Ityala aliboli: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (TRC) and its propensity to negate the collectivity of Settler-Colonial Apartheid oppression of Africans in South Africa.
Thand'Olwethu Dlanga
The indictment against apartheid and the corruption of the obnoxious system was deserted by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (Herewith TRC). The Truth and TRC, as a political project, set in motion the new apartheid after 1994. Its actions and decisions defended apartheid as a crime against humanity under the guise of reconciliation between the ‘victim’ and ‘perpetrator’. It narrowed the focus period of gross violations of human rights to 1 March 1960 until 10 May 1994. It individualised the permitting of amnesty and redefined ‘gross violations of human rights. These elements of the Commission negated the propensity of apartheid and settler colonialism on African communities. This article will illustrate how the TRC wittingly negated and absolved the debt of apartheid. Not only did the TRC absolve apartheid, but it also sought to terminate from the idiom ‘ityala aliboli’ from Africans’ consciousness. Andile Mngxitama translate this to mean “an act of evil does not erode with the passing of time” (Mngxitama, 2014). It is in my interest to revive the consciousness to the reader that all negations and evasions of the past may be the order of the post-1994 South Africa, but... ityala aliboli.
The history of South Africa from the 14th century, European settlers invaded the territory, established their norms, ideals and institutions during colonialism until the legal apartheid era which only discontinued in 1994 attest to the ‘debt’. The epochs of white domination against Africans were of minute relevance to the Commission thus making TRC a scam and a stage of no lies.
Methodologically, we commence by giving a brief background of the TRC and how it came to exist, with specific reference to Convention of Democratic South Africa (CODESA) negotiations and interim constitution of 1993. Additionally, we detail the mandate of the Commission and a special focus on the Amnesty Commission’s objectives. After the background, we discuss the focus period of the TRC and its implications Following that will be the Individualisation of amnesty as negation of apartheid atrocities, and then lastly, discuss how the TRC’s neglect of truth made it a scam. We conclude that TRC interlocutions did not aid to heal the divisions of the past as that the main indictment was avoided.
Background of the TRC
The TRC was birthed by a compromised regulation that was discussed mainly by the apartheid’s National Party (NP) government and the African National Congress (ANC). The negotiations which started in secret in the 1980s and were overtly conducted in the 1990s produced an Interim constitution of 1993 (Dlanga, unpublished, & Mamdani, 2002). The TRC establishment as authorized by the 1993 Interim constitution sought to bring about reconciliation without embracing the political evils of the past while trying to avoid pursuance of justice that turns into revenge (Mamdani, 2002, p. 33). Its mandate drawn from the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act 34 of 1995 focused its work on producing “a complete picture as possible of causes, nature and extent of the gross human rights violations which were committed during the period 1 March 1960 to 10 May 1994” (Lephakga, 2015; Sampie, 2002). Emanating from the Commission, the Amnesty Commission was set up and it constricted the granting of amnesty on a conditional and individual basis. In the Amnesty Commission’s ‘spirit’, there exist an emphasis on the victim-perpetrator dichotomy in which the perpetrator would be individually identified, own up to their onus and present the truth before being considered for amnesty from legal and criminal prosecution, while the victim would resign their right to prosecute the perpetrator in the courts of law (Mamdani, 2002, p. 33).
The structure of the TRC and its sub-committees as prescribed by legislation meant that justice for those identified as victims would be restorative and accompanied by compensations, and for society to have access to the truth, while the identified perpetrator would receive amnesty if the amnesty committee deemed it based on ‘full disclosure’. Though the victim-perpetrator dichotomy engulfed the TRC, the legislation that birthed it did not clearly define the ‘victim’ and the ‘perpetrator’, rather it placed the onus on the commission and its sub-committees to determine such. Such a decision or lack thereof from the Act provided the TRC with a space to draw up a narrower definition of a victim and a perpetrator in South Africa, therefore, providing a safe passage for the discarding of apartheid, its regime, and a system as a ‘crime against humanity’ that robbed Africans of their collective resources, sovereignty, identity, and dignity. We identify a few limitations of the TRC and its committees to argue that TRC's objective to reconcile the contradictions between black and white people was not achieved – instead, it negated apartheid from its colonial and imperialist nature.
Focus period of the TRC and implications
In the main, TRC defended apartheid as a crime against humanity, a political project that was implemented by the National Party which led to the gross violations of human rights. This defence did not reconcile the victims and perpetrators instead it made a provision and upkeep of new apartheid, endless institutional un-freedoms; and coloniality, a colonial system as expressed in post-1994 South Africa.
Primarily, TRC negated the over forty years of the formal apartheid system, which was preceded by about 400 years of colonial occupation, intertwined with racial capitalism (Kunnie, 2000, p. 01) by narrowing the process of enquiry from 1 May 1960 until 10 May 1994. This implied that Africans in South Africa had been oppressed, violated, and victimized only from 1 March 1960 until 10 May 1994 which is something total far from the truth. The standard in its reports considered “gross violation of human rights” as those violations of human rights that emanated from ‘conflicts of the past’ carried out in the duration of 1 March 1960 to 10 May 1994 within or outside of the Republic of South Africa (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, 1998-2003). Such periodization was blatantly limited, significantly puzzling and implausible considering that by 1950 Africans in South Africa “were already affected by apartheid, a policy which affected every face of life in a country locked in centuries-old patterns of discrimination and racism” (Blakemore, 2021). The limitation, we contend, was the Commission’s trickery to delinking apartheid from the country’s history of colonialization and slavery. To ensure this possibility, the TRC Report 2 concedes to the effects of colonial policy stipulated in the 1927 Native Administrative Act. This regulation was reassigned to the apartheid Department of Bantu Administration and Development as the basis of forced removals and banishments, but the TRC does not connect the forced removals of the 1950s to the 1927 Act. Additionally, the TRC does not link forced removals to the African communities rather it individualises them as merely removals affecting Headmen and Chiefs who were against government policies. A scheme to absolve apartheid from its ‘crime against humanity’ status.
Further perplexities are the commission’s characterization of gross human rights violations which it regards as ‘gross violation of human rights’ are those that “happened through the killing, abduction, torture of any person, including any attempt, conspiracy, incitement, instigation, command or procurement to commit an act referred to above” (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, 1998). Such interpretation exchanged gross human violations essence and provided a proviso, to shrink the understanding of the concept. All in the name of scope, limitation, and mandate, TRC became a playing field of defences against apartheid and contradictions.
Individualisation of amnesty: A negation of apartheid carnages
Secondly, the TRC’s individualisation of amnesty instead of a blanket amnesty ‘acknowledges’ but retrospectively negates the collectiveness of the apartheid system which was and continues to be affirmed a crime against humanity. According to Mamdani, the TRC reduced apartheid from a relationship between the state and communities to that of a state and an individual, a fallacy to the truth which the Commission professed to uphold. Notably, the Commission did not attempt to reconcile and resolve the guilt of apartheid violations of human rights rather it defended the debt of apartheid and its colonial roots.
Understanding that truth commissions in their nature are official agencies funded by governments including international organisations for a particular agenda, we assume that the greater number of TRC ‘influencers’ were drawn from former apartheid government officials, sympathisers and apologists. These influencers targeted the ambiguities of the Act for most likely a different path. Amnesty Committee through the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act 34 of 1995, conducted hearings between ‘victims’ and ‘perpetrators’. The latter were to be considered for amnesty on condition that the ‘truth’ was presented but firstly, all “formal requirements of the act were to be complied with before an application is considered” (Lephakga, 2015, p. 3). Significantly, this committee was not appointed transparently, and its conclusions were final instead of recommendations as compared to other commissions (Mamdani, 2002, p. 57). By its yearning to underpin social cohesiveness (Stanley E. , 2000), TRC emphasised individual responsibility of violations over institutional accountability of apartheid policies. Therefore, affording the National Party and its government an escape route (Nattrass, 1999 & Barchiesi, 1999) to avoid responsibity for its human rights violations. The emphasis on individual responsibility ignored the reality that apartheid was lawfully intertwined into the society’s social composition and its definition of conflict of the past excluded these policies of apartheid. The past, according to the TRC, was the conflicts however apartheid policies were not part of that schema. The add-on to the commission’s report stated that the commission asserts its judgement that apartheid, as a system of enforced racial discrimination and separation was a crime against humanity and that the acknowledgement of apartheid as such remains a fundamental departure point for reconciliation in South Africa. Mamdani locates the victims of this ‘crime against humanity’ acknowledged by the TRC as not individuals but “entire communities marked out on grounds of race and ethnicity” whose injuries included coerced labour, forced relocation, forced disruption of family and communities through administrative and statutory regulation” (Mamdani, 2002, p. 54).
The TRC’s individualisation of amnesty instead of a blanket amnesty proposed in 1993 by APLA Commander Sabelo Phama (1993), reduced the struggle against apartheid to that of a matter between individuals and the state. This obscured and ignored the victimization of communities by the apartheid regime. The amnesty applicants have been stripped of their collectivity, and the organisations they were operating under were paraded as if they were not collectively and ideologically influenced to commit those gross violations of human rights'. The personalization provided a greater advantage for the apartheid NP government to claim that the abuses undertaken in their name were exclusively anomaly and the work of individual deviants rather than a political policy (Stanley E. , 2001, p. 536). The perpetrators of apartheid remained unthreatened, its beneficiaries retained their status and most 'directly implicated violators' apartheid officials as in the case of Eugene de Kock continue to benefit over R200 000 a month from the taxpayers' funds (AmaShabalala, 2021).
Resembling other truth commissions, the TRC struggled to access truth either from victims who did not want to be recorded, perpetrators who provided an acceptable level of truth to maintain positive identities and the limited acknowledgement of the institutional nature of apartheid (Stanley E. , 2001, pp. 530-531). On volume 1, chapter 4 of the final report, TRC admits its scope was defined ambiguously (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, 1998), and based on this admission, we claim that it is the ambiguity that negated apartheid systems' carnages. Notwithstanding my criticism of the committee and its processes and the philosophical and political underpinnings of their pronouncements; it should be noted that the amnesty committee delivered a lifeline for many former liberation fighters, especially those from the Azanian People’s Liberation Army (APLA) to be released from jail.
TRC: A neglect of truth and a scam?
In the conceptualisation of the TRC, the focus was to be on contemporary history and the Chairperson foreword to the TRC volume 1 final report stated that “everyone agrees that South Africa must deal with that history and its legacy” (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, 1998). The how part, it claimed was contentious and would remain controversial for a long time (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, 1998). These ‘prophetic’ words have proven to be true considering that a debate on the TRC persists to this day. Stanley (2001) argues that the TRC was formed as a crucial precept to the rebuilding of South African society from its deeply divided past to a more peaceful future using the gathering of truth and providing compensation amongst other mechanisms (Stanley E. , 2001, p. 537). Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, the chairperson of the TRC stated that the court-like body was established to help heal the country and bring about a reconciliation of its people by uncovering the truth about human rights violations that had occurred during the period of apartheid (Tutu, 2019). From these understandings of the TRC objectives, it seems predetermined that it was to downplay settler-colonial apartheid and represent a trivial contest to apartheid itself while shielding state violence. While interpreting the Act that established the TRC, it is clear that apartheid is a crime against humanity. However, the proceedings of the TRC are contrary to this as the focus was from 1960 which was almost 12 years since apartheid had been implemented. For some in and during the TRC, such an acknowledgement was sufficient considering that the Kempton Park negotiations had already convicted apartheid.
The negotiations’ outcomes which resulted in the framework that produced the TRC, and its committees focused on political reconciliation and such reconciliation was constructed on dehistoricization of apartheid. Mamdani reasons, “Apartheid was rewritten and dislocated from its historical plane as if it was a state versus individual process” (Mamdani, 2002). It was not viewed from its historicity that apartheid maintained a bifurcated society where the whites and their communities were ‘civilized’ and were ‘Beings’ while blacks and their communities were ‘uncivilized’ and ‘non-Beings’ therefore deserved no human rights and dignity. TRC neglected the reality that was already in their disposal of a system that retained the colonizer and colonized dichotomy in South Africa. It further neglected that this system split Africans into ethnic groupings while equally obscuring the apartheid state violence which was mostly aimed at communities. An example of dispossession that occurred during the 1990s is that of Orania. It is a town that was established in the 1960s when apartheid government had embarked on projects in the then Orange Free State was divided in threefold racial zones. Big part of the town was for European descendants, and Africans including the so-called ‘Coloureds’ shared the remainder of the town. According to Mpofu-Walsh, in 1990 the town was bought by apartheid prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd son-in law, and it was confirmed a private volkstaat in 1990 (Mpofu-Walsh, 2021, pp. 36-37). As a beneficiary of apartheid and armoured with apartheid legislations Carel Boshof III, who bought the town, terrorised the African communities with violence until they fled in 1991, some to Warrenton others became wonderers. The TRC, which sought a peaceful future overlooked these elementary and critical pillars of apartheid, therefore did not challenge apartheid. Is it really that the TRC ‘missed’ the basics of apartheid, or it was just a platform for evading the truth, justice and neo-colonialism?
De Klerk a head of apartheid government from 1989 who put in place an apartheid ‘reform’ program and led the negotiations on the side of the NP, including making submissions to the TRC, challenged the position that apartheid was a crime against humanity (Asmal, Roberts, & Asmal, 1996). His government’s former police operative Dirk Coetzee who commitment apartheid crimes claimed that "the National Party did not unban the ANC without deciding that they would steer the course" (Taylor & Shaw, 1998, p. 17). From these utterances, the NP and its representatives manipulated the society about the TRC and had a plan on how they wanted to steer it and its outcomes. Regrettably, the ANC was hoodwinked into believing the scam. The ambiguities of the Act, its interpretation, the appointment of the amnesty committee and the little acknowledgement of apartheid as a crime against humanity seemingly were all part of the schema of the NP’s scam using the TRC. A manifestation of such a scam is reflected in the Dutch descendants namely Afrikaners and British descendants as groups which have not demonstrated any reconciliatory attitude.
Post the TRC and twenty-eight years after the abolishment of legal apartheid, both these European descendants have metamorphosed their apartheid strategies from brazen segregation to a deepened internal segregation. Spatial planning introduced by apartheid and colonialism has not been challenged. Townships and rural areas remain areas of destitute, poverty, under-development, and low quality of life while urban areas maintain the opposite as it was pre-1994. Racial exclusions in certain areas under the guise of ‘private property’, as it was witnessed in Maselspoort resort complex on 25 December 2022 have confirmed the fallacy of peaceful future scam which the TRC championed. Justice as moral obligation has been thrown to the ashcan of history in its place an impoverished meaning of justice in a sense of ‘social justice’ has brandished throughout the process of the TRC. Such a limitation of defining justice, Dlanga argues, “ is in line with the liberal democratic paradigm to conceal the intentions of maintaining the subjugation of the Africans status quo” (Dlanga T. , 2022) Instead of healing the country and bring about a reconciliation for the people, TRC protected apartheid and provided for a new apartheid.
Conclusion
Emanating from the Act that defined the objectives of the TRC, its structure, processes and decisions, the commission negated the propensity of apartheid. On the section dealing with TRC periodization, this essay displayed that the choice of the period was the beginning of the endeavour to shield apartheid and its collective propensity on the African communities. It is in this aspect of the essay that a critique was made against this periodization and that there was no plausible reason to limit the scope to identified period of 1 March 1960 until 10 May 1994 other than to delink apartheid from its atrocities. Furthermore, we argued that this was a political ploy guised as a process of truth and peaceful seeking. In the section dealing with amnesty commission and individualisation, we applauded the amnesty granting to former freedom fighters however it raised an objection on the emphasis of individual focus which the paper argued that it reduced apartheid from a state system against communities to a state system against individuals. This approach provided for the National Party regime to escape accountability of the crimes against humanity. Using the mechanisms of individualisation, we contended, apartheid was defended and was given a new life, a birth of a new apartheid. Lastly, we contended that the neglect, wittingly or unwittingly, of apartheid as a crime against humanity by the Commission did not help heal the injustices of the past, it did not grant justice nor created a repayment of apartheid debt, rather scammed the Africans into believing the possibility of a ‘peaceful’ future, a fallacy proven by the Maselspoort Resort incident. In conclusion, the paper argued that TRC did not bring the repayment of colonial and apartheid debt.
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