HOME - ABOUT US - ARTICLES - NEWSLETTERS - CONTACT US - LINKS - MEMORIAL PAGE

November/December 1998

Dear Friends,

We wish you a joyful Advent and Christmas, praying that God may bless you richly and grant you to enjoy the Lord Jesus Christ, Who is called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. May He enrich you with His grace, and may His promises sustain you in the year to come.

On 29 October the long awaited Report of the "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" (TRC) was published - drafted by Prof. Charles Villa-Vicencio, a liberation theologian of the Department of Religious Studies of Cape Town University. The Commission had sat for 2½ years at a cost of R155 Million to investigate the "human rights abuses" of the past three decades. Desmond Tutu, a former Anglo-Catholic Archbishop of Cape Town, ceremoniously handed the five big volumes (available at R750.00) to the State President Nelson Mandela. As Chairman of the Commission he had presided over hearings throughout the country. At these, the "victims" of Apartheid could recount their sufferings in front of TV cameras and the "perpetrators" could confess their deeds and apply for amnesty. The purpose of this was to effect "reconciliation". - However, the time period 1960-1994 does not correspond to the era of Apartheid (which is much longer and includes also English govern-ments). It corresponds to the period of what Oliver Tambo called "the terrible... fires of revolutionary war" in South Africa. 1) For, at the beginning of the Sixties the African National Congress (ANC) came under the influence of the Communist Party and started its "armed struggle". Nelson Mandela founded and led Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) and, following "Operation Mayibuye", he came before the courts and into prison. - It was not so much the apartheid deeds of the Afrikaner Government which the Truth Commission investigated, but the actions of the South African Police and Army in their dealings with communist inspired and trained guerillas who, especially among the Blacks, perpetrated acts of terror to win them for their cause. Strangely, no human rights abuses were reported for the period 1960-66, the heyday of apartheid.

The "Truth Commission" dealt with 21.000 witnesses and documents. "The volume of material that passed through our hands will fill many shelves in the National Archives," says Archbishop Tutu. "This material will be of great value to scholars, journalists and others researching our history for generations to come. From a research point of view, this may be the Commission's greatest legacy." 2) However, the hearings of the "Truth Commission", which were broadcast daily by radio and TV, had become a propaganda campaign against the Afrikaners who ruled South Africa after 1948. Almost all news programmes featured harrowing scenes in which the victims spoke about their experiences with the police. But the "Why" was not addressed. There was no cross-examination. One could not be sure whether the stories were true and whether the policemen who were publicly named had been rightfully accused. - But the Report is now published, though the work of the Commission is yet unfinished. For a whole week twelve-page "Extracts" were issued and included with the national daily newspapers. This campaign was funded with mostly foreign moneys donated a.o. by the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, long-standing friends of the Liberation Movements. Chairman Tutu says: "It has been wonderful to see the high regard in which the Commission is held in the international community. Almost without exception, foreign heads of state visiting this country have insisted on paying a visit to the Commission. The royal couples of Norway, Sweden and Denmark have been among such visitors... The international community has supported our work financially, and through staff secondments and generous donations to the President's Fund". - Many South Africans, however, were less euphoric. An opinion poll showed that in their eyes the commission had had little success at reconciliation.

The Report of the Commission includes a long list of "Freedom Fighters" whose human rights were violated. Revolution-aries, Communists, and Terrorists who, in the past 30 years, were arrested, roughly handled, interrogated, condemned, shot, and executed, are almost without exception presented as "victims", while the policemen and soldiers of the Apartheid regime who had to protect the White and Black population alike against unrest, intimidation, murder, assault, and arson, are brand-ed as "perpetrators". The Truth Commission "followed the internationally accepted position that apartheid was a crime against humanity. Accordingly, it upheld and endorsed the liberation movements' argument that they were engaged in a just war." 3) Thus it comes to the conclusion that "the state - in the form of the South African government, the civil service and its security forces - was, in the period 1960-94 the primary perpetrator of gross violations of human rights in South Africa, and from 1974, in Southern Africa." The National States and Homelands Governments were equally guilty, it says. - Especially the Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party, which sustained great losses and vigorously defended itself against revolutionary terrorism, is accused of "gross violations of human rights... against leaders, members or supporters of the UDF, ANC, South African Communist Party (SACP) and COSATU."

However, when talking about the human rights violations of the ANC, the Commission repeatedly emphasizes that "it was ANC policy that the loss of civilian life should be avoided." Murders and assassinations were often not planned, it says. Perceived ANC members and friends had frequently acted independently, albeit in the name of the ANC. These actions - nearly 800 citizens burned alive, more than 7000 houses incinerated, countless bombs laid, and 12.000 people murdered bet-ween 1984 and 1991 alone - should be "decriminalized", the Commission suggests, as they were committed in terms of "a just war". 4) "A distinction must be made between those who fought for and those who fought against apartheid." - This is a strange statement. Did people indeed fight for or against apartheid? - Surely, the South African police's first priority was to protect civilians against a terrorism which was sponsored by the capitalist and the Communist world alike.

In the TRC Report the Churches, too, are declared guilty. "The Commission finds that Christianity, as the dominant religion in South Africa, promoted the ideology of apartheid in a range of different ways that included biblical and theological teaching in support of apartheid; ecclesiastical apartheid by appointing ministers to congregations based on race, and the payment of unequal stipends; a failure to support dissident clergy who found themselves in confrontation with the state; and a failure to provide economic support to those most severely affected by apartheid." (Speaking of "economic support": The sanctions campaign so ardently promoted by Archbishop Tutu is said to have cost the South Africans about $500 billion.) 5) The TRC also claims that by appointing Chaplains the Churches "provided religious sanction and theological legitimisation for many actions of the armed forces." Also, "... religious proselytising and religious-based nationalism have... contributed directly to religiously inspired conflict. Religious communities must take responsibility" for the deeds of their followers...

Finally, the Truth Commission makes its "Recommendations". "Reconciliation", it says, must be promoted by all means - equally "the closing of the gap between the advantaged and disadvanged". It suggests that a National Summit on Reconciliation be held at the end of 1999. All state institutions, a.o. the prisons, it suggests, should be reformed "and include human rights bureaux". "Human rights curricula (should) be introduced in formal education, specialised education, and the training of law enforcement personnel." The findings of the Truth Commission should be widely publicised and used as teaching resources. "Monuments, memorials, and museums to commemorate events of the past" should be set up and a national "Day of Remembrance" declared. Never again should a government "pass legislation indemnifying the police and other security forces." Those named by the Truth Commission should be brought to trial. Dr Jan D'Oliveira, the Deputy National Director of Public Prosecutions, said such prosecutions might take at least six years. (Cape Times, 10.11.98) - The Commission also pleads for the redistribution of property and suggests financial "restitution" through taxes, stock exchange, business, and remission of dues and debts. Thus the Recommendations look like a never-ending act of revenge planned against all who effectively resisted Communism and its terrors in the service of their country and people.

The Commission recommends that the Churches, too, pay reparation. They are advised to "develop theologies designed to promote reconciliation", to "organise ceremonies to enable people to acknowledge their involvement in the human rights violations of the past", to "make available land to the landless poor", and to set up a fund for the "victims of past abuses." Churches are to devise social programmes for nation building, eliminate "religious conflict" and promote "inter-religious understanding". - Such are the demands made by a former archbishop who, by virtue of his knowledge and position, should be the first to appreciate the enormous sacrifices Christians and Christianity have made in the furtherance of evangelism, education, health, peace, development, and integration. Even today, on the basis of the Gospel, South Africa is the most civilised country in Africa. There have been no religious conflicts, except between Christianity and Communism, i.e. with those who abused theology to promote atheism and sin. A former Archbishop of Cape Town, Bill Burnett, confessed as much, saying: "We have fiddled the scriptures for ideological ends, and it may be we must bear some responsibility for the awful breakdown of authority and random killings among young people, including policemen. We too need to repent..." 6)

In order to shackle the Christian Church the Truth Commission recommends to the state that "an inter-faith body" be set up with powers to check "all theological and religious literature" for "derogatory material about other faiths". It is likely that, should such a body indeed be set up, references to sin, idolatry, and heresy, may not "pass scrutiny", which would hamper Christian evangelism and mission.

To sum up, the Truth Commission denies the historic reality of South Africa. It declares that, instead of a communist inspired revolutionary struggle, it was Apartheid which caused all political murders and killings. 7) "Apartheid" is the Afri-kaans word for Separate Development, a system now disdained, which in times past was common throughout the world, especially the British Empire. To many peoples it brought true progress. In South Africa, too, it was not a holocaust dis-pensation as suggested. In spite of hardships and humiliations it raised up thousands, if not millions, of middle-class and professional people in this country who, a generation or two ago, had little or no education, opportunity, or status. No other country in Africa south of the Sahara has had a comparable standard of advancement. No wonder then, that the TRC is widely seen not as an an agent of "Truth" and "Reconciliation" but as a political mutation of the Nuremberg Trials in which the victors judged the vanquished and rewrote their history. In South Africa, these trials are likely to facilitate the building up of an increasingly communist human rights state, in which the Christian Church is put into bonds.

May God bless you richly,
D Scarborough.