TRC Final Report

Volume 1

Chapter 1

Subsection 7

83 I want to pay a very warm tribute to all my colleagues, my fellow commissioners, our committee members and our dedicated staff. My fellow commissioners are gifted persons, frequently leaders in their particular fields. They have worked themselves to a frazzle, committed and conscientious to a fault.

84 None will take it amiss when I single out for special mention the vice-chairperson, Dr Alex Boraine. We were fortunate to have had him because frankly he performed nothing short of a miracle in getting the ball rolling, employing staff and procuring premises for the Commission in record time. Without his remarkable energy and competence, we would not have started as soon as we did. I would not want to wish such a project - starting up a massive undertaking such as this de novo on my worst enemy. We made it very largely because of Dr Boraine. He has taken a lot of flak from those who have delighted in taking political pot shots at him. He is a man of unshakeable integrity and commitment. I want to assure those who might have thought of him as a political opponent from his parliamentary days that he is scrupulously fair.

85 We have been served by a team of outstanding individuals - starting from Dr Minyuku, our indefatigable chief executive officer, to the most junior staff member. They have had to gel quickly, despite knowing that this intense and gruelling task would last only two years or so. This knowledge could have been thoroughly debilitating, sapping morale and energy, but I have been amazed that almost all our staff members have been so dedicated and so conscientious. Most have gone well beyond the call of duty, working many overtime hours as proof of their dedication.

86 The Research Department led by Professor Charles Villa-Vicencio has played a major role in producing this report. Our thanks are due to them for their sterling work.

87 It has been a gruelling job of work that has taken a physical, mental and psychological toll. We have borne a heavy burden as we have taken onto ourselves the anguish, the awfulness, and the sheer evil of it all. The interpreters have, for instance, had the trauma of not just hearing or reading about the atrocities, but have had to speak in the first person as either a victim or the perpetrator,

They undressed me and opened a drawer and shoved my breast into the drawer which they then slammed shut on my nipple! [or] I drugged his coffee, then I shot him in the head. Then I burned his body. Whilst we were doing this, watching his body burn, we were enjoying a braai on the other side.

88 The chief of the section that typed the transcripts of the hearings told me:

As you type, you don’t know you are crying until you feel and see the tears falling on your hands.

89 We have been given a great privilege. It has been a costly privilege but one that we would not want to exchange for anything in the world. Some of us have already experienced something of a post traumatic stress and have become more and more aware of just how deeply wounded we have all been; how wounded and broken we all are. Apartheid has affected us at a very deep level, more than we ever suspected. We in the Commission have been a microcosm of our society, reflecting its alienation, suspicions and lack of trust in one another. Our earlier Commission meetings were very difficult and filled with tension. God has been good in helping us to grow closer together. Perhaps we are a sign of hope that, if people from often hostile backgrounds could grow closer together as we have done, then there is hope for South Africa, that we can become united. We have been called to be wounded healers.

90 I pay a warm tribute to all my fellow wounded healers. You have done a splendid job of work. You have given it your best shot. It has been an immense privilege to captain such a superb team.

■ CONCLUSION

91 Ours is a remarkable country. Let us celebrate our diversity, our differences.God wants us as we are. South Africa wants and needs the Afrikaner, theEnglish, the coloured, the Indian, the black. We are sisters and brothers in onefamily - God’s family, the human family. Having looked the beast of the past inthe eye, having asked and received forgiveness and having made amends, letus shut the door on the past - not in order to forget it but in order not to allow itto imprison us. Let us move into the glorious future of a new kind of societywhere people count, not because of biological irrelevancies or other extraneousattributes, but because they are persons of infinite worth created in the imageof God. Let that society be a new society - more compassionate, more caring,more gentle, more given to sharing - because we have left “the past of a deeplydivided society characterised by strife, conflict, untold suffering and injustice”and are moving to a future “founded on the recognition of human rights,democracy and peaceful co-existence and development opportunities for allSouth Africans, irrespective of colour, race, class, belief or sex.”

92 Like our Constitution, the Commission has helped in laying- the secure foundation for the people of South Africa to transcend the divisions and strife of the past, which generated gross violations of human rights, the transgression of humanitarian principles in violent conflicts and a legacy of hatred, fear, guilt and revenge.

93 My appeal is ultimately directed to us all, black and white together, to close the chapter on our past and to strive together for this beautiful and blessed land as the rainbow people of God.

94 The Commission has done its share to promote national unity and reconciliation. Their achievement is up to each one of us.

95 I am honoured to commend this report to you.