‘Pain gives a quality to what is happening that nothing else seems able to give’ counsels the late Desmond Tutu to Antjie Krog in her book Country of my Skull. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has just been handed new information on, amongst others, The Cradock Four and Pebco 3, and the Bishop, back from his sickbed, is in khakhi shorts, takkies, a t-shirt and good spirits.
Threatening court action, the National Party is not playing ball. And so when asked by the reporter whether he really needs the NP, a despairing Tutu responds: ‘it hurts me … when I think of the quiet strength and resilience and magnanimity of the victims, that there is just no response from [the NP] side. And for reconciliation we need everybody.’
Does the NP need you, asks Krog. Tutu considers this before responding in his inimitable clerical fashion: ‘You see, we can’t go to heaven alone. If I arrive there, God will ask me: “Where is [FW] De klerk? His path crossed yours.” And he also – God will ask him: “Where is Tutu?” So I cried for him, I cried for De Klerk – because he spurned the opportunity to become human.’
Despite all the grim testimonies and wailing in the gallery, international visitors are curious about one abnormality: ‘the absence of black anger in the audience.’ Nobody is banging hard on tables or lunging at anybody. ‘Have decades of oppression eroded black people’s sense that they have a right to show anger?’ Clinical psychologist Nomfundo Walaza proffers an explanation. That: ‘a crying person and an angry person are two sides of the same coin.’ And that ‘in Xhosa the word they have chosen for “reconciliation” – as in “Truth and Reconciliation” – is “uxolelwano”, which is much closer in meaning to “forgiveness”.’
Of a pessimistic white woman who says she doesn’t even watch the Commission because all she sees ‘is a sea of hatred,’ Walaza has a rebuttal: ‘she knows instinctively that if apartheid had been done to her, she would have hated…..it goes to the whole notion of saying blacks are so angry with me there is no way I can go and live with them because they are going to kill me.’
But is forgiveness truly possible when the causes/offences for which it is sought remain in the shadows? Can the man who was once a baby when his father was tortured, killed and burned, ever find closure as long as those who could be held responsible remain free? Most importantly, though, can one expect different outcomes when the same issues that haunted the Commission nearly 30 years ago, seem to die hard even in the democratic age? And is it still forgiveness that the victims seek, or does justice nowadays sound like the more necessary word?
As anti-apartheid activists the Cradock Four’s political activities mimicked those of their surrounding small town neighbours. They stood against high rents, did not take kindly to black councillors, mobilised marginalised communities, and ultimately joined the United Democratic Front. In no time they found themselves in the crosshairs of the SA security forces. In June 1985, on their way from Gqeberha, they were abducted and ultimately murdered by the state apparatus.
It is in light of the reopening of the latest inquest into the murders of these activists; Fort Calata, Matthew Goniwe, Sparrow Mkonto and Sicelo Mhlauli – collectively known as the Cradock Four – that this – amongst the most painful and storied Struggle histories in the Karoo – has crept up in my mind. Nearly 40 years on, their respective families’ quest for justice have gone unanswered. But, Calata’s son, known in journalism quarters to be one of those who never goes down without a fight, has been the unsilenceable voice of the case for decades now. (He was one of the fabled SABC8 and has recently been the one to go for Thabo Mbeki’s jugular, accusing the former president of trying to “shield his reputation” by ‘intervening in a lawsuit against the government for failing to investigate and prosecute crimes committed during apartheid.’
Amid the squabbling, some 49 persons associated with this case are now dead, making the odds for finding justice just that much slimmer. Add to this incidents reminiscent of the distrust, loathing and attitudes of Krog’s literary recollections and indeed, even hope appears a waste of time. There lurk a familiar mix of allegations about political figures pulling strings from behind the scenes, missing dockets, alleged cover-ups and a National Prosecuting Authority that stands accused of dragging their feet.
The SA National Defence Force has refused to foot the legal bills of Lt General Joffel van der Westhuizen ‘former commanding officer of the Eastern Province Command and one of those implicated in the killings.’ The Daily Maverick (DM) report doesn’t give reasons as to the SADF’s decision but there are those who will wonder if the court delays – mainly dependant on evidence that’s already on public record – might not ultimately prove to be another unnecessary hurdle to justice. Columnist Ismael Lagardien’s DM piece on the TRC does little to keep one’s hopes alive. According to the esteemed Prof, justice was not really what the entire TRC exercise had in mind to start with, and neither will ‘the establishment of a commission of inquiry into long-standing delays in Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) case investigations and prosecutions,’ announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa in April.
‘It sounds nice,’ writes Largadien ‘it is well-meaning, but it will (deservedly) benefit only those who lost friends and family members who were killed by apartheid’s security forces between 1961 and 1994.’ Although acknowledging PAC and ANC activists who were killed as well as those who were “on the other side,” namely military personnel, police ‘and civilians (on whose behalf the military and security establishment defended apartheid.’ But the one grating failing for the Commission was the inability ‘to see that a country of 44 million people (the population in 1994), at least 80% of whom had been victims of apartheid, needed redress for decades of injustice and abuse that had nothing to do with the armed struggle.’
He continues to note a narrative that has gathered steam circa the EFF’s founding, the issue of urgent economic redress. ‘the TRC ignored the vertically segmented privilege of European colonisation and white settler colonialism. It was as if apartheid didn’t matter; only the conflict between the liberation movement and the state security forces mattered.’
‘It had to do with “moving on” which, effectively, sanctified all white people who today would tell us, often explicitly, that we have to “move on” — people who “don’t see race”, who fail to accept, or even recognise that something was wrong with the country during the settler colonial period.’ Then the spatial realities: ‘it had little or nothing to do with justice for people who were, for instance, forced off land, dumped in ethnic “homelands” or moved from homes in urban sites, like Sophiatown or Vrededorp in Johannesburg; Simon’s Town or District Six in Cape Town; and South End in what was, then, Port Elizabeth — to make way for white people.’
Which raises the question: if justice has been elusive for these educated men such as Calata, what hope might there be for invisible nobodies? To be sure, Ramaphosa’s new commission is meant to probe issues around ‘long-standing delays in Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) case investigations and prosecutions.’ Yet another commission, sadly, probably will not amount to much. Marikana, Zondo (remember everybody squirming with glee when Angelo Agrizzi was singing like a canary, assured that the prison overalls were coming) but here we are. Perhaps one can do without seeing a once high-flying political bigman in an orange jumpsuit but one can’t quite find the words for the child who’s grown into a man hearing stories of the savage way his father died. And, nearly 40 years on, the questions go unanswered.
More worrisome is why Mbeki, nowadays whirling his time giving lectures and accepting awards would creep out of the woodwork to challenge something so seemingly not really up his alley. And, with which most people would agree is necessary to all those people who’ve not given up the fight after all these years. Although one is not holding one’s breath for justice being served to the applicants, one hopes that some answers to some of these questions might be brought to the light.