Dismantling apartheid without retribution

By Sylvain Comeau

Post-apartheid South Africa is a model for nations moving toward democracy, Phillippe-Joseph Salazar said in a Concordia lecture on March 8.

After decades of oppression by the apartheid regime, South Africa faced a long uphill climb in moving toward a more just society. Still hampered by poverty, the country has made great strides in addressing long-standing inequities.

“Just imagine a country which, for a long time, was aimed at serving 10 per cent of the population. Today, with the same resources, it serves the entire population,” said Salazar, Professor in Humane Letters at the University of Cape Town.

One of the keys to South Africa’s “just peace” was the Sunset Clause, in which the old apartheid regime would be allowed to fade away rather than be torn down in retribution.

“The old regime would be allowed its sunset, and sunsets in South Africa are very slow. The apartheid regime was allowed to shut down gradually. There was a slow transfer of powers in the military and government; the previous administrations would have to train the next one.”

The idea was to avoid creating a sudden vacuum that could lead to chaos.

“South Africa learned the lessons of decolonization, in which colonial power would abruptly withdraw and the society would collapse. They knew the same thing would happen to South Africa if the regime disappeared overnight.”

Another key, according to Salazar, is that the difficult transition was handled internally by South Africans, rather than imposed by well meaning foreigners.

“No reform can be achieved from the outside; Iraq will never work for that reason. South Africans have suffered; foreigners can come, observe and grieve, but South Africans must do the work.”

Much of that work was accomplished by South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), an institution that offered amnesty to criminals of the apartheid regime.

“There is a need for understanding, not retaliation; reconciliation, not vengeance. Amnesty is granted to criminals because that is essential to this process. This is an example of restorative justice, as opposed to retributive justice.”

A key principle of the TRC is that apartheid dehumanized not only the oppressed but also the oppressors. Thus, amnesty was granted to criminals who were acting for political reasons.

“Amnesty can only be granted to someone following orders. They have to prove that they were ordered to do what they did; a lone believer in apartheid who was acting on his own can’t receive amnesty.” Granting legal amnesty and achieving reconciliation raises another issue: forgiveness.

“One of the parents of a victim raised this question with the TRC: will she forgive or not? The commissioner, who actually shares the parent’s viewpoint, said very sharply, ‘We are not here to forgive or to pardon. That’s not the job of the Commission; our role is to have the criminals tell us what they did.’”

There is a punishment inherent in that telling, Salazar notes.

“The telling of what was untold carries with it a punishment; that is the remarkable feat of the TRC. That is because telling the crime doesn’t erase it.

“Traditionally in the amnesty process, the crime is cancelled out; no one knows what you did. But in the TRC amnesty process, the crime remains, it is archived and publicized. You have to live with the shame of it.”

Full disclosure is the rule, “and the commission is actually ruthless in that respect. It cannot demand that you seek amnesty; the criminal has to come voluntarily. But once you face the TRC, you must tell everything.”

While those seeking amnesty have to live with their crimes as a matter of public record, those who sought to hide them from the Commission don’t get off scot-free.

“The risk is that if you committed a crime and you weren’t able to burn all the records of it, and somone finds out, then you could face criminal prosecution. There are 259 such prosecutions in the pipeline at the moment, including a general. So there is a penal follow-up to the TRC.”

The Commission is currently suspended, as the work of the TRC’s Amnesty Committee has been completed. Two other committees started by the TRC, the Reparation and Rehabilitation (R & R) Committee and Human Rights Violations (HRV) Committee, are ongoing.

Salazar’s lecture was presented by the Department of Communications and Media Studies.