TRC Final Report

Volume 5

Part minority_position

Volume FIVE

Minority Position

Submitted by Commissioner Wynand Malan

■ INTRODUCTION

1 We were seventeen individuals appointed by the President to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (the Commission). Although not representative of the South African society, we do come from different corners, so to speak, of our society. By definition, we had to have different understandings of our history and immediate past. We were differently exposed and therefore differently disposed. Even where we agreed on facts, their interpretation differed according to our various dispositions.

2 Because we see the world differently, in order to cope with it, we respond to it in different ways. We also represent a number of different value systems and empathise with other value systems. Simply stated, we understand some people better than we do others, and we relate better to some than to others.

3 At worst, we misrepresent each other. At best, we misunderstand each other, yet we are able to cope and live with each other. We do not necessarily love each other. We may not even like each other.

4 I was born towards the end of the Second World War, while my father was interned, “in detention without trial”. I was born into the Afrikaner Volk and the National Party. I shared its history and its myths. Choice was not an option. During the interview by the panel that put forward the names of potential members to the President, I stated that I supported apartheid under Verwoerd as a moral option that I believed would lead away from domination and discrimination. It took me more than a decade to shed my (ideological) milk teeth, recognise inconsistencies in policy and cut my more permanent (political) teeth. I shifted from Volk to nation. Yet, when I entered politics, although my aim was nation, I entered the fold of the Volk. Only on looking back do I recognise elements of broader democratic choice. My politics expressed itself through the limited opportunities within the National Party. Only towards the mid-eighties, and then only through friends in struggle politics, did I begin to sense that a covert security ‘policy’ militated against my understanding of the political policy of reform, aiming at a democratic dispensation. This sense came about mainly as a result of multiple discretionary detentions without trial of my friends. In their experiences, I recognised some of Afrikaner history.

5 When I left the National Party in January 1987, it was with agony, with pain. At the same time, it was with relief. In an atmosphere of a holy war, I positioned myself as part of both system and struggle, promoting both the necessity and reality of national unity. When the liberation movements were unbanned and negotiations started, I left politics in the sincere belief that a constitutional settlement was inevitable. I had no particular interest other than the well-being of the organism that was South Africa. Asked whether I could understand the right-wing Afrikaner, I responded that I had been there. Such is my disposition, my baggage. I wear it without pride or shame.