is determined by the Criminal Procedure Act No. 51 of 1977. Department of Justice and Constitutional Development of the Republic of South Africa, “Criminal Procedure Act No. 51 of 1977,” par. 212, http://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/acts/1977-051.pdf (accessed November 1, 2018).

42 Meleney Tembo (former TRC staff member: logistics officer), interview by TRC Oral History Project, 24 November 2004, audio file, A2985: 51.1, interview no. 51, South African History Archive (SAHA) /Historical Papers of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg; Sekoato Pitso (former TRC staff member, Johannesburg office: logistics officer), interview by the author, 6 October 2009, Johannesburg, audio file/transcript with the author.

43 Cf. e.g. Truth and Reconciliation Commission South Africa, “Affidavit Edward Ramorgawadi,” Victim Statement Edward Ramorgawadi JB00383/03NW, 20 June 1996, internal document, 10 hand-written pages, Group Truth and Reconciliation Commission, BOP Coup, National Archives and Records Service of South Africa, Pretoria.

44 Quoted from: Truth and Reconciliation Commission, “HRV Statement Peter W. du Preez. CT/01121/SOM. 29/4/1997,” HRV Statement Peter W. du Preez, 29 April 1997, internal document, 21 pages typographic/hand-written, Group Truth and Reconciliation Commission, St. James Massacre, National Archives and Records Service of South Africa, Pretoria.

45 This is particularly remarkable since the amnesty applications had to be strictly authenticated under oath by a Commissioner of Oaths. TRC Report, vol. 6, 5.

46 Chris Macadam (former TRC staff member, TRC office national: head of Witness Protection Programme), March 3, 2011, Pretoria, audio file/transcript with the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anne Fleckstein

Anne Fleckstein studied Cultural Studies and German Literature in Berlin and Lyon. She wrote her Ph.D. thesis on technologies of truth in the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission at the Bauhaus University in Weimar. She was the recipient of a stipend at the DFG Graduate Research Programme „Media of History - History of Media “in Weimar and at the International Max Planck Research School on Retaliation, Mediation and Punishment (REMEP) in Halle (Saale), and she is a member of the research network LOST (Law Organisation Science Technology) in Halle (Saale). She works at the German Federal Cultural Foundation where she is in charge of the International Focus Africa.