South Africa once again confronts its tortured past
Tuesday, 21 August 2007
Alec Russell
In Dream of the Dog, a powerful new South African play about confronting the past, one of the characters, an ageing white racist farmer, is baffled when one of his former black labourers returns after the end of apartheid to confront him about his abuses.
"Is it not too late for this?" the farmer asks. "It's never too late," replies his former servant, who is now a successful businessman.
Similar heated exchanges about how to tackle the past have been reverberating around South Africa ahead of the latest opening of a trial that has thrust the country's history back into the political debate.
Adriaan Vlok, a hardline law and order minister in the last years of white rule, is on trial for one of the more sinister crimes of the apartheid era - the 1989 attempted murder of a prominent anti-apartheid activist. The victim, Frank Chikane, who is now a senior adviser to President Thabo Mbeki, had poison soaked on to his underwear which attacked his nervous system, and had to be rushed to hospital.
In the nine years since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission wrapped up its hearings into the human rights abuses of the apartheid years, politics has focused on the challenges of the present and the future, in particular the economy.
But now once again South Africa is grappling with the often contradictory concepts of justice, truth and reconciliation and having to accept that apartheid-era wounds are far from healed.
The charging of Mr Vlok along with a former police chief and three former policemen has split South Africa along racial lines. Many whites, in particular Afrikaners, view it as an unnecessary opening up of old sores. The last white president, F.W. de Klerk, has warned that it threatens South Africa's hard-won spirit of reconciliation.
But for many black South Africans the TRC left questions unanswered. In particular there is resentment that only junior members of the apartheid security forces were brought to justice, rather than politicians.
"The TRC was not just about reconciliation; it was about justice too," says Adam Habib, a leading political scientist. "Speak to black intellectuals and victims' family members and there is a continuous question: how come foot soldiers got prosecuted but the decision-makers are allowed to get away with it?"
The TRC granted amnesty to those who confessed to political crimes but made clear that those who ignored the process would later be open to prosecution.
Mr Vlok was the only senior politician to confess to a crime: the bombing of anti-apartheid groups' offices in Johannesburg . He did not seek amnesty for the 1989 poisoning, which he is accused of masterminding, but in a bizarre scene last year he apologised to Rev Chikane and washed his feet in penitence.
Rev Chikane tried to lower the political temperature recently, insisting there was no "witch-hunt" of Afrikaners.
But South Africa has been given a reminder that it is still a long way from releasing what another character in Dream of the Dog called the "poison" of the past.
"This is something we have to do," says Prof Habib. The process has to be even-handed, but it is essential there are prosecutions to ensure South Africa does not develop a political culture of impunity. "Leaving it creates all kinds of other nightmares," he says.
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— FT Syndication Service
In Dream of the Dog, a powerful new South African play about confronting the past, one of the characters, an ageing white racist farmer, is baffled when one of his former black labourers returns after the end of apartheid to confront him about his abuses.
"Is it not too late for this?" the farmer asks. "It's never too late," replies his former servant, who is now a successful businessman.
Similar heated exchanges about how to tackle the past have been reverberating around South Africa ahead of the latest opening of a trial that has thrust the country's history back into the political debate.
Adriaan Vlok, a hardline law and order minister in the last years of white rule, is on trial for one of the more sinister crimes of the apartheid era - the 1989 attempted murder of a prominent anti-apartheid activist. The victim, Frank Chikane, who is now a senior adviser to President Thabo Mbeki, had poison soaked on to his underwear which attacked his nervous system, and had to be rushed to hospital.
In the nine years since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission wrapped up its hearings into the human rights abuses of the apartheid years, politics has focused on the challenges of the present and the future, in particular the economy.
But now once again South Africa is grappling with the often contradictory concepts of justice, truth and reconciliation and having to accept that apartheid-era wounds are far from healed.
The charging of Mr Vlok along with a former police chief and three former policemen has split South Africa along racial lines. Many whites, in particular Afrikaners, view it as an unnecessary opening up of old sores. The last white president, F.W. de Klerk, has warned that it threatens South Africa's hard-won spirit of reconciliation.
But for many black South Africans the TRC left questions unanswered. In particular there is resentment that only junior members of the apartheid security forces were brought to justice, rather than politicians.
"The TRC was not just about reconciliation; it was about justice too," says Adam Habib, a leading political scientist. "Speak to black intellectuals and victims' family members and there is a continuous question: how come foot soldiers got prosecuted but the decision-makers are allowed to get away with it?"
The TRC granted amnesty to those who confessed to political crimes but made clear that those who ignored the process would later be open to prosecution.
Mr Vlok was the only senior politician to confess to a crime: the bombing of anti-apartheid groups' offices in Johannesburg . He did not seek amnesty for the 1989 poisoning, which he is accused of masterminding, but in a bizarre scene last year he apologised to Rev Chikane and washed his feet in penitence.
Rev Chikane tried to lower the political temperature recently, insisting there was no "witch-hunt" of Afrikaners.
But South Africa has been given a reminder that it is still a long way from releasing what another character in Dream of the Dog called the "poison" of the past.
"This is something we have to do," says Prof Habib. The process has to be even-handed, but it is essential there are prosecutions to ensure South Africa does not develop a political culture of impunity. "Leaving it creates all kinds of other nightmares," he says.
...........................................
— FT Syndication Service