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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 5 of Episode 82
| Time | Summary | | | 41:42 | We have seen much truth and many deeply touching scenes of reconciliation between victims, survivors and perpetrators the last 22 months. But as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission winds up its work we now have to look to the future and ask what is to become of reconciliation. How do we take this process further? Perhaps we should first ask why are we talking about reconciliation. Doesn’t the re the ‘r’ ‘e’ in reconciliation implies that we bring people together who were once at peace? That is certainly not true of our society. We have been divided for more than 300 years. Should people not be conciled before they can be reconciled? Tonight we introduce you to the concept of conciliation. | Full Transcript | | 42:31 | ‘Conciliation’ | Full Transcript | | 43:37 | Being conciled means that you are in line with each other, which means you’re on the same wavelength and that had broken down. Now in our memory, all of us, you and me, we don’t remember such a situation because we are always at odds with each other. There was oppression, there was the oppressed and that is not being in line with each other. | Full Transcript | | 44:00 | We actually are talking about creating something that never was in this country. // Conciliation as far as I’m concerned will mean that you have to take away the anger and the animosity in people and make them understand the need to stay and work together. | Full Transcript | | 44:29 | 1995. South Africa reaches out emotionally to the concept of a rainbow nation. This moment is imprinted on our psyche as a time when one nation became a possibility, but today we have to ask is the rainbow nation a mirage? Did it exist? Can it exist? And if it does, is it over? | Full Transcript | | 45:11 | There’s no way that you can take away the rainbow aspect of our nation, it’s there, it’s permanent. It’s just that it has to be cemented further by ensuring that there’s parity between people in terms of conditions of their lives, conditions at work, at school, at their residencies. We should do away with poverty and in that way I think that this rainbow nation will mean something to all people. | Full Transcript | | 45:52 | I believe that we have now created conditions, the most ideal conditions ever in the history of the country, for black and white South Africans and when I say black I include Indian and coloured communities as well, I include everybody. I think we have created the most ideal conditions for the first time for all of us to be both conciled and reconciled. | Full Transcript | | 46:12 | I don’t believe that there was in fact a phase of rainbow harmony. I think there was an emergent rainbow, there was an emergent harmony. It was in fact more correct to label it as a period of relief that things didn’t turn out as badly as they could have. But also a period during which we celebrated an achievement, a major achievement. | Full Transcript | | 46:46 | At the moment it’s rainbow nation, one nation, everything together and we are going to create this paradise in a certain sense and I’m sad to say but we’re going to have a lot of disillusionment as some of these things will just not work. And then hopefully the pendulum will come back and we’ll become more realistic in addressing our diversity. Acknowledging that we have a diversity and then trying to reconcile that. | Full Transcript | | 47:08 | It is a recipe for disaster. I don’t know who this fool is that brought about this concept of rainbow nation. He must lack vision or she must lack vision, whoever he is who brought this rainbow concept to this country. They are planting again what we have eliminated. We have eliminated apartheid, now they are bringing it back in elevated and glorified ways. So, rainbow nation is out, but what is in is an African nation. We can be an African nation and the only thing that we need to do is to become committed to Africa, that’s all, that’s all it takes. | Full Transcript | | 47:50 | The PAC’s way forward may be Africanism, but what exactly does this mean? And what else lies in the pot at the end of the rainbow? How are we going to concile ourselves with the past in order to live in the future? | Full Transcript | | 48:22 | Now so many things have been taken away from the oppressed people. Number one, land, it was just taken away and they became landless, their stock was taken away and all their possessions were taken away, even their self respect was taken away. So those people therefore that took that away, they don’t exist anymore. Now, you cannot blame all the white people in this country for that and say they did it because they didn’t do it, I mean most of them didn’t do it knowingly at the time. But there is something: responsibility, they all have the responsibility; they may not have done it but they have the responsibility, so they must carry out that responsibility of restitution and they must acknowledge that. To say I’m sorry and I apologise and that’s it, that is the end of it, let us forget, that is not enough. | Full Transcript | | 49:14 | There is no way in which you can concile and reconcile people if you keep them apart from each other. I think for people to come to know each other they must live together. There is a dramatic example I think in the history of this country. When Moshoeshoe the First, during the beginning of the 19th century forged the Basotho as a tribal unit if you like. He pulled together Basotho, Fengu’s, Tswana, whatever group of people he found, he pulled all of them together and in a real sense in that doing that Basotho prized peace and they prized it because it came from the origins of the tribe, making peace with each other. You may be Nguni, but you know let’s live together, let’s find a common basis and let’s become one people. And I think that that is what we’re trying to do in this country today, creating conditions in which South Africans can interact with each other, can learn each other’s languages and customs, go to school together, play together. Unless that was so I ...more | Full Transcript | | 50:56 | The conflict of the past is not only about white oppressors. When we talk of reconciliation there are so many shades of the past that now have become levels for reconciliation. What about black informers, black policemen, black councillors, black collaborators? What about the ongoing strife between the ANC and the IFP? And in a country where the difference between rich and poor is so vast, what about conciliation between rich and poor people? | Full Transcript and References | | 51:30 | There are people that were tortured and tormented by the SB’s or by the security system and we are not of equal strength, we’ve got to recognize that, so they broke down and sold out and actually went ahead and gave evidence in court. Now, you look at their motives, did they join the liberation movement in order to sell out, the answer is no. You cannot therefore isolate them, you’ve got to embrace them and say, well you are weak but we can strengthen you now, we have achieved what you wanted to achieve in the first place but you fell by the way side. | Full Transcript | | 52:08 | If you look into some of the areas you will see how that the old order tries to encourage division. I mean between the Ciskei and the Transkei, this is one if you like tribe, everybody’s speaking Xhosa and yet the old order divided these people and we must now find a way to concile and reconcile those people. | Full Transcript | | 52:31 | There will be no sustainable reconciliation unless there is attention paid meticulously, vigorously, urgently to issues of socio-economic deprivation. | Full Transcript | | 52:46 | We need to address the poverty that is gripping the people, all of us together at this point in time, and then I think conciliation, reconciliation, rainbow nation will mean something to the majority of the people of this country. | Full Transcript | | 53:03 | As the life of the Truth Commission comes to an end we have to ask ourselves what role its activities have played in reconciling our nation. Throughout this programme you have seen amazing moments at hearings where people reached out to each other, forgave each other, embraced each other, moments of conciliation. But so many people who appeared before the Commission have said that simply telling their stories to a nation whose time it was to listen was a healing process that brought peace and maybe this lies at the root of the concept we are trying to explore: conciliation, meaning not only conciling ourselves with others but conciling ourselves with the past and our role in it, as victims, as survivors, as perpetrators, as politicians or maybe simply as people who did nothing more than just benefit from apartheid. | Full Transcript | | 54:00 | This conciliation/reconciliation is not about hearing that my child was killed here and so on and then say well I’m sorry and I forgive you and that is it. It is for families, it is for communities, gradually as they move on in life to find the capacity on a daily basis to overcome the traumas. So, even forgiveness cannot be legislated for. Some of the people of course will go to their graves without the fortune of being able to master that and being able to forgive. | Full Transcript |
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