Ivor Powell
There’s a passage in Des-mond Tutu’s just- published memoir of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, No Future without Forgiveness, that sums up the dilemma and the moral enormity of the truth commission.
Tutu is in Rwanda, and he has just delivered a sermon warning against Tutsi retribution for the atrocities committed by the then Hutu government during the 1994 genocide. Tribunals and punishment, he argues, will merely lead into new cycles of retribution.
“The president of Rwanda responded to my sermon with considerable magnanimity. They were ready to forgive, he said, but even Jesus had declared that the devil could not be forgiven. I do not know where he found the basis for what he said, but he was expressing a view that found some resonance.”
Tutu, of course, never loses his Christian charity or his optimism. But there are times, recorded his memoir, when these qualities were apparently tested to the limit.
One such instance was that of the government’s chemical and biological warfare programme, which he describes as the “most diabolical aspect of apartheid” and reminds him of Dachau.
“Thank God they were so incompetent,” he judges. “What was so shattering for me was that it had all been so scientific, so calculated, so clinical. We had listened to gruesome details in evidence that had come before the commission before then. “
Tutu then lists some of the projects and substances embarked upon by the programme: “Cholera, botulism, anthrax, chemical poisoning and the production of huge supplies of mandrax, Ecstasy and other drugs of abuse.”
“We wonder now that there is such a huge supply of drugs in the coloured community of the Cape Flats … Is it an unfortunate social phenomenon or does it relate to part of a chemical and biological warfare programme to undermine the morale of that community?”
Equally strong words are used to describe the actions of former state president FW de Klerk – who is nevertheless warmly commended for his February 2 1990 speech unbanning liberation movements.
Tutu, a former Nobel Peace Prize laureate, relates that he was telephoned by the Norwegian Nobel Committee for advice on whether to award a joint peace prize to Nelson Mandela and De Klerk in 1993, and endorsed it.
“Had I known then what I know now, I would have opposed it vehemently.”
Tutu writes: “Sadly, he [De Klerk] believed he could find a way to keep power by trying to erode that of his major negotiating partner, Mr Nelson Mandela, who increasingly became his opponent.
“That was when the so-called ‘black-on- black’ violence escalated and various horrendous massacres took place … I cannot believe that the involvement of one Cabinet minister and two former commissioners of police in human rights violations in the 1980s represented nothing more serious than aberrations by mavericks.”