The Truth and Reconciliation Committee

Article written by Ciaran Davis. Edited and Researched by Tom Burke.

The Truth and Reconciliation Committee was established in 1995 in post-Apartheid South Africa. Victims and perpetrators of atrocities were both asked to recount their stories of the Apartheid era in order to uncover the extent of suffering during the Apartheid era. The hearings were presented on television each Sunday from April 1996 to June 1998 in hour-long episodes. The court proceedings produced some truly shocking stories. The murder of the Cradock four, for example, demonstrated the ruthlessness of the apartheid regime. In 1985, four black activists were stopped at a roadblock near Port Elizabeth. They had been earmarked for assassination by the security forces. The policemen abducted Matthew Goniwe, Fort Calata, Sparrow Mkonto and Sicelo Mhlauli. They murdered them and in an attempt to hide their crime they mutilated and set fire to the bodies. The burnt remains of “the Cradock Four”, as they came to be known, were found in a nearby suburb. The retelling of events such as these produced great feelings of emotion within South Africa. 

Nobody was off-limits in the committee’s quest for the truth. Winnie Mandela, ex-wife of Nelson and considered in many townships as the ‘mother of the nation’ faced accusations of murder from a former comrade. Somewhat controversially, the committee retained the power to grant amnesties for crimes that black liberation fighters and white supremacists had committed, on the condition they truthfully disclose what occurred in South Africa. This example of restorative justice used history as a form of catharsis. It tried to discover the historical truth of what had happened in order to move on as a nation. 

The legacy of the committee has been contested. Families of the victims felt that justice had not been done. Furthermore there are still pervasive resentments within South Africa due to pronounced economic inequalities amongst black and white communities. However, the progress of post–apartheid Africa would not have been possible without the Peace and Truth commission. If a vengeful justice had been sought perhaps South Africa would be a more violent divided place. The dissatisfaction with the Nuremburg trials for example had a corrosive effect upon post-war Europe. The top-branch of the Nazis were tried and brought to justice. However, the widespread complicity of collaborators was never addressed. There was no public discourse of what had actually occurred. This was a major cause of the 1968 revolutions. The post-war generation were angered by the absence of their parent’s admission of sins and this added to the growing sense of dissatisfaction. If this style of enquiry was pursued in South Africa the results would have been potentially have been explosive. 

Furthermore it is interesting to juxtapose South Africa with Spain. The atrocities of Franco era were effectively swept under the carpet. The Spanish constitution of 1978 granted amnesties in order to protect Fascist power.  The absence of a historical enquiry has meant that mass graves of the civil war lay unmarked, with families still unable to bury their loved ones. Furthermore the absence of an examination of Spain’s recent history has led to the persistence of pro Franco fascist groups such as the Authentic Falange. Their low electoral support means they are unlikely to realistically challenge the mainstream parties, but their existence highlights the potential danger of not addressing historical issues in public. 

The atrocities committed by Serbian in the Balkans in the 90s demonstrated the power of historical myth. During the Second World War Croatian Ustaša forces killed 320,000 to 340,000 Serbs. In the aftermath of the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1989, these figures were wildly exaggerated with some leaders saying as many as 800,000 had been killed. The purpose of this distortion was to justify the need for a Serbian homeland. Serbian leaders such as Milosevic exacerbated the climate of fear and asserted that history would repeat itself, even though the various ethnic communities had lived together for many years in the multi-ethnic Yugoslav state. Perhaps a comprehensive public historical enquiry in the aftermath of the Second World War would have helped to heal divisions in the Balkans and prevented the sustaining of erroneous myths. 

The examples of Spain, Serbia and post-War Europe all demonstrate the importance of having a public historical enquiry. The vengeful justice exhibited in the Nuremburg trials proved to be unsatisfying for future generations. Similarly the absence of a public inquiry can lead to the creation of myths which have potentially awful consequences. For its all its flaws and persistent feelings of injustice the methods favoured by the South African peace and truth committee acted as a much needed form of catharsis. Its methodology should be adopted by other countries that undergo periods of intense human suffering. 

Research 

The Apartheid system in South Africa began in 1948 with the election of the National Party, the ruling party in South Africa from 1948 to 1994. Through the system blacks, Asians, natives and whites were segregated in education, housing, medical care and in other public and private services. ‘Coloured voters’ were formally disenfranchised in 1969 after a slow reduction of voting rights since 1948, leaving whites as the only enfranchised group (Asians were not granted the vote.) 

Eventually, after internal protest led by figures such as Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, and international condemnation such as MacMillan’s Winds of Change speech and trade embargos from the UN, negotiations to end apartheid began in 1990. 1994 saw the first multi-racial elections in South Africa, which were won by Nelson Mandela leading the African National Congress.

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