TRC Final Report

Volume 1

Chapter 5

Subsection 2

The Commission’s three sub-committees

7 Many people found it difficult to understand how the work of the three separately functioning subcommittees, with apparently contradictory aims, could contribute to the overall goals of promoting national unity and reconciliation.

8 A major source of conflict in public debate concerned the question of amnesty. As already mentioned, the decision to grant amnesty was a feature of the negotiated political settlement and became a central responsibility of the Commission. Many participants, however, saw a contradiction between the work of the Human Rights Violations Committee, which devoted its time and resources to acknowledging the painful experiences of victims of gross violations of human rights, and the work of the Amnesty Committee, which freed many of the perpetrators of these violations from prosecution (and from prison) on the basis of full disclosure.

9 This tension was deepened by the fact that the Amnesty Committee was given powers of implementation, while the Reparation and Rehabilitation Committee could, by and large, only make recommendations. Perpetrators were granted immediate freedom. Victims were required to wait until Parliament had accepted or rejected the recommendations of the Commission.

■ PROMOTING NATIONAL UNITY AND RECONCILIATION

10 The overarching task assigned to the Commission by Parliament was the promotion of national unity and reconciliation. Debates within and outside the Commission demonstrated that the interpretation of this concept was highly contested.³ While there is no simple definition of reconciliation, the following essential elements emerged.

Reconciliation is both a goal and a process

11 When introducing the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation legislation to Parliament, the Minister of Justice said:

[This is] a Bill which provides a pathway, a stepping stone, towards the historic bridge of which the Constitution speaks whereby our society can leave behind the past of a deeply divided society characterised by strife, conflict, untold suffering and injustice, and commence the journey towards a future founded on the recognition of human rights, democracy and peaceful coexistence, and development opportunities for all South Africans irrespective of colour, race, class, belief or sex. Its substance is the very essence of the constitutional commitment to reconciliation and the reconstruction of society. Its purpose is to provide that secure foundation which the Constitution enjoins: ‘...for the people of South Africa to transcend the divisions and strife of the past, which generated gross human rights violations...and a legacy of hatred, fear, guilt and revenge’.

12 The Minister of Justice made it clear that the ‘journey’ itself must be a conciliatory one. Thus, reconciliation is both a goal and a process.