TRC Final Report

Volume 5

Chapter 9

Subsection 25

■ RESTITUTION OR REPARATION

98 The previous two sections illustrated the healing potential of sincere apologies. A sure sign of sincerity is a commitment to restitution or reparation. The following statements from the Commission’s hearings capture the vital importance of restitution as part of the reconciliation process. At the public announcement of the Reparation and Rehabilitation policy recommendations in October 1997, Archbishop Tutu said:

Much of what we are about is saying as a nation ‘we are making acknowledgements to people’. The [reparation] amount is going to be symbolic… the nation is saying sorry.

99 At the forum on Reconciliation, Reconstruction and Economic Justice in Cape Town on 19 March 1997, Ms Cynthia Ngewu, mother of one of the ‘Gugulethu Seven’ said:

In my opinion, I think the best way to demonstrate a truthful commitment to peace and a truthful commitment to repentance is that perpetrators of acts of violence would make a contribution, a financial contribution to the families of victims and, in that way, they would then cleanse themselves of their own guilt, and they will then demonstrate with extreme confidence that in fact they are sorry about what they did.

100 A few amnesty applicants did seem sensitive to this need for restitution. Colonel Eugene de Kock devoted the royalties from the sale of his autobiography to a trust fund for victims. Mr Sakkie van Zyl saw his participation in the clearing of landmines in Angola as a form of restitution. Mr Brian Gcina Mkhize risked his own life by co-operating with the authorities to expose clandestine operations in KwaZulu-Natal during the years of conflict. The challenge is to involve much larger numbers of those who received amnesty and other perpetrators of gross human rights violations in the process of restitution.

101 The following extract from the ‘Bisho massacre’ hearing shows that perhaps an even greater challenge may be to involve people on a broader scale: for example, those who gave the orders or voted for the previous government and/or continue to benefit from past human rights violations.

Dr Ramashala: My question relates [not to] Bisho [specifically], but to the gross human rights violations in general which were supported by the then government of the day… We have been very successful in killing. We have been very successful in maiming and leaving people crippled for the rest of their lives. We have been very successful in leaving children without parents and without a future. Have there been any discussions at all within the National Party about these children… We all point to statistics, we all point to who has done what, but I really have never heard any discussions from the political parties about these children and our future, because these are our future South Africa…

Mr Roelf Meyer: Chairperson, I would like to thank the Commissioner again also for raising this issue, and I think, may I first of all say I think you have made an appeal to us – but not only to us, the three of us who are here, not only to our Party – I think you have made an appeal to the whole of South Africa, to all political parties, but also civil society in general, the community out there, everybody in South Africa…

I can say, yes, we are in various ways within the National Party attending to this question and related questions. What I would like to suggest is that we have a responsibility to come back to the Commission on this very question... But I think, Madam Commissioner, if I may say, you have raised with us an issue which is probably the most important one in the final instance of the work of the Commission. Because if we can’t find an answer to the very question that you have put, then the work of the Commission, with all respect, is not going to be in the long term worth anything.

May I say that I don’t think it’s only those that have suffered directly, but there are many, many South Africans, thousands of South Africans who have also indirectly suffered through apartheid, that we have to consider within the whole spectrum of what we want to do in the future. So it’s not only a question of the specific terms of reference of the Commission – namely how to address human rights violations of the nature that has been described in your terms of reference – but it is, in the final instance, we as politicians, as political parties, that have to give direction as to how we are going to rectify the wrongs that flowed from apartheid in a very general sense.

Dr Ramashala: Chairperson, may I ask Mr Meyer and his team that, as you prepare that submission, you consider the following comment from the communities, particularly the greater black communities, and I want to quote: "They get amnesty. They get the golden handshake, (meaning rewards). They get retirement pensions worth millions. And we get nothing. And on television they smirk or they smile to boot."

As you address that submission, please address the question of the perpetrators on your side. The other parties will deal with the perpetrators on their side. But the perpetrators on your side who, so far, when they apply for amnesty and present themselves, and even say they are sorry. None of them has said: “This is my contribution. I would like to do the following.” It stops with, “I am sorry”. None of them has said: “As a demonstration, perhaps of how sorry I am, this is what I would like to do”. None of them have done that. So as you prepare that submission, could you please address that, because that is the more tangible thing that people are asking, and people say that is a re-victimisation, that is a dehumanisation and that has caused more pain than you realise. Thank you.