What was problematic for the commission was that it was in many ways influenced by models of Argentina where it focused on civil violations and not on socioeconomic rights. This became a problem for the future. Towards its conclusion, the TRC decided to look at the institutional framework that had supported apartheid. Hearings were called with the former state and liberation movements, the legal profession (judges didn’t appear but made submissions); the religious community, (soldiers claimed they had been convinced that they were fighting a religious war against communism and had been supported by the religious community) and the business community.
The TRC established different levels of accountability. Those who came forward were largely ‘foot soldiers’ of the struggle. A major gap was an exploration of the moral responsibility of ordinary citizens and beneficiaries of apartheid. What we struggle with today is the failure of those who benefited from apartheid to accept that they should do something about reparations.
The TRC engaged with two levels:
1. The individual level: An evaluation of this would involve asking the questions - do victims feel they were given a proper opportunity to be heard; did the commission work for them.
2. An exploration of the root causes of the violations and their structural basis.
Some Concluding Comments:
The TRC’s 1st report was produced in 1998. From that time, there has been little discussion about race and about land. Black people still remain the poorest in our society. How do we deal with this?
In South Africa, we do not have political violence but we have violence that happens at many other levels because we have not dealt with how to address the economic disparities that still exist.
The strength of the South African process was that it explored complicity by almost all role players.
