Special Report Transcript Episode 85, Section 2, Time 08:08

All right, let me go back to Cape Town and I want to ask both of you in Cape Town. Can you imagine, this is now two years after the process had started … let me speak for myself, because I’m hardly … I’m going to try to be very neutral, but I’m not because I’ve lived with this process for two years through this programme, so forgive me if I have views on it. But, I can hardly imagine South Africa trying to go into the future without having had this process. If you look back now at the role the process had played in our public life week after week on television, on the radio, in the newspapers, that constant interaction with it. Herman Giliomee. Can you actually say that we should have done without this process? // Well you know I don’t think this process was the only alternative. One could have had trials along the De Kock trial, now the Ferdi Barnard trial. My whole feeling about the Truth Commission, there was very little observance of judicial procedures. So, one doesn’t know the exact value of the truth or the so-called truth that has been established. // Was that a feasible option though, to go the judicial process where you have cross examinations? // The arguments that people brought against it said no the courts can’t handle it, but now we have the situation that the Truth Commission can’t handle it. So I think one should have had the continuation of prosecutions, it should have been proper trials. They could have provided for more courts, more prosecution teams. But I think we have, in many cases have had a travesty of the truth and if I could just respond to Dr. Mandela, it was in fact because it was promised that there will be reconciliation that the main opposition parties, the IFP and the NP, went along with this Truth Commission. I don’t think they would have given their approval because there was no revolutionary victory. They would have given their approval to such a one sided process and secondly to a process that according to the poll I just sighted only aggravates injuries, aggravates the hurt, aggravates the racial polarization.

Notes: Max du Preez; Herman Giliomee

References: there are no references for this transcript