Gustav Thiel
AN international human rights commission has accused the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of ignoring the role played by psychiatrists and psychologists in abusing human rights under the apartheid regime.
The Citizens Commission on Human Rights said it had uncovered a “determined effort by the apartheid regime to use the field of mental health to further its aims”.
The truth commission was unable to hear the group’s evidence, blaming time constraints. It did, however, hear the Pyschological Society of South Africa, which admitted its profession had done little to fight for human rights, and in some cases had fought against blacks joining its ranks.
The Citizens Commission on Human Rights was established in 1969 as an independent reform body to investigate and expose psychiatric violence of human rights.
In 1970, it discovered disused mining camps which had been turned into psychiatric facilities, where up to 10 000 blacks were incarcerated, the majority involuntarily. They were used for unpaid labour.
A four-year investigation culminated in a report entitled “Let the whistle blow – an expos of concealed camps for mental patients in South Africa”, which chronicled the appalling conditions to which black mental patients were subjected.
In 1991, The Weekly Mail, defying the Mental Health Amendment Act, ran an expos on conditions at two of these facilities, Millsite and Randfontein. They were owned by a firm of accountants known as Smith Mitchell & Company.
Connie Mulder, minister of information in the PW Botha government, was a director of several of the mental institutions.
Among the key abuses uncovered at the facilities were the excessive drugging of patients, and patients being admitted for not carrying pass books, arguing in public or not being able to speak the local language.
Discharge from the facilities was complex, according to the citizens commission, because it required authorisation from a state psychiatrist. As Smith Mitchell was guaranteed a 90% occupancy rate by the government, this required a steady flow of patients. The company was paid on a per capita basis, but the psychiatrists who treated the patients were provided by the Department of Health.
The citizens commission alleges electroshock treatment – firing up to 460V of electricity through the brain – was administered to patients without anaesthetic.