Truth and Reconciliation

Abstract

Even at the best of times truth is at a premium in politics and to ask people who have behaved badly – and in some cases appallingly – to admit publicly to their wrong doings is to ask a very great deal indeed. White South Africans who either committed brutalities under the apartheid system in order to maintain the privileged position of their racial group, or knowingly benefited from such brutalities even if they themselves did not commit them, cannot easily bring themselves to admit that what they did was either brutal or wrong since to do so is to undermine the basis of the lives they lived until the system was brought to an end. As early as October 1994 Archbishop Desmond Tutu was able to say in Cape Town ‘It is very difficult now to find anyone in South Africa who ever supported apartheid. Oh no, I never supported apartheid, I always knew it was wrong.’1 Given the natural reluctance of human beings to admit their wrong doings the astonishing thing about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is that it obtained as many confessions as it did and even when those that were made in order to pre-empt future prosecution are taken into account, a large number of people did make confessions and some were demonstrably penitent. Whether the truth enshrined in two years of public admissions will promote genuine reconciliation between the races is another question altogether.