Never a spontaneous phenomenon, racism seems sparked often as an ideological view. Unlikely though it may sound, the white liberal government instituted what continued for over 40 years. Characterized by segregation and violence in response to any opposition, the order came to its end. While in the transitional period, the country established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for the restoration of national unity. Obviously, national reconciliation is possible only through racism eradication since it is racial bias that is at the root of the national disunity and bellicosity. Much as the commission utilized a number of tools towards this end, such as court hearings as the tool of deterring potential racial abusers and reform recommendations, it seems to have failed, as seen in the scope and number of racial abuse cases presently. Ranging from university and beach entrance discriminations to the physical annihilation of the whites, racism is arguably as intense as before. However, the commission does not seem entirely guilty of the reconciliation failure, as it had a limited range of powers and tasks that did not allow it to address the problem efficiently. The point is that, with all its best efforts, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa has failed to reach its intended target, which was re-establishing the national unity although there are plenty of arguments distributing guilt among a variety of actors and institutions.
The Atrocities of Apartheid
It was by a liberal government that apartheid was instituted, with poor white labor creating the racist legislation (Mayhew n.pag.). Apartheid was a system that validated segregation in South Africa in the period between 1948 and 1990. Exerting control over the government, the National Party expanded and formalized the policies that used to be less official in the days of the colonial rule. The institutionalization of racism established segregated healthcare, education, and other public services and disenfranchised blacks with regard to their political and civil rights. The blacks responded through resistance met with expression freedom restriction, repression applied against opposition groups, such as the African National Congress, arrests, police brutality and torture (United States Institute of Peace n.pag.). The range of atrocities committed or intended during the apartheid era appears enormous, as becomes obvious from the testimony of the surviving victims.
According to Facing the Truth with Bill Moyers (n.pag.), one of the testifying women suggested that an offender had prepared a chemical in an attempt to murder an unborn child and force the mother-to-be into cooperation. The methodical kidnappings and killings of resistance leaders were common. A group of security police members allegedly committed a presumed 40 acts of murder, bombing, and torture. Torturers were not alien to electrocuting their victims and blowing their bodies to pieces. Soldiers like Kyaya Makoma found guilty of murder admitted to it having been to obey the instructions of commanders that they fired shots and threw grenades (Facing the Truth with Bill Moyers n.pag.). Therefore, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission had plenty of work to do in the way of eradicating racism within the scope of its competence.
The Efforts of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
The TRC had 21.000 victims testify upon the trials. The commission had 7.112 amnesty applications submitted. In 849 cases, such were granted, in a remaining 5.392 refused (United States Institute of Peace n.pag.). Hamber and Kibble (n.pag.) confirm that commissions like TRC are in position to conduct prosecution, and that of South Africa had a mandate to grant amnesty. The number of those punished criminally could hint at the quality of evidence and overall work of the commission in question. According to United States Institute of Peace (n.pag.), a number of senior police members were indicted on the attempted murder of Reverend frank Chikane in 1989. Still, trials were few and far between. The former minister of defense Magnus Malan alongside 19 others were acquitted on appeal.
The function of criminal justice has very deep implications regarding racism since it serves as a deterrent tool to show those found guilty did not escape unpunished. Done for the edification of all potential abusers, the court hearings sent a message that time has come for racism to stop being an official, nay, encouraged and unpunished state crime. The crimes came clear when the commission went public about the once classified materials. The body did an excellent job showing that it will not sit loose even to the officials from top state services like the NIA. Thus, the organization worked towards influencing both potential senior and abusers among average people. The commission even came to reveal that fact of records destruction by the National Intelligence Agency, which it was doing in 1996. The report of the TRC brought to light the historical and structural background of brutality, regional tendencies, individual cases, and the wider social and institutional environment of the system of apartheid. Individual offenders received coverage in the concluding report. The failure was in commission proving unable to bring to justice as many officials as needed, as it bestowed amnesty upon a variety of them. Thus, the function of justice as deterrence worked partially at best since only a handful of officials ended up behind the bars.
As noted by United States Institute of Peace (n.pag.), the TRC recommended that each family be the recipients of 3.500 dollars’ worth of annual aid for 6 years on end. To reform the political system and society for the integration of educational institutions, media, the health industry, the armed forces, the judiciary, business, and faith communities in the process of reconciliation, to archive TRC documents, and to consider prosecution in case of amnesty being denied or not sought at all was also recommended (United States Institute of Peace n.pag.). The provision of aid was a good way to reduce bitterness created by apartheid and heal the gash inflicted by racism. The integration of multiple state actors and institution was also a wise process since racism as a pervasive phenomenon that required a collective effort to influence the destructive social mindset at various levels. The recommendation to archive documents shows the commission wanted the evidence saved for the justice to keep acting as a deterrent tool discouraging racism and thereby contributing to reconciliation possible absent racial bias, the disuniting factor. The commission seemed to encourage further prosecution despite different factors.
The recommendations materialized translating into actual steps aimed at reinforcing the deterrence function of justice that could facilitate the rejection of racism and the reintegration of social apostates motivated by racial prejudices. United States Institute of Peace (n.pag.) states that the commission activities and disclosure resulted in the government instituting a body tasked with monitoring the fulfillment of the recommendations offered by the commission, inclusive of exhumations and reparations, which it did under pressure applied by the civil society. The TRC also played a role in the assembly of the missing people taskforce whose task was exhuming and reburying apartheid victims as well as continuing the investigation of cases, in which people went missing. Thus, the efforts of the commission were versatile ranging from court hearings to recommendations. Now it remains to be seen whether they have lived up to their purpose of reconciliation that, if achieved, would be seen through the little-to-no rate of racism.
The Current State of Racism in South Africa as a Litmus Paper of TRC Success
The state of affairs in the matter of racism will be the best benchmark or the measuring stick of commission efforts success. According to Isilow (n.pag.), in 1994, the year that South Africa held the inaugural democratic elections never before seen in the country bringing apartheid to its end, there was a feeling racism was history. Still, fast-forward to 16 years later, the issue is still alive, the coloreds, whites, and blacks being the three chief racial groups with racial bias. To quote an example of apartheid or the geographical segregation of races, Orania, a small town in the Northern Cape is all-white, that is, it is whites-dominated. It is not that nonwhites have no way of entering the city. They will need to stay in a guesthouse though. Moving into Orania for such individuals will require a managing body approval. Town residents reportedly would like nothing better than to retain their Afrikaner culture, which they try by keeping the place all-white (Isilow n.pag.).
Swellendam, another small town in the Western Cape is said to keep some apartheid policies. Whites have their own cemetery denying the members of other racial groups the burial right. A seven-year old farm worker daughter having been buried there provoked outrage among white conservatives. People admit that the whites still regards themselves as the dominant group in the town. The better part of SA universities have room for racism contrary to anti-prejudice policies. In 2008, a racist video featuring four student of the Free State University went viral leading to international resentment (Isilow n.pag.). The students abased themselves so far as to get a black female staff member to eat what turn out to be urine stew (Msomi and Shilaho n.pag.). In the April of the same year, black students from the University of Johannesburg had white peers attack them at a university bar. The physical and verbal abuse of senior black students and the mistreatment of black student making their way back home in the nighttime are common. Mohammed Bulhan, a foreign IT student at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology is very outspoken in his opposition to what happens in his class where there is racial division, with all racial groups sitting separate. Fellow students do not want him in when it comes to assembling discussion groups, which is attributable to his race (Isilow n.pag.).
This is not to say that racism only favors the blacks as the abuse target groups. As became obvious in the January of 2007, white students may find themselves overlooked in terms of scholarship awarding in favor of black peers in spite of their performance leaving much to be desired. So admitted Ernst Roets who is a spokesperson of the organization Solidarity Youth. Universities may even be heard to deny white students the entry right. The spokesperson reported instances of whites having been blocked despite them having far better academic results than they black peers did. The University of Pretoria has gained a measure of notoriety for its discriminatory practices in favor of those of African descent and ethnicity (Isilow n.pag.). However, this is not all there is to what whites can sustain at the hands of the blacks.
The head of Genocide Watch, Dr. Gregory Stanton (n.pag.) embarked on a fact-finding mission in South Africa and went on to find a coordinated genocide campaign waged against Boers or white farmers. The murders of the farmers cannot said to be accidental. The barbarity of the carnage done by assailants testifies to the felony not being endemic or common for the region. The number of murders dubbed as plaasmoorde is overwhelming, with 3.000 farmers killed in the space of 10 years (qtd. in Ahlert n.pag.). Genocide Watch (1, 3) puts the figure of farmers killed since 1994 at 4.000 while the overall number of the whites murdered since that year stands at 70.000 people. Percentage-wise, 10% of all SA farmers can be considered murdered. The number is but rough, as police fails to report all cases. Overall, black racism has claimed 2% of South African whites in the 18 years since democracy being established. Not surprising, the number of white farmers is now 88.000 down from 1980 when it amounted to 128.000 individuals. Typically, 50 people lose their lives in South Africa on a daily basis, of whom 20% are the whites. Interestingly, the percentage of the whites comes out at 8.3% while that of Africans runs up to 80.5% (Statistics South Africa 2). The figure looks utterly disproportional since, in the country where the number of black is 8 times that of the whites, the latter are just 4 times as likely to die as the former do.
According to Stanton (n.pag.), what happens is that plenty of victims, infant children and women included, will often be subject to torture or rape before getting themselves murdered. It is not rare for offenders to burn white victims with hot pokers, pour boiling water down their throats, disembowel them or hack to death using machetes. Assailants also have it in them to tie victims to their cars only to drag them for miles after (qtd. in Ahlert n.pag.). The attacks left many badly aimed. Three blacks killed a white boy Amaro Viana aged 12 in a bath of boiling water, as he identified the murderers of his parents. Children as young as 2 years of age were subjected to the boiling water. In what is another inhumane killing, the blacks murdered a white child by bludgeoning after killing the parents (Genocide Watch 3). These are the examples of reverse racism in the sense that the international community is used to associating the issue with the mistreatment of the blacks. What happens with farmers in South Africa resembles the act of revenge or vindictive, retaliatory actions for past traumas, whether physical or emotional. The commission has failed South Africa in many ways, as it fell short of curbing racism in whatever manifestation, be it against blacks or whites. It is not only when against the blacks that racism is what it is.
The Lame Way of Initiating the Commission. Is the Commission to Blame for Poor Reconciliation Results Seen in Racism Persistence?
Van der Merwe and Chapman (46) stated that the goal was for the commission to promote reconciliation and national unity, as specified in the act of the same name, yet what the act failed was to provide a definition of reconciliation. The piece of legislation does not reveal a range of activities believed essential for contribution of the reconciliation process; neither does it so much as point to the parties that need reconciling. The authors left it unknown whether the commission was to concentrate on the act of reconciliation between the engineers of the apartheid, the remaining society, the races, perpetrators, victims, or fighting political parties and movements. There are said to have been no guidelines specified as to the evaluation of TRC contribution to the restoration of friendly relations. The early days of the commission operation were marked by little-to-no direction (Van der Merwe and Chapman 46). Thus understood, despite principles and actors being bleary, the commission was to have established a peaceful status quo with zero violence. It is no wonder it never did, for the entire initiative looks insipid and hollow, as follows from the way it was legally defined.
While there is no denying apparent problems associated with poor-thought-out conciliation acts, the commission may not be to blame at least not entirely, as racism is a hard issue to eradicate. A representative of the South African race relations institute held that time was needed for racial discrimination to die down inasmuch as it began as far back as 1652 upon the arrival of the Dutch settlers (Isilow n.pag.). Msomi and Shilaho (n.pag.) see the reason for racism perseverance in the intergenerational passage of the respective mindset in the SA society. Manyi (n.pag.) talks about the subliminal or subconscious persistence of racism. Trisler (95) states that subconscious mind control human conduct. Therefore, modifying racist conduct may be a matter of manipulating subconscious mind, which may require colossal effort on the part of any institution but the TRC. Indeed, Manyi (n.pag.) suggests that corporate SA has shown its distrust of the blacks. Media do little other than render racist stereotypes deep-seated. The society must also stay vigilant about the protection of young democracy achievements (Manyi n.pag.). With this in view, ministries or agencies need to monitor the activities of media and content. The media argument shows the commission cannot be responsible for the prevalence of racism since it had a limited scope of powers and tasks being more justice-based with some reconciliatory orientation that has nothing to do with what TV channels broadcast live and other aspects like education.
Furthermore, Hamber and Kibble (n.pag.) note that commissions are established usually during the transitional periods when a complete departure from the old regime and power handover to the new one remain unfinished. Presumed offenders tend to concentrate economic and political power in their hands eve at a time when the commission is under way. It is likely to have been the case back then since the government shied away from cooperating with the commission in all respects. According to Shea (62), concern was expressed that the government did not seem receptive to the recommendations made by the TRC. What it wished was for the ruling body to transfer all the records of the commission to the National Archives and make them accessible to the public (Shea 62). Thus, given the lack of purification of state institutions involved in the prosecution and other post-apartheid efforts and the deficit of cooperation, the commission was not to yield the intended results of national reconciliation through racism eradication. Worse, the party responsible for sparking racism is still where it was during the apartheid.
Genocide Watch (3) explains that genocide does not emerge out of nowhere. Nor do people fall to killing their own, albeit of different race for wage dispute or the feeling of being disadvantaged. The world remains unresponsive to hate still voiced by the ANC (Genocide Watch 3). The ANC has been the ruling party of the post-apartheid country since 1994 increasing its majority by close to 70% by 2004 (O’Doherty 27). It appears the ruling party has taken up the initiative. Once persecuted, the party now appears to suppress crime statistics collection all the while singing songs that retain the formerly officially cultivated culture of hatred. Unsurprisingly, the commission activities have not lead to sizeable results like profound changes in racist mindset. In addition, as is evident from the section on the TRC, there were plenty of recommendations made, that is, the commission probably could not do better than advising the government and other state bodies on what to do in some aspects.
Concluding Remarks
Thus, having been the official order for four decades, apartheid in South Africa sowed racism that required addressing. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was the organization intended to restore state unity, which it tried by curbing racism. While it did endeavor to show the price of prejudices and associated crimes through prosecution as an instrument of deterrence, it has authorized some amnesties it never should have, as some of potential offenders saw the justice was selective. It has urged the authorities to effect reforms. However, the current persistence of racism vindicates the failure of the major function of the TRC of national unity renewal though racism suppression. Restricted residential areas, privileged university access despite academic performance, and atrocious murders show racism is far from eradicated. However, the restricted scope of powers, poor elite purging, government resistance or the lack of cooperation, the ruling party spreading racist views, and media influence are among the factors that fail the country by entrenching racism more than the TRC did.
Works Cited
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