I came across an interesting part of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission archives a few weeks ago, and have since been reflecting on how it could be used as a tool for social cohesion and a step towards true reconciliation.
It is a page on the Department of Justice’s website titled “Reconciliation page”. It was recorded on 16 December 1997, which has come to be commemorated as the Day of Reconciliation, and is a register of white people acknowledging the atrocity of apartheid and apologising for not having made concerted efforts to renounce it, and also acknowledging how they benefited from the oppressive system.
I was particularly struck by a brief, concise entry which reads: “I am in awe of the capacity for forgiveness. I am committed to reconciliation and to actively participating in and contributing to building a peaceful, dynamic and healthy South Africa. For being complicit through my lack of meaningful opposition, I am sorry.”
The statement made me think that, had more white people made similar acknowledgements, we might actually be much further in our reconciliation project.
It also made me recall the Institute of Justice and Reconciliation’s SA Reconciliation Barometer Survey, which was released in 2014. A sample pool of white people were asked whether they thought apartheid was a crime against humanity, to which only 53% replied that it was. I remember being stunned as it left me wondering what the remaining 47% thought it was, never mind the highest international relations body, the UN, declaring it so in 1966.
Article 1 of the UN International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid states that “inhuman acts resulting from the policies and practices of apartheid and similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination ... are crimes violating the principles of international law, in particular the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, and constituting a serious threat to international peace and security ... The States Parties to the present convention declare criminal those organisations, institutions and individuals committing the crime of apartheid.”
The survey also drew a link between those who didn’t think it was a crime against humanity and those not accepting that its perpetration had resulted in the manifest economic disparity between the races and, perhaps more to the point, the privilege afforded to white people.
In anticipation of the shouts of “I pulled myself up by my bootstraps”, it is incumbent on me to remind people that white privilege is not the absence of hard work, hardship or suffering, but the absence of certain historical obstacles and barriers faced by people, in this instance black people, because of their race.
Judging by recent events, I’m inclined to believe the missed opportunity for honest reconciliation is on full display, because it is probably not those few white people who signed that reconciliation register in 1997 kicking up dust and being offered “refuge” in the US. Most probably, it is those who never had an interest in doing so and don’t believe apartheid was a crime against humanity. And they do so at the expense of South Africa’s much-needed social cohesion. DM
This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.