TRC Final Report

Volume 4

Chapter 9

Subsection 11

Psychological effects of exposure to gross human rights violations

88 Political and community violence characteristically expose children and adolescents to suffering long after the event. Whilst many are able to recover with the support of friends, family and community; others may suffer lasting psychological damage. Young people may suffer from concomitant conditions similar to those of adults – including post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, substance abuse and anti-social behaviour.¹⁸ Spraker and Dawes have reported significant depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and psychosomatic symptoms at levels that impaired everyday function in South African youth.¹⁹

89 Whilst the Commission did not embark on psychological evaluations of people who made statements or gave testimony, deponents themselves often referred to the damaging psychological effects of gross human rights violations. Dee Dicks, who testified at the hearing in Athlone, was arrested and charged with public violence at the age of seventeen. She described her pain in her testimony to the Commission:

I am not in control of my crying and ... my self esteem and confidence is very low at present and it is very difficult for me. And sometimes I am still directionless and unfocused which is always like, you know, the experience that I lived through in the 1980s is like forever in my mind. And it has become quite difficult for me to cope and it is making me very angry, because at that time I could and now I cannot.

90 Children may feel hatred, bitterness and fear towards society and institutions that represent authority, such as the security forces. A fifteen year old girl from the South Coast in Natal saw a policeman force a child to hold a bomb which subsequently exploded in her hands, tearing her to pieces.

I still have distrust for the police ... I blame the police for the disruptions in our schools. I still harbour hatred and fear for those who have committed these acts.²⁰

91 Children who have been continuously exposed to violence may experience a significant change in their beliefs and attitudes. Loss of trust may occur where children have been attacked or abused by people they previously considered as neighbours or friends.²¹ Fear, hatred and bitterness may be the greater, therefore, in cases of inter- or intra-community violence where children not only know who the perpetrators are, but are forced to live in the same community as them, despite feelings of simmering rage. A thirteen year old girl from KwaZulu-Natal recounted what happened to her when she was only six years of age:

Me and my family lived in Bethany and that was a mostly IFP area, and we were all expected to be IFP members. My family and I were ANC members and, as a result of that, we had to leave Bethany to go to Emavuleni ...

One fateful afternoon in 1992 my father was forcibly taken from our home by people known to us. ... That night my younger brother, my mum and myself went into the forest looking for our father, and then what I saw that night I have been carrying around with me ever since. My father had bullet and stab wounds all over his body and, since that day, I vowed to revenge my father’s death.²²