Jillian Edelstein spent four years recording the progress of the truth commission. Her new book, Truth and Lies, tells some of the stories that emerged. The following is an extract from this book In 1985 I left South Africa to take up a photography course in London. After that, although I went back regularly to visit my family, I was relegated to watching most of the political events as they unfolded on TV. Back in South Africa for my sisters wedding in 1996, I was gripped by the TV footage of the early scenes from the Truth and Reconcilliation Commission (TRC). I promised myself I would return to document the process. Over the next four years I went back and forth between England and South Africa covering the hearings, but I was always aware that it would be impossible to attend every hearing in every small town and every city in every province around the country. There are many people who testified before the TRC who are not in this book. I did what I could. I knew the contradictions and the controversies that raged around the truth commission right from the start. But nothing prepared me for the emotional world within the community halls and courtrooms in which we observers witnessed the testimonies and confessions of the victims and perpetrators, where truth gave way to lies and lies gave way to truth. I often pondered why people agreed to be photographed. For the victims, I guessed it might have been because they wanted to reclaim their dignity, their past, or to feel acknowledged for the part they had played. It seemed that they were grateful to have had the opportunity to share their experiences and to make public their stories. Perhaps this process of being in front of the camera was part of that ritual. It was harder to comprehend why the perpetrators offered themselves up so willingly for a portrait, often proudly, as if they had played some heroic part in South Africas history.
Wherever I went I came across people dealing with tumultuous emotions. In KwaZulu-Natal, after the hearings into Inkatha Freedom Party-African National Congress violence, I met Mrs Msweli who showed me the forest where her son had been murdered; it was a strange and difficult thing to share that place with her. I felt her generosity and her pain. And I tried to show her dignity and the strength in her suffering. Truth and Lies by Jillian Edelstein is published by M&G Books and costs R220,00
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