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Content
A listing of transcripts of the dialogue and narrative of this section.
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Structure
The list provides the transcript, info about the text, and links to references contained in the text.
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Special Report
Transcripts for Section 7 of Episode 38
| Time | Summary | | | 18:26 | Let’s turn to something completely different now. The amnesty process is about perpetrators of human rights violations. The other side of the truth and reconciliation process is about their victims. How do we compensate them for their hurts and losses? On a practical level we should look at health care, education, financial and emotional assistance, but equally important to the human soul are symbols and rituals that heal. This was the topic of a workshop in East London last week held by the Truth Commission’s Rehabilitation and Reparation Committee. It is a debate that is only beginning. | Full Transcript | | 19:02 | We had the first hearing in April in this very hall and victims came in their hundreds to open their souls to the TRC and I believe that we have then a responsibility as the TRC not to let those who opened their souls to us down. The Reparation and Rehabilitation Committee must begin to lead the TRC towards assisting in answering the question whether or not we are a Commission which is led by a concern for the victims. | Full Transcript | | 19:59 | With these words another dimension has been added to the task of the Truth Commission and that quite simply is to start a national debate on what should be done for the many, many victims of gross human rights violations. While some perpetrators have already been granted amnesty, victims have not even begun to have their losses restored. What then is to be done? One of the ways in which it is said victims can be compensated is through symbolic reparation. In other countries like Germany and Argentina, which also instituted Truth Commissions, past atrocities and acts of resistance were symbolically remembered through national monuments and memorials. Symbolic reparation then could be one way of remembering suffering and strength. It could also serve as a powerful warning to future generations not to repeat the mistakes of the past. But how do we in South Africa do this? For instance Vlakplaas, the death squad headquarters, could be turned into a public park or Steven Bantu Biko’s ...more | Full Transcript | | 21:56 | If you’re going to build symbols that stand up there and all they do is remind me of my pain… // You’re watching it on TV, you see an old woman telling you that my son was shot and he died right in front of me and to me it just brings back a pain. It cause hatred inside me, you know there’s no way I can heal from that because every time I see it, it just keeps hurting me; it’s like not letting wounds to heal. I agree with him, if we could have positive ways of doing it like Mandela walking out of jail which is taking us a step further instead of going backwards, because, yes we have to live with our past but if we’re going that backward we’re going nowhere. // It is a statement by the nation to say we have been through this past. It’s a reality of our past. We need not repeat it. // There’s a real contradiction in the way that people speak about fixing or try in some ways to improve the lives of victims while saying that there are very limited resources to do that ...more | Full Transcript | | 24:07 | OK, so let’s work with the reality of here it is, this is what’s happening. OK now all of the things that you guys are talking about: remorse, repentance, material and economic reparation, improving people’s lives, etc. etc. How can gestures on a national level like for instance turning … what do we do with Vlakplaas, as a way of making sense of the past? // You burn and show it live on television. You burn it so it disappears, I mean it’s like why should it … you burn it on television or whatever. You know, it must go. You burn it like they burnt people. // If you want to destroy Vlakplaas we can destroy it at any time or make it into something, but I think for the sake of future generations they should be able to go and look at exactly where their kin, their fathers, their forefathers died or where they were ill-treated. So that, destroying Vlakplaas, while it will achieve at a very minimum level or immediate thing removing from our history something that is bad. But I ...more | Full Transcript | | 26:15 | The old symbols that we have, they are there, they are symbols, but they represent a particular history and a particular past that has not been associated with respect for human dignity and human rights, they are integrated. What we need are new symbols. // … And I think we should be able to use our tragedies, if we need to use them, in a manner that empowers us. // The issue of symbolic monuments should really focus on the triumph of our people over apartheid, you know, that the heroic aspect of our symbols must actually be what gives us confidence to actually love our country, to be patriotic to it, etc, etc. // He’s absolutely right that most of the representation of the Commission and of the history has been of victims and of pain and there is a whole other story about celebration and strength. // We have a victim mentality. ’76 is not about the people who died. Apartheid crumbling down is not about the people who died, you understand, it’s about what they achieved ...more | Full Transcript |
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