Pieter-Dirk Uys, South Africa’s most playful political commentator, digs into the truth commission in an effort to define what is true and what is just another aspect of reality
THROUGHOUT our lives, I bet you, we’ve all at one time or another sweated before a truth commission. As small children, in front of the giggling class, with an angry teacher hissing: “Did you bring that frog into the room?”
Of course you didn’t. It was the biggest bully in the class who put it down your shirt and made you howl like a beastie. But you knew to tell the truth would mean a fate worse than punishment. That bully would just beat you to a pulp. So to tell a lie and admit to something you didn’t do, would only end up as six stripes on your bottom. So you’d lie to tell the truth.
Remember that terrible array of angry mothers glaring down at you? With their daughters laughing silently behind their innocent shocked expressions.
“Were you being rude to the girls?” the mothers would bellow. Confusion would only make you smile nervously in fear of these harridans. They’d see this as arrogance and get even crosser.
“Did you unbutton your trousers and wave your winkie at the girls?” the mothers would demand. “Tell the truth!” Heavens, yes! It was only meant to be a joke! Me and the poor winkie were only 8 years old! And both very small too! So you tell the truth and you get six more stripes on your bottom! Truth or lie, you never could win!
So what is The Truth? Is it to tell what you think happened? Is it to rearrange the facts ever so slightly, so as not to hurt the person who expects the worst? Is it to see something from your point of view which is white, while someone else who watched the same thing, but from a totally different perspective, sees it as black?
Within two years of that wonderful Inauguration Day, it seems that the facts of a forty-year old horror-story called Apartheid Suid-Afrika have made way for the fiction of a reborn democracy. Has everyone forgotten terrible things that happened during those years? Didn’t we all read about something? Hear about, think about, whisper about? Now people are dead, and the empty space left by their memories cannot let their loved ones ignore the fact that they are gone forever.
Forgive and forget? Forgiving is the gift of someone who knows there is life after death. Forgetting is the curse of a nation who doesn’t want to remember the deaths that gave it life. The sacrifices of the past have made the present so possible. Yes, it’s all terribly serious, frightingly sad and fragile. And so easily forced off-course through insensitive attitudes and expectations.
If the grieving mother can now find out what happened to the son she’s not seen for 15 years, no matter how terrible, a truth commission has earned its place in our democracy. There are far too many mothers with no tombstone against which they can weep. Their children have vanished. Who did this? Who is responsible for the pain that was so unnecessary? Someone crippled those families through power and laws. Arrogant politicians signed papers. Persons in uniform delivered the envelopes. Dominees in black said it was okay. Fathers refused to answer their sons’ questions because they were too scared.
So, if it’s so serious, how can anyone find humour in a truth commission? The fun is not in the findings. It is in the hypocrisy that will lead a guilty party to the stand where the world will watch the tears of apology wash away the flecks of spilt blood on the faces of fascists. I don’t think any of those former leaders still alive today will show the greatness of spirit and stand up to be cross- examined. And then tell the truth!
Already former FUhrer P W Botha had made it clear. “I did nothing wrong,” he said, wagging a finger and licking a cracked lip.
Our own Errol Flynn of Nationalist politics, Pik Botha, insists that he has nothing to confess. Former security police monsters are bending over blackwards to point fingers at their old bosses. It is fashionable in the new South Africa to be sorry. It is the in-thing to admit guilt. It is quite acceptable to expect to be forgiven.
So roll up! Get on the stand! Open your heart! Show your inhumanity, be cleansed and get away with it! Here are a few easy steps on how to say you’re sorry and not mean it.
l Hint that throughout the years of being an obvious voter for the National Party, you were a spy for the ANC!
l Whisper that the only reason you behaved like a racist pig throughout your life was to divert the attention away from the fact that you were a commander in the ANC army!
l Suggest that maybe you’d had a black lover at university during the 1960s, 1970s or 1980s!
l Find an old “Free Mandela” T-shirt and say you’d had it hidden under your mattress while it was illegal to possess such a subversive thing!
l Drink neat vodka without coughing and so prove that some of your best friends used to be communists.
l Practise to do the double handshake of liberation so that you don’t get your fingers in a knot when meeting an ex-terrorist like Robert McBride.
l Be sure not to vomit when you meet an ex- terrorist like Robert McBride. Remind yourself that the student murders he committed were politically motivated, just like the times you turned the hose onto the black beggars who came round to ask for a crust of bread.
l Apply to be allowed to confess to the truth commission. Send so many rambling letters that they, in desperation, just ask you to fax your crimes. Then say the fax machine was broken.
l Plead ignorance of everything. Some answers could be:
— “How should I know? I was in a coma for
12 years after my riding accident.”
— “I supported the struggle, but had to
keep a low profile because I have five children.”
— “I think I was overseas when that
happened …”
— “I was definitely overseas when that
happened …”
— “I must have been overseas when that
happened …”
— “I am a Christian; how could I even
understand such cruelty?”
— “I stand accused on behalf of my fellow
man. Blame me for his sins …” This comment is impossible to argue against. Have a video camera ready to record you when you say it.
Good luck! Who knows, your barefaced honesty might even get you onto the truth commission itself one day!