| |
Content
A listing of transcripts of the dialogue and narrative of this section.
|
Structure
The list provides the transcript, info about the text, and links to references contained in the text.
|
Special Report
Transcripts for Section 5 of Episode 80
| Time | Summary | | | 30:53 | Once the Truth Commission has wound up its work there’s no doubt that we can expect a spate of books from commissioners eager to share their insights and experiences with the world. It is very likely that the first memoir to hit the shelves will come from the pen of Wendy Orr. As we found out, this is a woman who doesn’t waste time. Here is a profile of the youngest Truth Commissioner. | Full Transcript | | 31:05 | I was born in Boksburg, but have no memory of it, we moved to Pretoria when I was eighteen months old. My father is a Presbyterian minister, so I was brought up in a religious, spiritual household and although I am not a practicing Christian now I have a very strong sense of right and wrong and justice and injustice and was brought up with that. So I grew up in Pretoria, went to primary school there, matriculated at Pretoria High school for girls and then went to UCT to study medicine. I did my house job in Port Elizabeth and then because I’d had a government bursary I had to work for the state to either pay them back or work it back and the job they gave me was as a medical officer in the District Surgeon’s office in Port Elizabeth. And my bosses there were Doctors Ivor Lang and Benjamin Tucker of Steve Biko infamy. Port Elizabeth, 1985 was a nightmare. It was the year of the Langa massacre, of the death of the Cradock Four, of the disappearance of the Pebco three, of the ...more | Full Transcript and References | | 32:47 | Orr wanted to report the beatings and torture experienced by detainees she treated, but there was no one to turn to. | Full Transcript | | 32:55 | I did report to Dr Lang, as one following dutiful procedure, and his attitude was basically look give these people the treatment they need, you know if they need a Panado give them a Panado, if they need an X-ray have them X-rayed but that’s where our job stops. It’s not our job to find out why this is happening or how it’s happening or to stop it quite frankly. I was absolutely flabbergasted that everybody knew it was happening and nobody was going to do a single thing about it. This went on for about a month and I became quite desperate. The daily litany of suffering, of sjambok wounds of lacerations, of horrible injuries, of mentally retarded young men who were detained for no rhyme or reason, elderly gentlemen who were released after their 14 days and then maliciously re-detained as they were about to get on the bus to go home. It literally broke my heart. I didn’t know what to do. And through a serendipitous circle of events and speaking to family members I was put in ...more | Full Transcript and References | | 34:53 | Life in the PE District Surgeon’s office became unbearable for Wendy Orr, but the bravery of this young doctor who had spoken out against injustice was widely acknowledged. // My motivations have been questioned and I’d like to reiterate that what I did was out of a deep professional concern for the welfare of my patients and the belief that medical ethics should not be compromised. | Full Transcript | | 35:16 | After leaving Port Elizabeth Dr Orr practiced in a range of health sector jobs, settling ultimately into a senior administrative post at the University of Cape Town. | Full Transcript | | 35:25 | And out of the blue one day in 1995 Barney Pityana phoned me and said Wendy can the Human Rights Commission nominate you for the TRC? And I said Barney I’d be honoured, but surely there are other people who are far more appropriate and suitable. And he said, no we think you should be on it so I said fine and I forgot about it quite frankly. I really thought there was very little chance that I’d get on. My life was finally on an even keel, my plans never work out, and I forgot about it. And about four weeks later I got a telephone call asking me to come for an interview and I sat down and thought about it. And my attitude quite literally was this is who I am, this is what I am, this is what I’ve done and this is what I’ll talk about and if that’s what the country wants and needs, well this is me. | Full Transcript | | 36:16 | The highs have really been very individual things and I think of specific events like workshops that I ran for victims in Port Elizabeth - also very early on in the process when I was learning and they were learning - and Brandon Hamber from the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation was with me. And the sense of pain in that room was immense, it was palpable. But by the end of the day as I had spoken about what the Truth Commission is about and how we wanted to reach out and embrace people and hold them and strengthen them one could almost feel that, the pain was still there but that people at last felt it was being acknowledged and that was tremendously important for them and I came out of that workshop on an absolute high. | Full Transcript | | 37:10 | Amongst the many missions of this high-octane commissioner Wendy Orr hopes to achieve two goals in particular: the improvement of mental health care in South Africa and the appointment of a medical ombudsman, a regulator to who doctors can report malpractice. // My immediate plans for when the TRC ends are to go and lecture in the USA for a few months; there are a number of schools of human rights at the universities there and they’re all very interested in hearing about the process, particularly within the health sector and what has happened. But I am a South African through and through and I will come back. I stuck it out through the eighties and I certainly will stick it out through the nineties and the new millennium. | Full Transcript |
|
|
>
