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MANDELA AND MBEKI: WHITEMAN’S LAPDOGS?

...Read the full article.

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Dear sir,

Thank you for your article and I recognise the time you have invested in it, however, I think with respect that your observations and conclusions are flawed.

I have an interest in this area because it is my area of specialisation and I will take time to respond to you in the course of the next few days.

But simply I ask what choice did South Africa have? A bloodbath? Prolonged civil war?

It would have been so easy for Mandela to rise to the populism and go for vegance. The mark of greatness is being a visionary, which means sometimes going against the popular grain. History is scattered with women and men such as Mandela.

Regards Olu

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i agree with the previous contributor.
and i add..."what would revenge or unforgiveness have achieved? another iraq? another palestine? what?"
things arent comfy for the blacks now, but if the mandela govt had towed d line of unforgiveness and vengeance, South Africa would have been a worse version of what zimbabwe is today.
Somehow, God will right the wrongs.

Another dimension to look at (pretty sad too), is: where is the progress in the African nations that got their independence straight away??????? where is the quality of life for the indigenous africans or even non indigenous ones for that matter???

lets try and call a spade a spade please....no matter how shameful and painful.

the truth will set us free

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Olu and datuouwadaberechi, I think you're both missing the point. The author was not asking for Mandela to have gone for vengeance or a bloodbath, but JUSTICE.

Could you imagine a western country in which a man like P.W Botha could sanction the kinds of mass killings he did, yet repeatedly refuse to appear before a committee for truth and reconcilliation with no action by the authorities?


Did you see the caravan of killers shedding crocodile tears for crimes they commited. In fact, most showed no remorse. It was just a factual recollection of 'adventures' for them. The whole process soon became a bit of a joke, with white supremacist groups disrupting some of the hearings because their members were being compelled to appear.

The arrest of Botha and the quashing of the white supremacist groups would have gone a fair way to addressing the anguish of many families hearing about the terrible ways in which their sons/daughters/fathers were killed by people who didn't think there dealing with fellow human beings!

No one wanted 'revenge', but you will never be taken seriously by people who think little of you in the first place if you cannot be strong and stand up for yourself when it counts.

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No my brother, I do not believe we have missed the precise point. Justice? What is justice? Can a term as contested and elusive as justice be unpacked in any definitive way with more substantial homework? Please read my simple attempt below:

THE POLITICS OF COMPROMISE AND JUSTICE - Olu Ojedokun, Ph.D.
For South Africa, as in many other countries, Albie Sachs seemed to agree that the central tension is between the politics of compromise and the radical notion of justice. This tension has been expressed in different ways by different analysts of the process from authoritarian rule in Latin America and Eastern Europe to a democratic form of government and is a genuinely universal issue. Garreton, from Chile, sees it as "ethical logic" vs political state logic. Jelin, drawing on Greek tragedy, sees the tension as the "logic of mourning/remembrance" vs "political logic".
Political scientists, such as O'Donnel state the dilemma somewhat more pragmatically. For them it is the need for democratic or stable democratisation as against the notion of justice, equality and restitution.
Another way of stating the tension is to distinguish between retributive justice on the one hand and a prudential focus on the common good and future injustice on the other. The former is the Nuremberg model based on the positive duty of successive government’s to dispense justice for past crimes.

At the interview I held with some Jewish participants at the Jewish Book fair on 5th March 2003 we explored this approach, and they raised very real limitations and indeed challenges to the very notion of justice itself, if only prudential justice was involved. Furthermore, we must note that while many countries emerge from a totalitarian system not via military victory but through a state of collapse, South Africa emerged through negotiation, and therefore had to deal with the messy business of compromise. Albie Sachs, however, does not agree that truth itself was compromised in the South African context, he concedes depending on the definition of Justice, then justice may have been partially compromised.

In South Africa the transition was essentially determined by a political compromise and a recurring question is "was there a moral basis to that compromise?” And I think in one sense it could be argued that there was, with the idea that truth at least could be preserved. Essentially the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was committed to the development of a human rights culture and a respect for the rule of law in South Africa. In attempting to do this, I believe that there was an irreducible minimum and that is a commitment to truth. As Roberto Canas of El Salvador puts it: "Unless a society exposes itself to the truth it can harbour no possibility of reconciliation, reunification and trust. For a peace settlement to be solid and durable it must be based on truth."

In Zalaquett’s introduction to the English edition of the Chilean Commission's Report he summed it up:
"Although the truth cannot really in itself dispense justice, it does put an end to many a continued injustice - it does not bring the dead back to life but it brings them out from silence; for the families of the "disappeared" the truth about their fate would mean at last the end to an agonising, endless search."

In a word, it is important that knowledge of the past is known and shared, but it is equally important that this knowledge, this truth, should be acknowledged by the South African community - if reconciliation is to have any long term chance in what had been a deeply divided society.

The setting up of the ANC’s own internal commissions of enquiry, the Stuart, Skweyiya and Motsuenyane Commissions to address its own internal violations of human rights, formed the basis on which the TRC was formed. The Reports of the Commissions confirmed that gross human rights violations had taken place in ANC camps. It is these reports that eventually prompted the promise to set up the TRC which came into being after the transition to multi-party democracy.

Following a period of “truth recovery”, the TRC, in October 1998 presented its final report to President Mandela.

It attempted to locate within the establishment of the TRC, the creation of a process which allowed people to penetrate the thoughts and objectives of those who inhabited the power structures. It also drew from various views and positions on why its establishment was considered necessary. This position can be explored with the knowledge of the argument advanced that South Africa was faced with the use of a legal framework for what was essentially a spiritual/psychological process.

The preamble of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa 1996 as adopted on 8 May 1996 and amended on 11 October 1996 by the Constitutional Assembly, forms a starting point in the process, particularly the section that recognises and acknowledges the past, where the draftsmen express the desire to reconcile the past with the present and bring together these together as a basis for healing a divided and traumatised society and, also as a means of improving the quality of life of all citizens and in the process freeing the potential of each individual. That position also seems to be reinforced by the Act No.34 of 1995: Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act 1995. The act lays down the legal framework for the functioning of the Commission, providing for the investigation and establishment of as complete a picture as possible of the nature, causes and extent of gross violations of human rights committed during the period from 1 March 1960 to the cut-off date contemplated in the Constitution. The implication of these two statutes and indeed others grounding the work of the Commission is the creation of a situation where the South African society simply says to the perpetrators and collaborators of apartheid confess all, your sins are forgiven and there is reconciliation. If this is the case then we must be asked by what means exactly did the Commission hope to verify without powers of the law courts that all truth had indeed been confessed? There is doubt whether this can be answered, since it is argued that ‘truth claims’ in themselves do not flourish in a climate of genuine knowledge, but in a climate of power. John Eldridge states that there is also the problematic of dealing in a world of unassailable facts, not with provisional accounts.

In order to further explore some groundings of the Truth Reconciliation Commission we refer to some of the views of its members. Pumla Gbodo-Madikizela, who was a member of the TRC’s Human Rights Violation Committee, asked:
“Why is it necessary to lift the veil from our past? Why not simply erase the page and start all over again?”

Her attempt to answer the question refers back to the enabling act which enjoined the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to ensure the restoration of dignity to people who have suffered pain and loss through atrocities of the past. She goes on to add that:
“The Truth and Reconciliation Commission starts with the assumption that the truth will heal and rebuild a shattered past.”

The assumption of course draws heavily from Christian principles based on St. John’s Gospel in the Bible, which states:
‘Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free’ and the 1st Book of St. John chapter 1, verse 8:
“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

These principles are also found in Desmond Tutu’s writings where he merged this traditional thought with Christian values of forgiveness, repentance and reconciliation. This combination led to a subtle pressure on those who testified to forgive those who had committed crimes against them, as according to the Ubuntu ideology it was only through forgiveness and the recognition of the humanity of the wrongdoer that testifiers could fully reclaim their own humanity.

There, however, appears to be a variance with some of the other interpretation given by Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s earlier thoughts. In one of those thoughts he argues that the law setting up the TRC does not require that the perpetuators of the crimes should express remorse before amnesty is sought or given by the Commission. He appears to be suggesting here that the Commission was faced with use of a legal framework for what Storey described as a spiritual/psychological process. Why the contradiction? It would seem that Tutu dealt with Amnesty for the perpetrator, while divorcing it from truth telling by the survivor.

This brings us back to the question of ‘truth’, the Bible sees it from a position based on faith, but when Kadar Asmal, a member of the TRC argues that:
“We sacrifice justice for truth so as to consolidate democracy, to close the chapter of the past and to avoid confrontation.”

This quote opens up the problematic: Is it a case of power’s establishment of the Commission, in attempt to avoid confrontation with the ‘truth’ of the South African situation and in doing so exercise a degree of manipulation in managing the process of reconciliation? The argument that Kadar Asmal presents is that the whole process is the subtle exercise of power behind the backs of the people who are governed.

In Brandon Hamber’s case he develops his own argument by justifying the Truth Commission’s establishment as a necessity for ensuring peace and argues that it would have been logistically impossible to guarantee convictions due to what he describes as the inefficiency of the judicial system. What is interesting is his argument is that the Commission is necessary for peace, but he does not place the necessity on total ‘truth’ recovery. In his argument he seems to reinforce a compromise. His argument even contradicts the speech made by Nelson Mandela where he sought to use the whole weight of the government’s position to prevent compromising of the reconciliation.

The compromise inferred by Hamber and Kader Asmal is the ANC’s agreement with the National Party made at the World Trade Centre, not to prosecute its political class and suspected collaborators in return for ceding of power. It would appear that this argument seeks justification from the Truth Commission and its means of ‘truth’ recovery.

Hamber goes on to make an argument about multiplicity of truths. I am not convinced that the argument properly takes into account any serious view of the underlying or foundational notion of truth. If his argument about multiplicity of truths is upheld, then the peace each ‘truth’ brings is subject to various interpretations by each victim or oppressor, all predicated on historical circumstances. In return to the nature of truth later, he does, however, argue that the TRC trades ‘truth’ discovery or full disclosure for amnesty, thus potentially meeting victims’ need for truth and public acknowledgment.

Adrian Guelke in his paper, South Africa’s, Morality Tale From Our Time, presents a concise and well informed summary of the events leading to the establishment of the Commission and attempts an analysis of its work, which can best be described as subjective. It is claimed that:‘The issue proved highly contentious’, arguing that the leaders of the African National Congress favoured the mechanism of the Commission because of a conviction that their self interest and the conduct of its limited ‘armed struggle’ would be protected. This would also seem to have been supported by Judge Albie Sachs in my interview with him in March 2003.

While Adrian Guelke assumes that the National Party were in opposition to the Commission, the available evidence simply does not unequivocally support this position. The National Party in their 2nd submission to the Commission stated that:
“……the National Party wishes to emphasise that it has no problem with bona fide efforts to establish the truth regarding the conflict of the past. It will also enthusiastically support any genuine effort to promote national reconciliation. It believes, however, that the Commission’s present approach is seriously flawed and that unless it can take rapid and effective steps to convince all parties of its impartiality it will not succeed with its historic task.”

It would appear they opposed not the establishment but what they felt was the partiality of the process that was being used.

The TRC deliberately avoided the trappings of a Nuremberg process. In Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s foreword to the Commission’s Report, he stated:
“However, there were even more compelling reasons for avoiding the Nuremberg option.”

He had no doubt that members of the security establishment would have scuppered the negotiated settlement had they thought they were going to run the gauntlet of trials for their involvement in past violations. He felt if that had happened then South Africa would certainly not have experienced a reasonably peaceful transition from repression to democracy. He continues:
“We need to bear this in mind when we criticise the amnesty provisions in the Commission’s founding Act. We have the luxury of being able to complain because we are now reaping the benefits of a stable and democratic dispensation. Had the miracle of the negotiated settlement not occurred, we would have been overwhelmed by the bloodbath that virtually everyone predicted as the inevitable ending for South Africa.”

The ANC’s position was that:
”As part of the process of the transformation of our country, the ANC had to consider its approach to the difficult but critically important question of what the new South Africa should do with those among our citizens who were involved in gross human rights violations during the struggle for our emancipation. The choices we had to make can be stated in a simple and straightforward manner. We could have decided to hold our own Nuremberg Trials. We could have decided that all that should be done should be to forgive everything that has happened in the past.”

The Commission was sought as a mechanism of self-scrutiny, but had not only to wrestle with heavy questions of forgiveness and responsibility, but also with the extent to which reconciliation was dependent upon offering forgiveness and acknowledging responsibility. Admittedly, the emotional cost associated with each of these acts and gestures, the shame, humiliation and betrayal, have all made the TRC one of the most contested sites of post-apartheid identity in South Africa.

When Adrian Guelke makes the point that the TRC standard of evidence gathering falls below that of legal proceedings, he is right, but he appears to miss the point that the whole process of the Commission was to remove from it the mechanical process of the law, as Albie Sachs says, it was to avoid making mechanical the emotional process of evidence gathering in the courts. The whole process was aimed at humanisation.

In the interview of 9th March 2003, I held with Albie Sachs at Kings College, London, during my field work, he contrasted the TRC from a court of law where the whole setting of the court can be intimidating, where the process of eliciting the truth is seen as a cold mechanical way of getting at the truth. He argued that: “This is the opposite of getting at the truth this is the truth getting at you at the participant, the hearer and the viewer.” He refers to the stiff controlled statements by the perpetuators which he feels revealed more than its own content; there was stiff body language and discomfort:
“The inability to express emotion as a professional attribute, that you are a policeman a soldier, your control hides the emotion. But it came through paradoxically, the more strangulated their voices, the more they told about the nature of their work and profession. It was up to the questioning to bring out something that was most human. It was more experiential from that point of view.”

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Ye paripa. My head hurts after reading that ramble. More than that, it shows that you've completely missed the point :D.

A bit less lawyering and a little more straight talk my bother. Now where's that alabukun .........

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Points made, none taken, I got it all mixed up about the mid section.
Declaration of Kosovo's independence took lot less words.

Now, where were we?

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Dear Sir,

I must apoloise for going to town and forgetting myself.....

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My Dear Sir,

Positionally we are at the point where we argue about the utility of using a climate which allows Christian values to predominate when resolving conflicts.

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=Ranter;4294996853>Points made, none taken, I got it all mixed up about the mid section.
Declaration of Kosovo's independence took lot less words.

Now, where were we?

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Let us not forget that the violent crimes and killings now plaguing South Africa, also has some implications with the amnesty granted to former white aparthied people at the end of that bitter history of South Africa, in order to shield, protect and pardon them from worst of crimes against humanity.
It seriously backfired as the easiest thing to do and get away with minimal sentence in South Africa became to shed a human blood and waste lives, even when robberies doesn't have to end in killings and cold blooded murder, it does anyway, as white aparthied racist who were responsible for wasting so many lives, for many decades during aparthied, are being protected by a dumb amnesty to pacify the whites, so they don't leave and take their money and investments away.

The new South African leadership must and must quickly confront their past effectively, in order to build a future.
Whites in South Africa will always have a burden, whether they are forgiven or not.
I am also believing that Africa is a land for the blacks, just like Europe is a land for "whites" or whatever that may mean.