SPEAKING VERY SOFTLY, her voice strained by illness and years of struggle searching for the truth about the whereabouts of her son’s remains, Joyce Mthimkhulu is tired. Her son Siphiwe was detained, tortured and poisoned by the apartheid security police in the Eastern Cape. He disappeared after suing the state for gross abuse and attempted murder. His body was never found.
When she appeared at a public hearing of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), she raised in her hands the only remains she has of her son: the mass of hair that fell out as a result of thallium poisoning. She had kept her son’s hair, she said, in the hope that one day she might be able to bury it with his remains. She is still waiting.
The man whom Joyce Mthimkhulu believes holds the key to that truth, Gideon Nieuwoudt, testified before the TRC that her son’s body had been burnt, and his ashes scattered in the Fish River. Nieuwoudt was granted amnesty for the murder of Siphiwe and his companion, Topsy Madaka, but was denied amnesty due to his lack of candour about his and his unit’s role in the PEBCO Three and Motherwell Bombing incidents. Now Nieuwoudt has been arrested by the Scorpions, and released on bail. He has a second chance to disclose the full details of the human rights abuses for which he admitted responsibility before the TRC, including, according to Joyce Mthimkhulu, information on where Siphiwe’s remains are buried.
Some believe the arrest of Nieuwoudt and his former colleagues who did not apply for amnesty, or were denied amnesty, may ‘hamper reconciliation’. The vigorous prosecution of Nieuwoudt and his ilk, they suggest, will throw the reconciliation agenda into chaos because of the possible disclosure of the names of high-ranking officials in the former apartheid government. But are such disclosures not the very essence of reconciliation? Was it not this promise of the truth that encouraged victims and survivors to embrace the idea of reconciliation, lending legitimacy to the ‘justice’ of the quasi-legal process of the TRC?
Nieuwoudt, who is out on bail until June when his court hearing is scheduled to resume, no doubt enjoys hearing remarks about the potential ‘hampering’ of reconciliation if his prosecution goes ahead. A Cape Town newspaper recently quoted him as saying that continuing his trial would show that the government was not serious about reconciliation.
Rather than encourage Nieuwoudt and others to use the commitment to reconciliation as a form of ransom, ways of moving them towards contrition and some measure of genuine regret for their deeds should be considered. These prosecutions, as I see them, will contribute to South Africa’s dealing with the unfinished business of the TRC – unfinished because of the gaping void left by undisclosed truth. They lead us towards the road of moral humanity that lies ahead on our journey of reconciliation. Nieuwoudt and others like him should rise to the challenge of honouring victims and their families, and to be honourable. Allowing them to go free at this point would not only reward them, but would also prevent any corresponding compensation for victims, who were granted a mere R30 000 for reparations.
Joyce Mthimkhulu has not received the reparations promised by the president in April last year. She says that when she phoned the justice department to find out why her payment was delayed, she was informed that the department had been going through the claims in alphabetical order. ‘What does the alphabet have to do with it?’ she asks with exasperation. ‘Why should our pain be reduced to the way the alphabet is constructed?’ She and her husband are waiting for the money not out of greed, she says, but because they need it to pay their medical bills. Her husband suffered a stroke that affected his speech, and she has had a series of health problems.
Nieuwoudt has visited her home to apologise. His arrogance and contempt for the process of reconciliation is clearly evident in a documentary by Mark Kaplan entitled ‘Between Joyce and Remembrance’. Nieuwoudt tells Joyce and her husband that he, like them, is a Christian. It’s now time to forgive, forget the past and reconcile. ‘I have done my duty,’ he says, referring to the ‘duty’ of coming to their home to ask their forgiveness. In the same film, Siphiwe’s only surviving son, S’khumbuzo, asks how he can be expected to forgive when he has not been able to find his father’s body. ‘They didn’t even leave a single bone,’ he says.
In the past, victims knew that the legal route was no antidote for crimes committed by the security police. Gross human rights abuses were impervious to the normal principles of law – as if one could call the justice system of the past ‘normal’. The process of justice today should not remind victims of their marginalised status in the past. Saving Nieuwoudt from prosecution will vindicate him, and add to the victims’ pain.
A programme of rewarding perpetrators, either through presidential pardon or other kinds of amnesty, should follow a clear vision guided by the spirit of the goals set out in the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act that governed the TRC: those who confess fully, and those who have demonstrated a dedication to national reconciliation, should be considered for political pardon.
The state’s commitment to pursue the prosecution of perpetrators of human rights abuses who were refused amnesty for specific crimes, and those who did not apply for amnesty, is a sign that the government takes reconciliation seriously. Far from threatening reconciliation, those prosecutions are essential for holding perpetrators accountable, and therefore a positive element of reconciliation.
If former senior apartheid leaders share in the ideal of healing and reconciliation for our country, their being named in public, if it happens, should be valued as an important contribution to the country’s post-apartheid transition. This would elevate victims’ suffering from being mere footnotes in the story of South Africa’s reconciliation process.
4. The politics of revenge will fail
ThisDay, 19 May 2004
In May 2004, the American broadcaster CBS aired images of the torture and abuse of prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison at the hands of American military personnel and government officials. At that time, I was on a lecture tour of the United States, speaking about my book on my experiences at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The events at Abu Ghraib bore an uncanny resemblance to the forms of torture described by victims of apartheid, and I became troubled by the grammar of violence with which the American government responded.
SEVERAL WEEKS AGO I was interviewed on a live show on American National Public Radio (NPR). The occasion was the launch of the paperback edition of my book A Human Being Died That Night,3 and the radio discussion included the third democratic elections since the ANC’s 1994 victory; the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC); how South Africa moved on after the bloody conflict of the past, and some of the challenges it faces now; and forgiveness and reconciliation.
At some point in my conversation with the host, the lines were opened to allow listeners to share their views. One of the callers, an Irish-American woman, questioned the significance of the TRC in the lives of blacks in South Africa. ‘How can they [black people] allow this thing to happen?’ she asked. She went on to express her discontent with current discussions in Northern Ireland about the possibility of introducing a process similar to the TRC.
She made it clear that she was opposed to any idea that would fall short of punishing the British for the years of pain and anguish they had caused in Northern Ireland. She cited ‘Bloody Sunday’, an incident in which Catholic civilians involved in a peaceful march against detention without trial were killed by British troops – an equivalent of the Sharpeville Massacre – as an example of the evils of the British: ‘I want the British to suffer for what they did to us,’ she said. Her anger on air was palpable.
Earlier that day I had lunch with Alex Boraine, former chair