Special Report Transcript Episode 80, Section 7, Time 51:47

Our Truth Commission here is very different because we have television cameras recording every single moment and radio microphones, and it’s broadcast on a daily basis. Does that in your experience make a big difference? // It’s absolutely remarkable to me to watch the process here. I mean, it’s so much so that I would say that most other commissions are a commission about a product and the commission in South Africa is a commission about a process. And it is the process that will affect the country; that is affecting the country. Presumably the report that’s produced as well will be important, it’s obviously still in process, and we’ll see that. But in other countries people know very little from the outside about what’s happening, nothing’s public. Often, there’s a very strict rule of confidentiality that even the staff can’t speak to the press, no one knows even what cases might be investigated and the journalism sector is usually much more limited, constrained, often threatened themselves, if they’re coming out of a very dark history. So that there is not the investigative journalism context that prompts other investigations to go on for example within the commission. // We have a feeling here that this is the mother of all Truth Commissions and this will be the model from now on. Do you agree? // It is definitely the model that everybody is looking to and I think in part because of the great attention and great interest in the commission here there has been spark and interest in doing something similar elsewhere. And those commissions that are being spoken about in other countries, and they are cropping up all over it seems, often refer to the South African case, as what they want to do in their country. Unfortunately I don’t think it is a model that can be recreated and probably shouldn’t be. As I said each commission is different and each commission should be different, it should be as strong as it can be in the political context in which it operates. But there will be different aspects of its mandate which might need to be stronger or weaker. Now, some of the distinctions about the South African commission, such as the amnesty provision, such as the power to subpoena persons, other kind of powers, fairly strong powers that has been given such as search and seizure to collect evidence. Those have never been seen before; surprisingly, because they are such an important part of the commission here. It is hard to think of a truth commission without them, but those are actually unique and they’ve captured much attention from persons overseas. Now, if you look to Bosnia, if you look to Rwanda, two good examples, both countries of course have an international tribunal, which are trying some of their criminals from past conflicts. Both countries have not had truth commissions, but both independently are now thinking of putting together truth commissions, which is a surprise to me. But I think that says many things, I think it says something about the limitations that people are seeing in taking a trials approach only. It also says that it is not an either or, you can have trails, domestic and international tribunal trials and you can also have a commission that can paint the big picture and give much more voice to and listen to the victims. If you look at Rwanda specifically. They specifically decided against a truth commission and after their period of genocide they decided to have domestic trials as well as support the international tribunal. Now they have, as of about three weeks ago a 105 000 persons in jail from the genocide period. There have been 250 trials that have started and that is pushing about as hard as can be pushed from the UN and other organisations that are trying to facilitate trial. It’s just a very slow process.

Notes: Max du Preez; SA TRC hearings; Priscilla Hayner; Max du Preez; Priscilla Hayner; Rwanda genocide; Rwandan jail

References: there are no references for this transcript