Bearing Witness: Women and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa

by Fiona C. Ross

Overview

People who witness acts of terror and violence are often called after the event to bear witness to what they saw. In cases where this violence is inflicted by the state upon its own people, the process of bearing witness is both politically complex and traumatic for the individual involved. Independent trials and commissions have become important mechanisms through which the truth of past violence is sought in democratising states, but to date there has been little close attention to the processes and complexity of the work of such institutions.

Fiona Ross's fascinating study of the process of bearing witness is the first book to examine the gendered dimensions of this topic from an anthropological and ethnographic viewpoint. Taking as a key example the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, Ross explores women's relationships to testimony, particularly the extent to which women avoid talking about or are silent about certain forms of violence and suffering.

Offering a wealth of first hand examples, Ross approaches a more subtle understanding of the achievements and the limitations of testimony as a measure of suffering and recovery generally. Is it, she asks, the panacea it is usually seen as? Or do conventional discourses on human rights, suffering and reconciliation oversimplify an altogether more complex and problematic process?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781783715268
Publisher:	Pluto Press
Publication date:	12/20/2002
Series:	Anthropology, Culture and Society
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	928 KB

About the Author

Fiona C. Ross is Professor of Anthropology and AW Mellon Research Chair at the University of Cape Town. In addition to her work on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, she has engaged in research in an urban shantytown on Cape Town's periphery. She is the author of Bearing Witness: Women and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa (Pluto, 2002).

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

MAKING THE SUBJECT

SINCE the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1993 (Act No. 200 of 1993), provides a historic bridge between the past of a deeply divided society characterized by strife, conflict, untold suffering and injustice, and a future founded on the recognition of human rights, democracy and peaceful co-existence for all South Africans, irrespective of colour, race, class, belief or sex; AND SINCE it is deemed necessary to establish the truth in relation to past events as well as the motives for and circumstances in which gross violations of human rights have occurred, and to make the findings known in order to prevent a repetition of such acts in future;

AND SINCE the Constitution states that the pursuit of national unity, the wellbeing of all South African citizens and peace require reconciliation between the people of South Africa and the reconstruction of society;

AND SINCE the Constitution states that there is a need for understanding but not for vengeance, a need for reparation but not for retaliation, a need for ubuntu but not for victimization;

AND SINCE the Constitution states that in order to advance such reconciliation and reconstruction amnesty shall be granted in respect of acts, omissions and offences associated with political objectives committed in the course of the conflicts of the past;

AND SINCE the Constitution provides that Parliament shall under the Constitution adopt a law which determines a firm cut-off date, which shall be a date after 8 October 1990 and before the cut-off date envisaged in the Constitution, and providing for the mechanisms, criteria and procedures, including tribunals, if any, through which such amnesty shall be dealt with;

Be it therefore enacted by the Parliament of the Republic of South Africa as follows; [that] There is hereby established a juristic person to be known as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. (Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act No. 34 of 1995)

TRUTH BE TOLD

Michel-Rolph Trouillot writes of power in relation to history: 'The naming of the "fact" is itself a narrative of power disguised as innocence', and that 'Naming the fact ... already imposes a reading and many historical controversies boil down to who has the power to name what' (1995: 114). In the discussion that follows, I explore the effects of naming apartheid as a particular form of violence and injury amenable to examination by a Commission. The subjects and objects of the Commission's enquiry were made through at least three moments of translation. As I show in the remainder of the book, the categories these produced have important consequences in relation to recognising harm and constituting new social formations.

The Commission was an innovative and imaginative social intervention, one of several designed to redress some of the effects of colonialism and apartheid. It originated from the agreement on amnesty reached between representatives of the South African State, political parties and some liberation organisations in 1993, during negotiations to end apartheid and institute democratic governance in South Africa. The negotiations faltered over questions of amnesty, and the negotiating parties agreed that after the first elections the new government would establish a mechanism to facilitate the granting of amnesty to individuals. The amnesty agreement was incorporated into the Interim Constitution, whose 'post-amble' describes the Constitution as an 'historic bridge' between the apartheid past and a democratic future based on non-discrimination and a respect for human rights. It continues by pledging the new government to create a law through which to deal with amnesty, in the interests of 'understanding but not ... vengeance', 'reparation but not ... retaliation', and 'ubuntu but not ... victimisation'.

The Interim Constitution did not oblige the new state to conduct a truth commission. Depicting the options as a choice between political prosecutions (the so-called 'Nuremberg' option) and 'amnesia' characterised by blanket amnesty, a Commission was posited as a third option that bypassed the complexities of legal trials while still meeting the state's constitutional obligations and acknowledging some of the harms inflicted by the system of apartheid (see Boraine and Levy 1995; Boraine, Levy and Scheffer 1994; Asmal, Asmal and Roberts 1996; Minow 1998; Boraine 2000; Hayner 2001). The proposal for a Commission drew impetus from the work of similar Commissions elsewhere, particularly in Chile and Argentina (Rosenberg 1992; Weschler 1990; Zalaquett 1994), and from two Commissions of Enquiry conducted by the ANC into abuses in its training camps outside South Africa (Skweyiya 1992 and Motsuenyane Commission Report 1993). The Commission was contentious; opponents on the right of the political spectrum argued that it would be a 'witch-hunt', while those on the left argued that in offering amnesty from civil and criminal prosecution, a Commission compromised justice for those most affected by apartheid.

After a lengthy consultative process, the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act No. 35 of 1994 (henceforth, the Act) was tabled and passed in Parliament. It passed into law on 16 December 1995. The Act's preamble recognises apartheid as having comprised more than one form of violence and imagines a future founded on peaceful co-existence, human rights and democracy. To achieve its aim 'to promote national unity and reconciliation in a spirit of understanding which transcends the conflicts and divisions of the past', the Act created three committees: one on amnesty, one on human rights violations (the focus of the first part of this book) and one on reparation and rehabilitation. It also provided for an investigative unit, a research unit and a limited witness protection programme, and granted the Commission considerable powers, including rights of search, seizure and subpoena.

The Commission established four regional offices, based in Cape Town (covering the Western and Northern Cape Provinces), Gauteng (dealing with Gauteng, Mpumulanga, the Northern and Northwest Provinces), Durban (focusing on KwaZulu-Natal and Free State) and East London (for the Eastern Cape), staffed by 438 people, including 17 Commissioners, selected and appointed on the basis that they were 'fit and proper persons who are impartial and who do not have a high political profile' (the Act). Commissioners were drawn from a narrow range of professions: Archbishop Tutu, Alex Boraine, Reverend Bongani Finca and Reverend Khoza Magojo were at the time, or had been, practising Christian theologians and Yasmin Sooka was President of the South African Chapter of the World Council on Religion and Peace. Eight Commissioners – Dumisa Ntsebeza, Fazel Randera, Wynand Malan, Denzil Potgieter, Richard Lyster, Sisi Khampepe, Chris De Jager and Yasmin Sooka – had legal training, four were medical professionals (Mapule Ramashala, Wendy Orr, Hlengiwe Mkhize and Glenda Wildschutt), one, Mary Burton, was a civil society activist. Two – Alex Boraine and Wynand Malan – had been politicians. In accordance with a stipulation in the Act, a judge, Hassan Mall, was appointed to the position of chairperson of the Amnesty Committee. Once established, the Commission appointed additional members to its three committees: investigators, researchers, data processing and data capture staff, media liaison staff, and administrative personnel.

Chapter Three of the Act describes the Commission's objectives as:

(a) establishing as complete a picture as possible of the causes, nature and extent of the gross violations of human rights which were committed during the period from 1 March 1960 to the cut-off date, including the antecedents, circumstances, factors and context of such violations, as well as the perspectives of the victims and the motives and perspectives of the persons responsible for the commission of the violations, by conducting investigations and holding hearings;

(b) facilitating the granting of amnesty to persons who make full disclosure of all the relevant facts relating to acts associated with a political objective and comply with the requirements of this Act;

(c) establishing and making known the fate or whereabouts of victims and by restoring the human and civil dignity of such victims by granting them an opportunity to relate their own accounts of the violations of which they are the victims, and by recommending reparation measures in respect of them;

(d) compiling a report providing as comprehensive an account as possible of the activities and findings of the Commission contemplated in paragraphs (a), (b) and (c), and which contains recommendations of measures to prevent the future violations of human rights.

Multiple forms of social destruction described in the founding statement – deep divisions, strife, conflict, untold suffering and injustice – are here reformulated in the Act's concern with 'gross violations of human rights'. Two transitions are involved in this formulation of injury: from 'apartheid' to different manifestations of 'violence'; and from 'violence' to 'gross violations of human rights'.

The definitions of violence and violation laid down in the Act were narrow. They did not address forms of structural violence or the racial discrimination that characterised apartheid. The Act defines 'gross violations of human rights' as killing, torture, abduction (often referred to in the Commission's work as 'disappearance') and/or severe ill treatment, or the conspiracy or attempt to commit such acts. Severe ill treatment is not clearly defined in either the Act or the Commission's Report (Truth and Reconciliation Commission 1998: Volume One: 80; see discussion in Chapter 3 and in Ross 2001b; all subsequent references to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report 1998 will denote simply volume and page number). Notwithstanding provisions in the Act for recognition of pecuniary harm and other forms of damage, the Commission's focus was, for the most part, body-bound. Resolving that 'its mandate was to give attention to human rights violations committed as specific acts, resulting in severe physical and/or mental injury, in the course of past political conflict', it focused its attention on what the Report describes as 'bodily integrity rights': ' ... rights that are enshrined in the new South African Constitution and under international law. These include the right to life ... the right to be free from torture ... the right to be free from cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment ... and the right to freedom and security of the person, including freedom from abduction and arbitrary and prolonged detention' (Volume One: 64). Here is a third moment in translation; a narrowing to focus on violations of bodily integrity.

The translations described above not only affected the object of enquiry but also identified and shaped its subjects. The Act bifurcated violence into a concern with 'perpetrators' who committed or commissioned acts of violence, or who failed to intervene to prevent them, and 'victims' who suffered their consequences. The dichotomy obscured the roles of 'beneficiaries', prompting Mahmood Mamdani (1996) to ask at what point reconciliation becomes an embrace of evil. It drew attention away from structures and structural violence that maintain oppression (see Asmal, Asmal and Roberts 1996; NGO Coalition 1997). Rather than commencing from the historical grounds of the constitution of the subject under apartheid, then, the Commission considered its subject in terms of injury – the violation of particular rights. According to the Act, victims are:

(a) persons who, individually or together with one or more persons, suffered harm in the form of physical or mental injury, emotional suffering, pecuniary loss or a substantial impairment of human rights (i) as a result of a gross violation of human rights; or (ii) as a result of an act associated with a political objective for which amnesty has been granted; (b) persons who, individually or together with one or more persons, suffered harm in the form of physical or mental injury, emotional suffering, pecuniary loss or a substantial impairment of human rights, as a result of such person intervening to assist persons contemplated in paragraph (a) who were in distress or to prevent victimization of such persons; and (c) such relatives or dependants of victims as may be prescribed.

Using a notion of 'even-handedness' that presumed that 'violation' necessarily produced 'victims', the Commission's work stripped away context8 and the effects of power by condensing suffering to its traces on the body. The resultant legal person, 'the victim', produced through occupation of the signs of injury, has a different relationship to the state and legal systems from other citizens, not least in the abrogation of recourse to the law for redress for criminal and civil wrongs (Ross 2001b).

The Act that established a Commission on Truth and Reconciliation gave no definition of either term. In the debates concerning the formation of a commission, in the Commission's early work and in public discourse, truth was viewed as singular, uncompromisingly objective, neutral and its revelation empowering: 'the Truth'. It was presumed to be amenable to discovery through scientific method and quantification, and to be accessible through individuals' memories and the material remainders of apartheid. The link between truth and reconciliation was considered self-evident and consequential: that disclosing the truth would result in reconciliation. Indeed, the Commission's slogan was explicit: 'Truth – the road to reconciliation'. Reconciliation was viewed as paramount in nation-building, itself assumed to be necessary to democracy (Wilson 2001: 13–17).

Although a direct result of a constitutional provision for amnesty, the Commission was depicted in the popular imagination as a healing intervention, ideas about which drew from three models of damage. Commissioners and social commentators frequently metaphorically likened South Africa and South Africans to wounded bodies. They compared truth-telling with the opening and cleansing of unhealed wounds caused by gross violations of human rights, or, more frequently, by the system of apartheid itself, and used words like 'wound', 'fester', 'cleanse' and 'operation' to describe aspects of the Commission's work. In the second model, society was depicted as a psyche. In the corresponding healing matrix, people's memories and experiences were to be the subject of 'analysis' in which the past was to be revealed in all its pain and ugliness. After due acknowledgement, it was assumed that the process of daily life could begin afresh. Drawing heavily from a simplified model of psychoanalysis, 'recollection' was presumed to ensure 'non-repetition'. Alongside these two models circulated a third, that of spiritual, Christian healing generated through the process of contrition, confession and acknowledgement. The model was emphasised through use of words like 'martyr', 'sacrifice', 'confession', and 'forgiveness'. The models were established early: explanatory notes to the draft of the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Bill describe the Commission as originating from the principle that:

[R]econciliation depends on forgiveness and that forgiveness can only take place if gross violations of human rights are fully disclosed. What is therefore envisaged is reconciliation through a process of national healing.

The Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Bill, 1995, seeks to find a balance between the process of national healing and forgiveness, as well as the granting of amnesty as required by the interim Constitution. [TRC CD-Rom 1998: Notes to the Bill 1995: 1, emphasis added]

Implicit in these models lies an underlying assumption about the constitution of the subject in the post-apartheid era. In terms of the Act, 'victims' were entitled in law 'to relate their own accounts of the violations of which they are victims', an intervention designed to 'restor[e] the human and civil dignity of such victims'. This innovative intervention explicitly linked 'voice' ('relating their own accounts', 'testifying' or 'telling one's story') with the restoration of dignity and thence with the subject. In addition, the work of the HRVC made an explicit link between 'experience' ('gross violation of human rights') and the resultant subject-position ('victim').

The Act did not provide measures by which the Commission might ascertain its success. There are no absolute indicators of the number of people who suffered violations of the order the Commission was required to investigate, and its sample was not probabilistic. People whose experiences of harm fitted the Commission's definitions of gross violations of human rights were invited to make statements to designated HRVC officials, 'statement takers', and were recorded on specially devised forms, 'protocols', the format of which was standardised and altered several times during the Commission's process to accommodate the complexity and variety of harm reported to the Commission (Buur, 1999; Report, Volume One: 139). By December 1997, the closing date for the submission of statements concerning gross violations of human rights to the Commission, 21,298 statements concerning 37,672 violations had been received (Volume One: 166).

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Bearing Witness"
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Copyright © 2003 Fiona C. Ross.
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Table of Contents

Glossary
Introduction
1. Making The Subject
2. Testimonial Practices
3. The Self In Extremity
4. Narrative Threads
5. Considerations Of Harm
6. In Pursuit Of The Ordinary
7. Epilogue
Appendix A: South African Security Laws
Appendix B: Detention Data
References
Index