By Catherine Sasman
WINDHOEK
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa investigating crimes against humanity between 1960 and 1994 “engaged the past” and allowed for national debate in that country.
This, according to Dr Charles Villa-Vincencio, Director of the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, allowed old wounds to heal, although the attempt has failed at coming to grips with the fundamental causes of the gross human rights violations that took place during that historic epoch.
“The commission failed to deal with racism, gender contradictions, Bantu education or forced removals; it failed at getting to the root of the cancer that plagued the South African society at the height of the Apartheid era. Perhaps it was too soon, and perhaps the population was too traumatized,” suggested Villa-Vincencio.
Another failure of the TRC, he contended, was that those found guilty of crimes against humanity have not been prosecuted, suggesting that transitional governance might have been the reason for this.
“But how does one deal with a terrible past?” he pondered.
Delivering a lecture on Monday entitled “The SA TRC: Does it have relevance for Namibia?”, he stopped short of suggesting that Namibia should go a similar route in dealing with the past, arguing that all nations choose their own way to deal with their difficult and indefensible past.
“There is no blueprint of how different nations deal with its past, but what nations need to ask is if it can forget the pain of the past,” he said, suggesting that ways, however alternative, should be found to express past suffering and trauma “to let it out and not fester in the national psyche”.
“The litmus test is what do the citizens of a nation say?” he asked.
He noted that there were great fears in South Africa that the TRC would “dig up old bones and speculation of revenge was rife” but that there was not a single example of revenge.
There were 16 TRCs around the world before South Africa instituted its commission, with eight following afterwards elsewhere.
“The idea of the TRC in South Africa was to put the lights on the past, and not to generate guilt in others or punish the wrongdoers and get retribution. It was to see what has gone on and to harness spiritual and moral resources to say ‘never again’,” Villa-Vincencio stressed.
The South African commission focused mainly on three areas: first, the provision of amnesty to those who have committed gross human rights violations by killing, torture and abduction. Here perpetrators were encouraged to come forward and give full disclosure of their past misdeeds under cross-examination. A total of 7 500 persons applied for amnesty –
only 1 500 were granted amnesty.
“The amnesty process was an amnesty for the truth,” said Villa-Vincencio.
The second tier of the commission’s work was to get testimonies of victims of human rights violations. Voluntary statements at public hearings from 22 000 persons were received. Victims were not cross-examined but were allowed to give subjective truths of what had happened to them.
“Most importantly,” said Villa-Vincencio, “is that the process generated a national conversation within the TRC as well as within the wider public.”
Both Namibia and South Africa signed the Rome Treaty in 1991 that established the International Criminal Court, which has the obligation to step in and arrest and prosecute persons guilty of crimes against humanity when nations are unwilling or unable to do so.
A general consensus among members of the audience suggested that Namibia might benefit from a TRC-styled search into the wrongs of the past.