NEWS ANALYSIS
If it is true that blame never results in change, there can be scant hope that the inquisitorial hearings of the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) into the July unrest will lead to a more coherent response from security agencies if the country sees a repeat soon.
Previous commissions have shown these seldom yield little more than nonbinding recommendations, violence and policing researcher Mary de Haas said, and three weeks set aside for hearings was too short to get to the bottom of the complex events, underpinned with politics around former president Jacob Zuma’s arrest, that devastated the province.
“I have experience of quite a few commissions and very few of them achieve anything much,” De Haas told the Mail & Guardian.
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