{"id":199,"date":"2014-04-17T11:07:19","date_gmt":"2014-04-17T10:07:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/accounts.ulster.ac.uk\/accounts\/?p=199"},"modified":"2014-04-17T11:08:11","modified_gmt":"2014-04-17T10:08:11","slug":"reconciliation-lessons-verne-harris-on-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/accounts.ulster.ac.uk\/accounts\/blog\/archiving\/reconciliation-lessons-verne-harris-on-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Reconciliation Lessons: Verne Harris On South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post was originally published on the website of the Northern Ireland Foundation<\/a> on 9 April 2014. The author is Eoin Dignan<\/a>. Thanks to Eoin and the Northern Ireland Foundation for permission to republish the post here.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

INCORE\u2019s<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0EU\u00a0Peace III<\/a><\/strong>-funded\u00a0\u2018Accounts of the Conflict\u2019 project<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0is building a digital archive of personal histories narrating the Northern Ireland conflict. In 2006, Jon Elster distinguished a third phase in transitional justice evolution by its emphasis on transnational learning (1). Accordingly, a core aspect of INCORE\u2019s project is a seminar series delivered by international memory work experts.<\/p>\n

The fourth seminar,\u00a0\u2018Remembering, Forgetting and South Africa\u2019 (video)<\/a><\/strong>, on 19th March at Skainos, welcomed a particularly notable contributor. Verne Harris is director of Research and Archive at the Nelson Mandela Foundation, and was Mandela\u2019s personal archivist from 2004 to 2013, subsequently lead-editing a best-selling compilation of Mandela\u2019s memoirs entitled\u00a0Conversations with Myself<\/em>. As former Deputy Director of the National Archive, he was their liaison with South Africa\u2019s landmark Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). As the most influential of such bodies, the TRC model has been\u00a0replicated<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0in numerous transitional justice contexts.<\/p>\n

Harris reflected upon the legacy of state memory work with disheartened candour, cast scorn on opaque archival structures emerging in South Africa, and outlined the \u2018lessons we should have learnt\u2019 in the almost 20 years since post-apartheid memory work began in earnest. His review provided a cautionary tale to other memory projects, and was oriented around issues considered significant in a Northern Irish context.<\/p>\n

Harris\u2019 overview was topical, owing to South Africa\u2019s\u00a0proposed introduction<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0of dogmatic secrecy laws, in violation of the tenets and innovations of the TRC: transparency and accountability. Yet it coincides with our accelerating domestic debate around the flags issue and the possible formation of a Truth Commission body as\u00a0proposed by Dr. Haas<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0championed by Labour<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Awash in memory \u2026 we know so little<\/strong><\/p>\n

Harris set out the strategy adopted by Mandela\u2019s transitional post-apartheid democracy, in its efforts to distinguish democratic South Africa from the enmities and injustices of its \u2018pasts\u2019. He encapsulated Mandela\u2019s ethos as: \u2018to find a liberatory forgetting, we would first have to do the difficult remembering\u2019, adding that memory work \u2018is important because it gives us the promise of a liberatory future \u2026 it is not about the past, it is about the future.\u2019<\/p>\n

This kick-started one of the most ambitious state memory projects ever conducted, encompassing \u2018state historiography, numerous state-funded oral history projects, new curricula for schools, museums, new archives \u2026 we\u2019ve been awash in memory\u2019. The TRC became the most innovative and high-profile consequence of democratic South Africa. By binding truth to conditionality of amnesty, South Africa\u2019s Truth and Reconciliation Commission represented unprecedented ambition in its evolved conception of truth as the mechanism for delivering justice (2).<\/p>\n

The TRC\u2019s judicial model was democratic, transparent, public and unique. The process sought to pre-empt accusations of impartiality by acknowledging ANC culpability in human rights violations. Representatives of the independent commission were publically nominated and the process, endorsed by Parliamentary Act, emphasised transparency. Hearings were in public.<\/p>\n

The determination to provide legal accountability, against the \u2018crass impunity\u2019 and \u2018partial justice\u2019 that affected victim support for the blanket-amnesty Argentinean (1983-84) and Chilean (1990-91) Truth Commissions, resulted in a conditionality of amnesty (3) that Mr. Harris acknowledges as \u2018remarkable\u2019. Amnesty was individualised; perpetrators of gross violations could apply within a 16-month window, exchanging full disclosure for criminal and civil court reprieve dependent on fulfilling qualifying criteria.<\/p>\n

Yet Harris\u2019s concise, considered lecture was suffused with frustration. \u2018We know so little about the past, so many voices are still disavowed \u2026 there are so many secrets, so many lies, only a handful of people have been punished for their crimes. Relatively few have found healing and we remain a profoundly damaged society.\u2019<\/p>\n

And so Harris\u2019 uniquely intimate critiques posed the question, \u2018Why? After so much memory work?\u2019<\/p>\n

Shadows of failure<\/strong><\/p>\n

Between 1990 and 1994, Nelson Mandela steered South Africa\u2019s formal transition to democracy through a three-pronged \u2018strategy for reckoning with the past\u2019. A new flag, anthem and eleven recognised languages were early changes. Their \u2018traction hinged on the other two prongs\u2019. Mandela implemented provisions for reparation and empowerment and announced a restructuring of the economy and a redistribution of \u2018wealth, skills and opportunity\u2019.<\/p>\n

According to Harris, South Africa has failed on each account. \u2018That kind of nation-building\u2019 \u2013 of flags and anthems \u2013 almost always casts a xenophobic shadow, providing an intriguing if unarticulated overlap with Dr. Haas\u2019 proposals for\u00a0a new Northern Irish flag<\/a><\/strong>. He elaborates South Africa\u2019s \u2018deep suspicion of foreigners\u2019 and \u2018inversion of apartheid logic\u2019 directed against darker North Africans.<\/p>\n

While some economic empowerment schemes have been \u2018reasonably successful\u2019, they have been too slow to bring change, particularly land redistribution. As a result, large segments of the population are \u2018carrying rage\u2019. Economic restructuring has not worked, leaving South Africa more unequal than in 1994, now \u2018the most unequal society on earth\u2019.<\/p>\n

Parallel challenges<\/strong><\/p>\n

In January, Skainos was the scene of rioting, sparked by the\u00a0Listening to Your Enemies\u00a0<\/em>festival,\u00a0<\/em>which invited Brighton Bomber Patrick Magee to meet Jo Berry, whose father died in the explosion.<\/p>\n

As Harris relayed six fundamental lessons South Africa \u2018should have learnt\u2019, he drew parallels between the challenges facing Northern Ireland\u2019s memory work and South Africa\u2019s: \u2018Like my country, yours is very beautiful, hospitable but also fundamentally damaged by its pasts \u2026 you can see it physically \u2026 you can see the imprint of the past.\u2019<\/p>\n

Lessons to be learnt<\/strong><\/p>\n

Harris describes the persistent \u2018myth\u2019 that 22,000 victims \u2018came to the Truth Commissions, told their stories, their experiences were affirmed, and they found healing.\u2019 The first lesson is never to take this for granted; the majority of victims did not find healing. Setting a timeframe, rather than \u2018creating a continuing space for storytelling\u2019 just opens the wound. \u2018Every time a story is told it changes, things which couldn\u2019t be talked about five years ago can now be perhaps named, and in another five years we can then perhaps start to go into the really difficult spaces.\u2019<\/p>\n

Harris\u2019 second point: rather than overemphasising individual experiences, narratives must evolve through community discourses. This is a common critique, made elsewhere by Mahmood Mamdani, who states \u2018the Commission\u2019s analysis reduced apartheid from a relationship between the state and entire communities to one between the state and individuals.\u2019 Harris wishes to \u2018connect a network of stories and to build within communities ownership of those painful pasts.\u2019<\/p>\n

Harris cites the story of the Worcester bombings. One of the perpetrators sought an opportunity to apologise to the affected community. This process evolved independently. The community took ownership for developing this reconciliation and nurturing offshoot histories and narratives. This was a civil society mechanism, not a state-centred project: \u2018We need more of these projects.\u2019<\/p>\n

Thirdly, there can be no single past, no one-track narrative. Effort must be made to bring \u2018hostile voices into conversation, dominant voices \u2026 with less empowered voices\u2019. Within the TRC context, stories could not emerge fruitfully. With a sigh, Harris admitted there remain certain truths that South Africa is unwilling to acknowledge \u2014 noting that the majority of police officers prior to independence were black. A rigid prevailing national narrative within schools also obstructs exploration of cathartic personal experiences. Othershave elaborated on an underrepresentation of female and illiterate \u2018truths\u2019 as evidence of exclusionary truths dictated by \u2018dominant voices\u2019 (4).<\/p>\n

Fourthly, \u2018like many countries\u2019 South Africa adopted \u2018easy labels \u2026 victim, perpetrator, beneficiary, survivor\u2019, but \u2018it is when we foster that complexity and honour that space that memory work begins to enable liberatory futures\u2019.<\/p>\n

Harris asserts the importance of reaching youth who are exhausted with the past, impatient and \u2018uncomfortable with celebratory accounts of the glorious struggle against oppression\u2019. Rather than spoon-feeding a state narrative, what truths would liberate this generation, and how best to harness the lessons they can teach?<\/p>\n

Ghosts in the machine<\/strong><\/p>\n

Harris\u2019 forceful final lesson asserted the need for accountability, paraphrasing Derrida: \u2018No justice seems possible or thinkable without the principle of some responsibility, before the ghosts of the dead (be they victims of war, political or other kinds of violence), before the ghosts of the living (who are damaged by violence past and present) and before the ghosts of those who are not yet born.\u2019<\/p>\n

The TRC\u2019s time-window forced the hand of prospective applicants; 7,116 applied, among whom 1,973 received a hearing and were confronted by their victims before the Commission; 1,167 amnesties were granted (5). But the TRC meted flawed justice, addressing a fraction of documented murders (6).<\/p>\n

Since the closing of this window, there have only been two prosecutions and there is \u2018no evidence that there will be systematic prosecution\u2019. These inadequacies are so significant that Harris denounces what became \u2018effectively a blanket amnesty \u2026 we\u2019re paying a terrible price for that, in terms of a culture of impunity\u2019.<\/p>\n

He does not claim to have a solution for the complications of transitional justice, but he considers it essential that those in power today acknowledge their complicity. Speculatively, Harris pondered a Cambodian approach based around symbolic trials, rather than risking mass disillusionment after unfulfilled judicial promise.<\/p>\n

Concluding impressions<\/strong><\/p>\n

A lengthy opportunity for post-lecture questions crystallised central themes and personal impressions.<\/p>\n

Harris emphasised South Africa\u2019s glaring inability to sustain cultures of accountability and transparency. He highlighted his foundation\u2019s current difficulties accessing public records and the struggle against secrecy acts, noting that \u2018you need a lot of money to force records into public domain\u2019, before querying Northern Ireland\u2019s situation regarding sensitive records.<\/p>\n

Tragically, South Africa\u2019s state-managed memory work, once so ambitious, has dissipated. Asked whether the \u2018state has closed the door\u2019 post-Mandela, Harris described the changed climate confronting institutions and foundations \u2018under huge pressure in terms of funding \u2026 the environment is changing quickly, their existence is under threat\u2019.<\/p>\n

The process has failed to disperse ownership of memories; tried individuals rather than institutions, opted for \u2018easy labels\u2019; did not build community projects and ultimately ignored the \u2018really difficult spaces\u2019. To Harris, memory work requires long-term, grassroots solutions. Yet, in his view South Africa\u2019s state-centred approach has stifled individual and community initiatives \u2014 \u2018people are waiting for the state, for funders, for experts from outside\u2019 and this has not fostered a space open to contested pasts, fundamental to building reconciliatory dialogues and attaching more complex, empathetic identities to the \u2018other\u2019. What\u2019s more, stagnant narratives lack space to evolve and address concerns relevant to the post-apartheid generation. Such concerns are likely a legacy of failed structural reforms.<\/p>\n

I was thus reminded of former TRC member Yasmin Sooka\u2019s 2006 appraisal, which stressed inadequate structural reform and the new inequalities and impunities it reproduced (7). In what Elizabeth Stanley termed \u2018double victimisation\u2019 (8), the absence of proposed reparation payments and structural reforms has dovetailed with the de facto blanket amnesty and a judicial mandate that excluded structural violence (9). Consequent embitterment can damage trust and further inhibit the emergence of community-led reconciliation.<\/p>\n

As INCORE prepares to launch Northern Ireland\u2019s online storytelling space this autumn, Harris provides timely insights. Two further seminars in the \u2018Accounts of the Conflict\u2019 series will lend further guidance. Next up: Liz Silkes, discussing\u00a0\u2018Archive Development and Civic Engagement at Sites of Conscience\u2019<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0on 16th April at the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland, Titanic Quarter.<\/em><\/p>\n

NOTES<\/strong><\/p>\n

(1) Elster,\u00a0Retribution and Reparation in the Transition to Democracy<\/em>, pp. 325-326.<\/p>\n

(2) Elizabeth Stanley, \u2018Evaluating the Truth and Reconciliation Commission\u2019,\u00a0Journal of Modern African Studies<\/em>, Vol. 39, No.3 (2001), p. 525.<\/p>\n

(3) Boraine, \u2018Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. Amnesty: The Price of Peace\u2019, pp. 299-316.<\/p>\n

(4) Jeremy Sarkin, \u2018An Evaluation of the South African Amnesty Process\u2019, in A. R. Chapman and H. van der Merwe (Eds.),\u00a0Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: Did the TRC Deliver?<\/em>, pp. 93-115.<\/p>\n

(5) Sarkin, op. cit., p. 94.<\/p>\n

(6) Stanley, op. cit., p. 527.<\/p>\n

(7) Yasmin Sooka, \u2018Dealing with the past and transitional justice: building peace through accountability\u2019,International Review of the Red Cross<\/em>, Vol. 88, No. 862 (2006), p. 324.<\/p>\n

(8) Stanley, op. cit., p. 539.<\/p>\n

(9) Elster, op. cit., p. 8.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post was originally published on the website of the Northern Ireland Foundation on 9 April 2014. The author is Eoin Dignan. Thanks to Eoin and the Northern Ireland Foundation… <\/p>\n

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