Reparations debate must begin anew

A year has passed since the truth commission submitted its final report to the then president Nelson Mandela and the public.  Unfortunately, other than the occasional amnesty report, a deafening silence prevails about what is to happen next. 

 The list of recommendations made by the TRC received passing reference in parliament then disappeared from the news.  The most controversial component of the TRC's recommendations, the reparations policy, also seems to be slipping from the national agenda. 

 One of the sectors the commission called on to redress its past was business.  It is indisputable that until the dying days of apartheid, the system continued to create an economic environment conducive to white economic advancement and unfavourable to black labour.

 Should business pay for a reparations programme? Or more pragmatically, does the country have enough resources?  And, what is government doing to facilitate this process?

 There are no easy answers.  But the lack of public debate so far means that the reparations process may be reduced to pragmatics before any principles have even been set.  Step one in the process should be to establish whether survivors of violence have a right to reparation in the first place.  To date, most South Africans and government have failed to even attempt to answer this question.

Reparations for those who suffered in the past, according to the TRC report, should include financial compensation and mechanisms from the erection of headstones to programmes for better access to social services.  Internationally there is a growing recognition that reparations of this sort are integral to justice.  Bodies such as the UN are advocating that compensation for victims of political and criminal violence should be legislated as a matter of course.   South Africa lags hopelessly behind in these debates.

In South Africa, the rights of victims seem to be overruled by potential cost factors.  There seems to be a covert accord between business and the government that any reparations programme would be too expensive.  This is odd considering no substantial investigations, or research, into the issue has been undertaken by government or business.

The truth commission argues that the financial component of reparation alone, for those found to be victims, should be around R21 700 annually for each victim or their beneficiaries.  With an estimated 22 000 victims being paid for a suggested six years, this would amount to R477 million a year, or close to 3 billion over the entire period.  Currently, the responsibility to implement this, as well as the equally important symbolic mechanisms of reparation, rests with government. 

The commission recognised the potential economic drain and made a number of suggestions on how to fund the process.  These included: a wealth tax; a once-off levy on corporate and private income; listed companies making a once-off donation of 1 percent of their market capitalisation; a retrospective surcharge on corporate profits; the suspension of all taxes on land and other material donations to formerly disadvantaged communities; debt cancellation; and the utilisation of the South African Risks Insurance Association Fund as a source of funds.

These suggestions seem to have been written off before the debate about practicalities has even started.   The commission's suggestions should provide a welcomed starting point for incorporating the business sector into the process of reconciliation.  If South Africa is ever to move beyond its third world status, it is essential that the benefits of macroeconomic policies for the business sector are counterbalanced by social obligations.  

The very least that victims of apartheid are owed is that the reparations issue is discussed publicly.  Government must take a lead in that regard.  A point of departure for business, and those who feel they owe nothing to those victimised in the past, should be to address three issues in a direct fashion:

• Why do they feel they are morally exempt from making a contribution to any reparations programme. 
• They should address each of the commission's suggestions in detail, arguing why they feel they make no fiscal sense and can therefore be justly ignored; and
• They should outline what it is they are currently doing to redress the imbalances of the past.

This process needs to be supported by government. Government has earmarked R300 million (at the time about £30 million) for the reparations process of which it has spent just R25 million.  Eight thousand people have received about R3500 each as a so-called interim payment.

This is minuscule next to the funds spent on granting amnesty - and laughable in the face of some of the civil claims victims have forfeited in the name of furthering reconciliation. 

 A long term, substantial reparations programme seems a long way off. It would need to include financial compensation, symbolic measures like building memorials, and the assurance that victims get adequate social and medical assistance.

Surely government recognises that the current lack of debate about the granting of reparations to victims of political violence is nothing short of an embarrassment for South Africa, which is supposedly a champion of human rights. Not only were victims' rights to justice undermined by the amnesty provisions, but the lukewarm approach to reparations by all sectors in society, including the government, remains a constant reminder that human rights principles have barely taken root.

Originally published Brandon Hamber & Kamilla Rasmussen, Business Day, Friday 29 October 1999

Brandon Hamber is a fromer programme manager and Kamilla Rasmussen an intern at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation in Johannesburg.

 

Johannesburg Crime Stories

A few nights ago I thought I heard a gunshot
I read in the newspaper the next day
that the sound I had heard was indeed a gun
that was fired during a car-hijacking
the driver died face down near to his home
the newspapers further revealed
weeks later
that the man who died face down on the tar
was ripping a company off for millions
and it was his stolen wealth that had enabled him
to buy the new car
that was so attractive to a criminal
that it was worth killing for
the story went on to say
that the car had been recovered in the suburbs
on the same day as the fraudulent man’s funeral
the car
which was now second-hand
was found in the possession of another businessman
who really wanted a new car with all the trimmings
but could not afford it
because his child needed private schooling
which was essential to prevent his son
from mixing with unsavoury elements
the man is now being charged with buying stolen goods
and his wife is appalled by the crime wave
and how the innocent seem to always come off second
what is more
is that yesterday
she read
that a gorilla was shot in a bizarre shoot-out
with a criminal at the zoo
so directly after attending her husband’s hearing
she wrote to the newspaper
calling for the police to get tougher on crime
strangely the hijacker’s wife read the letter
she showed it to a neighbour
who strongly agreed with the views expressed
because recently seven houses had been robbed
in their street

Published by Brandon Hamber
New Contrast, 1999, No. 108, Volume 27, Number 4, p. 72-73

South Africa: Freedom fighter with a heart of gold laid to rest

 Maggie Friedman and Brandon Hamber remember Sylvia Dlomo-Jele, The Sowetan

Johannesburg — Sylvia Dlomo-Jele was a symbol of strength and courage for bereaved family of victims who suffered under apartheid. She passed away on Saturday March 13.

Photo by Vibhu / Unsplash

Sylvia was a founder member of the Khulumani Support Group, which gave courage to her fellow bereaved victims to speak out and demand the truth about the past.

The members of Khulumani supported one another during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and Khulumani in part owes its growth to Sylvia's commitment and her ability to network with the mothers of Soweto.

Sylvia knew how to comfort and she led people with spirituality and dedication. Her strong voice often intervened in song when meetings threatened to get over-emotional.

In our view Sylvia fundamentally changed the process of the TRC. Many people do not know that the first draft of the TRC legislation argued for the hearings to be held behind closed doors. On hearing this, Sylvia went door-to-door among people she knew in Soweto and asked them to come to a press conference at the Centre for the Study of Violence.

This non-government organisation and others issued a statement condemning the Government's proposals that amnesty applications be heard in secret.

At the meeting Sylvia spoke out strongly and emotionally. The presence of the victims Sylvia had personally helped get to the press conference gave the meeting a power it would not otherwise have had. However, Sylvia did not stop there.

Together with Maggie Friedman and the late Chris Ribiero she then flew to Cape Town in February 1995 to take up the issue directly with the Parliamentary Select Committee on Justice.

Sylvia's words at that meeting were unforgettable: "Now I hear that everything is going to be behind closed doors. I am pleading as a mother. I want to know who killed my son. I cannot forgive those people who killed my son without speaking to them." She spoke straight from her heart, as she always did. We have no doubt that her input significantly helped to get the secrecy clause dropped.

All the hearings of the TRC are now in public - something most of us take for granted. However, we should not forget that Sylvia too was a survivor of a terrible past. She was one of the first people to testify before the TRC.

She related how her son Sicelo Dlomo was found in 1988 shot dead in an open field in Soweto. His killers were unknown. Sylvia knew that the answer to the riddle of Sicelo's death was not simple but by the time of the amnesty hearing this year she had discovered that her son's murderers were his young comrades, who she had welcomed into her own home. We believe that the stress of this discovery was finally too much for her. In this regard Sylvia continues to symbolise the plight of many bereaved victims who have been left with nothing but unfinished truths about the past.

Her death reminds us that it is people like Sylvia who ultimately paid the price for the democracy we now enjoy. To us she embodied the meaning of Khulumani. She was able to make the world understand the pain of bereaved mothers and their anger against those who go unpunished.

To us she was a mother, a friend, a teacher and freedom-fighter. Her wisdom is immortalised on video saying: "When you are in the fields alone you are not heard but when you are in a group you are heard easily." The Khulumani Support Group will live on long after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Sylvia Dlomo-Jele is survived by her son Maxwell "Vicky" Dlomo and her supportive husband, Wilson Mthumzi Jele, two sisters and five grandchildren.

Her funeral will be on Saturday at 9h00 at St Matthew's Anglican Church in Emndeni South, Soweto. She will be buried at the Avalon Cemetery.

Published by Maggie Friedman and Brandon Hamber, The Sowetan, 18 March 1999.

Maggie Friedman is from the Khulumani Support Group and Brandon Hamber is from the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation.

Hamber, B. (1999). Have no doubt it is fear in the land: An exploration of the continuing cycles of violence in South Africa. Zeitschrift für Politische Psychologie, Jg. 7, Nr. 1+2, pp. 113-128 [Download]

Past Imperfect: Dealing with the Past in Northern Ireland and Societies in Transition

Past Imperfect: Dealing with the Past in Northern Ireland and Societies in Transition, edited by Brandon Hamber is now available free online.

Past Imperfect was published in 1998 by INCORE/UU: Derry/Londonderry, Northern Ireland. ISBN 0 9533305-4-0.

This publication brings together the papers presented at the 'Dealing with the Past: Reconciliation Processes and Peace Building' Conference and draws on the ideas of the participants to further the debate about dealing with, or perhaps not dealing with, the past in Northern Ireland. Includes chapters on South Africa, Northern Ireland and Guatamala.

Download the Book (Zipped File)

Contributors

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution (of which he is a governor) and St Peter's College, Oxford, where he read Modern History. He was appointed Head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service on 1 December 1984. In that capacity he was the most senior advisor to successive Secretaries of State for Northern Ireland and other Ministers on a wide range of issues. He retired from his position in April 1991. Sir Kenneth received a Knighthood in the 1987 Birthday Honours List. In December 1997 he was asked by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to head the Northern Ireland Victims Commission. His report entitled We Will Remember Them was published in April 1998.

Mary Burton was born Marie Macdiarmid Ingouville in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She moved to South Africa in 1961 when she married a South African, and became a South African citizen in 1994. She has been active in human rights organisations since 1965, including the women's anti-apartheid organisation, the Black Sash. Mary Burton served as national president of the Black Sash from 1986 to 1990 and is now a trustee. She was Provincial Electoral Officer for the Western Cape Province in the 1994 general elections in South Africa. In 1995 she was appointed to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and served on its Human Rights Violations Committee.

Mario Roberto Cabrera holds a Masters of Public Health and is also a physician. Presently he is the Psychological Restoration Area Co-ordinator for the Human Rights Office of the Archbishop of Guatemala working on The Recovery of the Historic Memory Project (REMHI) in Guatemala. Roberto Cabrera works on designing, planning and implementing the psychosocial component of the project.

Marie Smyth currently co-ordinates the Cost of the Troubles Study, an investigation on the experiences and effects of Northern Ireland's Troubles on the population of Northern Ireland. She also teaches at Smith College in Massachusetts. She has taught for ten years at the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, and has researched and written on issues such as segregation, mixed marriage, women's roles, life in enclaves in Northern Ireland, and the social, economic and political effects of violence and low intensity conflict. She has written widely on the psychological and physical cost of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Brandon Hamber is a Clinical Psychologist and works at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation in Johannesburg, South Africa. He co-ordinates the Transition and Reconciliation Unit at the Centre and has co-ordinated the Centre's work focusing on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission over the last three years. He is a visiting fellow (1997/1998) at the Initiative on Conflict Resolution and Ethnicity (INCORE) in Northern Ireland, where he holds the Tip O'Neill Fellowship. His work at INCORE focuses on countries coming out of violence and strategies for dealing with the past.

Appendices
1. Summary of the recommendations of the Bloomfield Report
2. Dealing with the past in Northern Ireland: questions and issues to consider
3. Dealing with the past reading material
4. Dealing with the past Internet resources

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A Review of Islamic Fundamentalism: Myths and realities

A Review of Islamic Fundamentalism: Myths and realities by Ahmed S Moussali (ed). Reading, UK: Ithaca Press. 1998, 348pp. Index. Hb. ISBN 0-86372-232-6.

"Islam has been seen to be well suited to play the role of the bad guy after the Cold War, for it is large, frightening and anti-Western and thrives on poverty and anger. It is spread over vast tracts of the world, and so the countries of Islam could be shown on TV as large maps of green, as the communist countries used to appear in red." (p.6)

The fetishism of the West, and particularly the United States, with the creation of a new enemy after the end of the Cold War is an increasing point for international concern. On one hand there is a growing awareness in the international community of the fabrication of an enemy for a plethora of self-serving reasons. Yet, on the other, the overwhelming ignorance of the Muslim world, and the enormous publicity of extremist terror attacks, has fanned fears of a new Islamic "green threat". Ahmad Moussali and his fellow contributors set out to rationally and systematically challenge the myths that perpetuate these anxieties.

The book begins with several complex theoretical chapters that cover a number of key debates. These range from the irrelevancy of Western social science in understanding the Muslim world, to the philosophical and political underpinnings of the views and ideologies of differing Islamic traditions on religion, state, democracy and human rights. These intricate theoretical chapters will be helpful to researchers with little understanding of Islamic fundamentalism, as well as those with a larger base of knowledge. They demonstrate that although any understanding of Islamic fundamentalism cannot be easily conflated into the framework of Western thought, fundamentalism is "not beyond intellectual, economic, political and cultural analyses" (p.25). This is critical, as the remaining chapters all converge on the need to understand Islamic fundamentalism and its growth contextuality.

The instructive and in-depth case studies of Algeria, Lebanon, the Occupied Territories, Saudi Arabia and Egypt clearly show that the resurgence of Islamic activism cannot be divorced from the local socio-economic and political context. The case studies convincingly demonstrate that most major fundamentalist groups, notwithstanding a few widely publicised groups that are engaged in exclusivist uncompromising revolutions, are not necessarily or inherently juxtaposed in thought and action to democracy and pluralism. The detailed and contextual analyses in the case studies implicitly challenges the Western myths (and consequent fears) of an all-encompassing hegemonic and extremist Islamic movement.

The book will be instructive to those not familiar with the theoretical foundations and historical context of Islamic conviction in the contemporary world. However, the book does not extensively explain, and that is not its purpose, why the West has chosen fundamentalism as its new enemy. Rather Ahmad Moussalli and his fellow contributors choose to demystify Islamic fundamentalism through developing a nuanced and contextual understanding. A refined analysis of this type is critical in moving Western conflict resolution practitioners, and the public, away from the reductionist view that the biggest threat to peace is the clash of irreconcilable civilisations rather than the socio-economic problems, and the resultant opposition, created by rapid economic liberalisation.

Published by Brandon Hamber in the Ethnic Conflict Research Digest, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1999.