Lessons of South Africa's Truth Commission
Ten years ago, Michael Lapsley, an Anglican priest who for many
years travelled the world fighting apartheid, received a letter
bomb hidden between the pages of two religious magazines. South
African government agents had sent it. Fr Lapsley suffered
horrific injuries, losing both hands and an eye. For him, this
was the beginning of a journey that led him to establish the
Institute for Healing of Memories.
Michael Lapsley aims to become a victor in the sense of becoming
a participant in creating a different kind of society. He spoke
recently in Trinity College at a conference organised by AfrI,
the Irish School of Ecumenism and the East Timor Ireland Support
Campaign.
``Many people on this planet have very good reason to be bitter,
to want revenge,'' he told his audience. ``But the problem is that
those feelings would eventually destroy us. We got involved in
workshops called the Healing of the Memory, which give people the
space to share what is within them.'' Since 1998, workshops have
been organised in South Africa and other places with traumatic
experiences fresh in the memory: in Rwanda, Sri Lanka and few
months ago in Dili, the capital of East Timor.
Last year, Michael Lapsley ran a workshop in Portadown.
``I believe that here in this island is very important that people
do not forget what people have done to each other. It should not
be forgotten. It should be remembered forever,'' he said. ``But we
have to find ways of healing the wounds.''
Lapsley believes a common fundamental issue linking different
conflict situations is how to deal with the past. He has found
that it is mostly the oppressors who want to turn the page of
history but ``the problem we face in South Africa is that the page
of history is too heavy. It will not turn, and we realised as a
nation, as a people, that we have to look at it if we were to
proceed.''
Possibly no other society in history has faced its past in the
same generation as openly as the people of South Africa have done
through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. There have been
other truth commissions around the world, in Latin America and
Africa, but they tended to meet behind closed doors, hampered by
very limited budgets and extremely limited powers. Sometimes, the
first news that the general public had of the commission was when
the final report was produced.
``We looked into the face of our pain,'' said Lapsley. ``Under
apartheid we inverted the moral order. So for example, if you
spent your life as a torturer, you would be promoted and
rewarded. At the end of your life, you would be given a golden
handshake. And the ones that were tortured were told `scream for
all you like, there is no one listening... Do not worry, we will
not leave marks, so no one will believe you'.''
The Truth Commission was for many people the first time that what
happened to them was acknowledged. Twenty-three thousand people
came forward, speaking in their own voices of killings, attempted
assassinations, torture, severe maltreatment.
One of its most controversial aspects was the question of amnesty
for those who declared their crimes during its hearings. Lapsley
explains that this was decided during the negotiations between
the Apartheid regime and the African National Congress. ``The
apartheid generals said to the negotiators, `unless there is
amnesty, these negotiations are going nowhere'. What we saw was
the possibility of an escalating civil war that would have cost
millions of lives. Our negotiators took a step back from the
table and said `There should be amnesty'.''
There was a third aspect to the commission, a committee
responsible for making recommendations to the state for
reparations and rehabilitation for victims.
In October 1998, the Truth Commission presented to the president
its final report, listing the forms of reparations it believed
that victims should receive. These included symbolic reparations;
methods of institutional reform; the issuing of death
certificates for those who had disappeared; the issuing of
scholarships and bursaries for children from those families where
the breadwinner had been killed; the holding of services and
national commemorations; and medical and counselling services for
those who had been traumatised. It also decided that everybody
who had been declared a victim should received a form of monetary
reparation every month for six years.
These reparations apply to 18,800 people and would cost three
billion rand.
``Now, more than two and a half years later, the state has not
said what its response is to the reparations requirement,'' states
Lapsley. ``The state has not said we will not have reparations,
but it has not said when and how and to what degree it will
fulfil reparations.''
``The government has said it is waiting until the final amnesty
decisions have been made before it makes its decision. So the
relatives of victims and the survivors are being held hostages of
the amnesty process.''
As Michael Lapsley rightly points out, if those reparations do
not happen, the Truth Commission will go down in history as ``a
perpetrator-friendly exercise''. On the other hand, if there were
reparations, the commission would go down in history as the most
extraordinary examples of restorative justice in human history.
``The jury is still out on that question'', says Lapsley.
Martial law in Ecuador
At least three indigenous people have been killed and about ten
injured after the Ecuadorian army opened fire against 5,000
indigenous Quichua who were demonstrating peacefully on the
bridges over the rivers Napo y Misahualli. This latest
development could be the starting point of an armed conflict
between Ecuador's indigenous population and the government of the
country.
On Saturday 3 February, Ecuador's President, Gustavo Noboa,
declared a state of national emergency after the breakdown of
talks with indigenous leaders over price hikes that have sparked
nationwide protests. Indigenous, peasant and workers'
organisations have been holding peaceful protests against
IMF-sponsored cutbacks for the past two weeks, blocking roads and
occupying marketplaces and a university.
The emergency allows the government to limit group meetings and
nationwide travel, inspect private homes without other legal
authority and dispatch military and police forces as it deems
necessary, according to the constitution.
Throughout the previous week, from across the impoverished Andean
nation thousands of indigenous were arriving in Quito, where most
are camped out at Salesian University, to protest
government-mandated hikes in transportation and fuel prices.
Police have estimated some 3,000 indigenous people have arrived
to the capital, but the university sets the count at 6,000.
Throughout the highlands of this nation of 12.4 million people,
protesters have blocked highways, making vehicle travel nearly
impossible and triggering a scarcity of basic goods in some major
cities.
As the talks broke down between the government and the indigenous
leaders, who last year led an uprising that ousted then-President
Jamil Mahuad, they threatened to intensify their protests.
The defence minister has announced that the army would intervene
to end the protest, but Antonio Vargas, president of Ecuador's
National Indian Federation and leader during the protests that
overthrew Mahuad, vowed not to back down: ``They've been insisting
we talk and threatening to evict us. They want to apply a strong
hand. We're not going to run, we're not going to faint, we are
going to stay right here until we reach our objective.''
Ecuador has had four presidents in four years. But this time
political analysts have said it is unlikely this year's protests
will topple Mahuad's successor President Gustavo Noboa because he
has the backing of the business community and, in particular, the
military, which often acts a key powerbroker.
World leaders hacked off
On Sunday, 4 February, it emerged that computer hackers had
managed to steal personal information about the rich and powerful
from the organisers of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in the
Swiss resort of Davos.
Although security was tight around the meeting,
anti-globalisation activists approached a Swiss newspaper,
Sonntagszeitung, with accurate data including mobile phone
numbers, credit card numbers and home addresses of such figures
as Bill Clinton, Bill Gates of Microsoft and Palestinian leader
Yasser Arafat among others.
The WEF confirmed that its computer security had apparently been
breached during its annual gathering, which ended on 30 January,
and that it was treating the matter as a crime. Organisers
refused to speculate as to whether the hackers might be
anti-globalisation protesters, who were mostly kept out of the
Swiss resort town during the WEF meeting by a heavy police
presence.
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