Barry Streek
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is to give an average of only R3 000 to each of the 16 700 victims of apartheid identified during its hearings.
“It is very little,” TRC commissioner Hlengiwe Mkhize acknowledged this week, saying the awards would be merely “symbolic”. “It is simply an acknowledgment of their pain and suffering. It was intended to restore people’s dignity, but it really does not fulfil that function.”
The TRC proposed far higher compensation, said Mkhize, but the government came back with a more modest proposal.
News that the pay-outs will be so paltry follows details of the government’s reparations budget announced by Minister of Justice and Constitutional Planning Penuell Maduna in Parliament last month: R100- million in the 1998/99 financial year and a further R200-million during the current financial year.
Pay-outs have already begun. In reply to a question tabled by the New National Party’s Sheila Camerer, Maduna conceded that the government lacked “adequate financial resources” to “implement all the recommendations”.
He added the TRC pay-outs had also been hit by logistical problems: “There is concern that some of the victims, especially those located in rural areas, are experiencing problems in communication with the national office currently handling reparations.”
The TRC verifies the claims, then submits them to the President’s Fund, which makes the payments through bank accounts which TRC officials have helped to open for the victims to help prevent abuses. Victims are also advised to get documentation on other costs, such as medical and school costs, for the service component of the awards.
The basic payment is R2 000, but with the service component the average payment is R3 000. Mkhize says the highest payment she could recall was R10 000 to a wheelchair- bound victim who could not urinate without assistance.
“It is not really compensation,” Mkhize points out. “It is aimed at getting people access to services, but it is not reparation in the true sense of the word.”
The reparation and rehabilitation committee said in its November report that it had continued pressing the government to form a reparations co- ordinating structure at national and local levels to be responsible for the implementation of the long-term reparation process as the locus of responsibility after the life of the committee.
“It is essential that the proposed co- ordinating structure is located within government as from the beginning of December 1999, so as to allow government officials time to master information related to the reparation process before the end of March, when the committee intends to close down its operations. There cannot be a hiatus in the process.”
Maduna, however, merely said the government is “giving consideration” to provincial structures to act as focal points for urgent interim reparations claims, and to the establishment of a national co-ordinating mechanism.
It is also giving consideration to the establishment of a reparations trust fund to which all segments of society, including the private sector and organs of civil society, can contribute because “we believe the duty of promoting reconciliation in our country falls on all South Africans”.
Mkhize says there is an ongoing dialogue on these issues but “we have to put them on the table”.
People are still suffering from trauma and they could be treated in co-operation with NGOs. Many people who were convicted as young people are now being given amnesty and being released without any skills. They need rehabilitation and support.
The government will have to decide what action should be taken on these issues, including the creation of memorials.
The TRC does not have the powers, the budget or the authority, “but we have the ideas”, says Mkhize. “It is now a political decision.”