TRC Final Report

Volume 5

Chapter 9

Subsection 5

26 It was even more difficult for those who were directly involved in the security forces to reconcile themselves with the decriminalisation of their former enemies. This difficulty was articulated by Ms Trudy de Ridder, a psychologist who had recently worked with a number of ex-SADF conscripts struggling to cope with their involvement in the war on the Namibian border during the 1970s and 1980s. In her written submission to the Commission, Ms de Ridder said⁵:

Central to most of these testimonies [by ex-conscripts] is the notion that the present has destroyed the foundations of ‘meaning’ these conscripts adopted to cope with their traumatic experiences. It is easier to cope with having killed someone you believe to be the sub-human agent of forces that wish to destroy everything you hold dear than it is to cope with having killed a normal man, woman or child that history happened to cast as ‘your enemy’.

This crisis is greatly intensified when it is revealed to you that the person you have killed is a ‘hero’ or ‘freedom fighter’ or ‘innocent civilian’ – which the South African transformation correctly described him or her to have been. Most of these conscripts have, up until now, silently considered themselves victims (of neglect and manipulation) but are now publicly portrayed as perpetrators (of apartheid military objectives or even of gross human rights violations)…

The Truth Commission has helped break the silence of past suffering, atrocities and abuses. In so doing, it has both released some traumatised ex-conscripts from the prison of silence and trapped them in the role of perpetrators of apartheid. For some, the contradictions of their experience might prove intolerable; for others, the process of revealing the truth about the past might allow them to confront and deal with their experiences.

27 The complexity of the impact of decriminalisation on different communities was illustrated by the testimony of Mr Chris van Eeden, president of a mainstream Afrikaner youth organisation, the Junior Rapportryers Beweging (JRB) at the Commission’s special hearing on children and youth, in Johannesburg:

In our organisation, there are a couple of thousand of young men. More than 50 per cent of them were national servicemen; the rest were too young. In my work in the JRB, I see most of these people during the year and we talk to each other.

I don’t want to blame the [Commission] – the media is inclined to look at these atrocities. But the same names, the same police are repeatedly referred to, while there is no mention made of the majority of people who were in the police and the Defence Force who weren’t involved in the atrocities.

They provided a service for the country, because they loved the country. This is still the case at present and they would probably do it again.

Commissioner Malan: Could I just interrupt you here, because I think we’ve got the message. I refer to the other part, you hear the same names and things but those are things that you didn’t hear when you were in the army? That is my question.

Mr Van Eeden: I can honestly say to you that these kinds of acts, no one can approve of. It makes you furious and angry because that is not what myself and thousands of young Afrikaner men got involved to do.

Commissioner Malan: Can I take the question a bit further and the answer. I know is very difficult for people to understand who look at this whole history from a different perspective… How is it possible that you didn’t know anything of it or did anything about it? Do you have a perspective on that?

Mr Van Eeden: War as such is a crime against humanity; there are no victors. I had personal knowledge because I saw it, of certain of these actions that took place. I saw the result of bodies being burnt. I had knowledge of that. I didn’t have knowledge of orchestrated efforts of forces that I served to incite such incidents…

Commissioner Malan: You say that you saw bodies that were burnt. What did you think was the reason for that? Who burnt them?

Mr Van Eeden: I didn’t have to think of what the reason was; it was quite clear. I did my service in Vaal Triangle in the 1990s and it was black on black violence. That it could have been incited from another force, well we have evidence for that now. But I have personal knowledge of, well, let’s refer to it as violence between ethnic groups, black ethnic groups in the Vaal Triangle, I saw that.

Commissioner Malan: You never saw some kind of an orchestrated effort from government?

Mr Van Eeden: No, I never experienced it as such and I think the evidence came as a shock.