Special Report Transcript Episode 31, Section 4, Time 53:35

It just says fulfil these legal obligations and then we sweep the terrain clean and can start on a clean slate. // Let’s talk about the other leg, reconciliation. There’s been a lot of criticism that this has only been the opening of wounds and no real reconciliation. Do you agree with that? // No, I’m amazed actually at what has been taking place. Admittantly we have those occasions. Like the mother of, some of the mothers of the Mamelodi boys, ten I would have been surprised if they immediately at the hearing of the gruesome murder of their children, how their children were murdered, that they could have stood up to say. Yes, we are willing to forgive. But when you think of the white woman in King Williamstown who says after she’s been through a hand grenade attack and there’s shrapnel in her body still. She says that experience has enriched my life. I’m ready to forgive the perpetrator of this deed and I hope he will forgive me. And in Bisho when one of the army officers says. We gave the orders to the soldiers to open fire, please forgive us, and you’d have thought that the people would eat them up, the people applaud. I mean, those are incredible moments in the life of our country. // Let’s talk about white perceptions of the Truth Commission because we’ve seen in newspapers like Rapport and Die Burger very negative comment. We even had the Western Cape Premier saying the National Party should boycott it. There’s this perception that whites think this is the Kleenex commission, so called. // Yes, I’m sad for those who feel that way. I was telling someone in one of the Afrikaans newspapers, I said ”You know you are very lucky. You are lucky that we don’t want to treat you as you treated us, you are lucky that despite the kind of things that you’ve done to us we are willing to stretch out our hands in reconciliation. Please don’t spurn this opportunity, please, for your sake, for the sake of your children.” And we hope, as I keep saying at hearings, that the generosity from the survivors and victims would have an answering generosity that, of those that benefited to say sorry. // Last quick question: what will 1997 bring? Will the Truth Commission be able to cope with what will be demanding of it in ’97? // We are supposed to give as complete a picture as possible of the human rights violations and I think we’ll be able to do that. But it seems to me we are going to be snowed under, we are being already, in the amnesty process, it’s a flood really, an avalanche of applications. And we are worrying, I mean we are improving the staffing of that but I think we are going to have our work cut out. But I believe that we would have done the major thing that this country is seeking for and we will be making our proposals as well with regard to reparation and I believe we are going to get there. // Thank you Archbishop and on behalf of the Special Report team may I say ‘sterkte vir volgende jaar’ [all the best for next year]. // ‘Baie dankie, en Geseënde Kersfees vir almal van julle’ [Thank you, and a Merry Christmas to all of you].

Notes: Reconciliation

References: there are no references for this transcript