Benjamin Pogrund
Reconciliation Through Truth by Kader Asmal, Louise Asmal, Ronald Suresh Roberts
(David Philip/Mayibuye, R49,95)
The advantage of a late review is the opportunity it provides to take on board what has already appeared. In this case there has been an exchange of views in newspaper columns between the authors and Professor Hermann Giliomee of the University of Cape Town and current president of the South African Institute of Race Relations, with others joining in.
The exchange has been so acrimonious and the insults so personal that there appears to be a history behind it. No doubt Giliomee’s feelings were also inflamed by the book’s abrasively dismissive references to his previously expressed views in which he disparaged African National Congress electoral success.
It is a debate, if one may call it that, which Giliomee cannot win. Neither reason nor emotion are on his side and in trying to attack the book as he has he lands up, no doubt unintentionally, as an apologist for the discredited previous regime.
The three authors in their turn are on the side of the angels. The core of their argument is that for South Africa to go forward it must confront its past and this can only be done ”on the recognition that apartheid was a terrible evil”.
That, of course, is not an original thought, but the authors present it with a passion and fluency which grip the mind and imagination. They go on from this starting point to argue for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission not ”the triumphalist approach of victors’ justice, with its inevitable selectiveness and political opportunism” but rather taking the form of ”apology and renunciation of past atrocities as a precondition of amnesty”.
The book was evidently written before and during the commission’s existence, so it both anticipates and reports its doings. Thus far the book’s arguments for the commission have been amply borne out: the searing, agonising details which have been pouring out of the hearings are justification, if any had ever been needed, of the commission’s purpose.
The book’s denunciations of apartheid as ”a crime against humanity” and as ”genocide” are based on declarations and findings by United Nations bodies. The approach tends to be legalistic and perhaps reflects the role of Kader Asmal in a previous life as a professor of law at an Irish university and his work, together with his wife and co-author, Louise, in opposing apartheid internationally. But none of this detracts from the justice of what they say and the more that Giliomee seeks to deny it the more defensive about the past he seems to be.
That is a pity because in past times he was a thoughtful commentator and he could have done better, for himself and everyone else, to have concentrated on the parts of the book which deserve criticism. For not only is there evidence of sloppy research as in speaking of 11 000 arrests under the Public Safety Act in 1960 when in fact there were some 2 000 political detentions with another 18 000 people arrested as ”vagrants” but among the wearying repetitiousness there is also a tendency to rely on words without exploring and explaining the context.
For example, the authors treat seriously and at some length Judge Tienie Steyn’s commission in 1982 into the media. They thus give Steyn considerably more credibility than he enjoyed at the time. From the then government’s point of view he served a purpose in supporting propaganda about ”total onslaught” but his report of hundreds of pages then disappeared from view because it was widely perceived, even in official circles, as the meandering musings of an amiable but eccentric man.
The whole discussion about the press is disappointing in its shallowness. Yes, as the authors say, the Newspaper Press Union, the organisation of proprietors, did repeatedly cave in to government pressure and yes, most of the press was into ignorant denial. On the other hand, there was enough resistance to ensure that a good deal of the truth about the evils of apartheid was made known so that no one, whether at home or abroad, could ever claim complete ignorance about what was happening.
These weaknesses apart, the authors get into one of the most burning controversies of the moment in describing the ANC and the apartheid government as, respectively, ”the world’s most law-abiding liberation movement” and ”the world’s most lawless bureaucracy”.
During the struggle between them, ”The anti- apartheid resistance, under-resourced and reduced to the status of exiles and refugees … committed scattered human rights infringements amounting to departures from its primary humanist goals … In contrast, apartheid’s administrators, deliberately rejecting humanism and civilised international norms, formally implemented avowedly ‘abnormal’ measures in the conscious and deliberate defence of a crime against humanity. These things inhabit different, fundamentally incompatible, moral universes.”
That is well put. But does it follow that ANC members are not to be called to account for their actions? The Truth and Reconciliation Commission will shortly be getting to grips with the question when it comes to consider applications for amnesty being submitted by ANC members.
Who is to be given amnesty and why is bound up with our country’s future moral health and with relationships between people. The issue deserves the widest possible airing. This book gives valuable and timely direction to the debate.
Benjamin Pogrund is a former deputy editor of the Rand Daily Mail. His book on that paper will appear next year
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