Truth and Reconciliation Commission

This is a moment of enormous significance in the history of our country.

Through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, we can now deal with our past, establish the truth that has so long been denied us, and lay the basis for genuine reconciliation.

Because only by knowing the truth can we hope to heal the terrible open wounds that are the legacy of apartheid.

Only the truth can put the past to rest.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission will now be set up to perform this momentous task.

It will do its work through three committees.

The first, the Amnesty Committee, will hear applications for amnesty on the basis of full disclosure.

The third committee, the Committee on Reparations, will look at ways to restore the dignity and self-respect of victims.

And I'm going to say it again positively, which was in the media.

He, when he opened the, uh, the TRC he says, you know, "Everybody is equal." I, I made a, as, as the head of legal, legal of the ANC, I made a s- a comment that says, "I cannot be equal to someone who wanted to kill me five times.

How can we, can we be equal?"

[clears throat]

I was very blunt about it.

And of course, they arranged a meeting at the airport.

Sharo, Sharo was there, and then we shook hand and professed misunderstanding this way and that way to make peace, and the com- the TRC moved on.

I always maintain a position on this matter, which I've not changed even today.

So I believe the people who doged us and took away food and medicine from the world's poorest, who fired hundreds of thousands of federal employees, including black women, the people who ordered fishermen boats to be bombed in the Caribbean, the people who shot Alex Prudy and Renee Good and other harmless immigrants, the people who lied us into the war in Iran and ordered killings of schools with children dead, that all of them need to be held accountable, that we need to be a nation of laws, and that the next Congress and administration need to do that.

Congressman, I did a deep dive into the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and why it didn't quite work out.

And it turns out that that law required anybody who didn't admit their crimes to go to prison, and nobody ever went to prison.

In other words, they didn't fully enforce the law.

Yeah.

That's what's so astounding to me about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, that it was so ambitious to take on such a cavernous amount of pain at both the individual and the social level, and to not leave out any individual who needed that affirmation.

For somebody who's not familiar with it, could you give us just the overview?

Um, in very broad brushstrokes at the end of, um, of the apartheid era, the, the two sides, the apartheid government.

The liberation movement actually wanted something like Nuremberg trials.

Neither side was strong enough to have... their desired method of being able to resolve conflicts and move on.

And so what they came to was to decide on a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

And the Truth and Reconciliation Commission said, or the acts that created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission said, that in exchange for a full disclosure, those who had committed human rights abuses could be granted amnesty from prosecution.

No, absolutely.

I'm old enough to remember Hysteria Lane, Mandela and Tutu's Truth and Reconciliation Committee, every effort to avoid conflict and reconcile difference.

Where are they like today?

Where are they?

It is my view now that we should investigate the involvement of sections of the media in this rot.

It is my view now that when we look at, for instance, the work the TRC Commission is doing under very difficult circumstances-

Mm

...

it is my view now that the country needs an investigation into, first of all, the lies that are embedded in truth about the liberation struggle, including the position of the ANC and its leaders.

Now, when you look at the TRC Commission, it's clear to me that there's an extent to which this commission, the TRC Commission-

Mm

... um, will struggle to come to the bottom of the truth because of the positionality of the ANC when it comes to collusion with apartheid forces, for instance.