A joint committee has been set up to further discuss whether names of South African Defence Force (SADF) soldiers killed in the apartheid era should be included on the wall of names in Freedom Park.
Freedom Park spokesperson Ilse Posselt said on Tuesday the committee comprised members of Afrikaner rights group AfriForum, Afrikaans pop singer Steve Hofmeyr and representatives from Freedom Park.
The committee will take part in a workshop that will address certain issues, Posselt said in Pretoria.
On the agenda will be defining and understanding what the SADF was, collecting names of SADF soldiers and discussing AfriForum’s concerns regarding the portrayal of history at Freedom Park.
The workshop to be held on February 8 will also be attended by members of the Veterans’ Association, the Afrikaanse Taal en Kultuur Vereniging (ATKV) and the departments of defence and justice to ensure a representative decision-making process.
”When we refer to the term history, the challenge is that the truth is often in the eye of the beholder,” Freedom Park Trust CEO Dr Mongane Wally Serote said, adding that for many South Africans the SADF was associated with deep-rooted pain.
”Our responsibility is to take what happened and move forward towards reconciliation. We also need to come to a common point of reference to move forwards from,” he said.
However, AfriForum chief executive officer Kallie Kriel said reconciliation in the country could only be made through a balanced version of history.
”To sing the praises of participants in the struggle while the rest are vilified will be a recipe for undesirable polarisation.”
It is unthinkable that Cubans who fought for a communist ideology in the Angola border war and not for freedom will be honoured while SADF members will be excluded, Kriel said.
The Freedom Park Trust last year unveiled the Isikhumbuto memorial, which bore 68 000 names of people who died during the anti-apartheid struggle.
There were complaints that the memorial was one-sided. This prompted the unveiling by AfriForum of an alternative monument to that at Freedom Park, which included names of SADF soldiers.
It was a mark of respect for those excluded by Freedom Park, Kriel said at the time.
Freedom Park chronicles the struggle for liberation in South Africa, including eight events that have shaped the country’s character, such as slavery and the Anglo-Boer war.
The park, which is still under construction, will be completed in 2009 at an estimated cost of R719-million. — Sapa