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Alternative to revenge
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Regime change is almost always associated with the destruction of the symbols of the previous government. While the most recent example of this is Iraq, an exception has been South Africa. AMMU JOSEPH examines why this was so, against the backdrop of a new book that looks at hate and forgiveness in the light of the South African experience.
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A LONG-SHOT image of the infamous toppling of one of several statues of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad in April 2003, circulated via the Internet, suggested not only that the event was stage-managed for public consumption outside the country, but also that much of the mainstream international media cooperated in disseminating disinformation about the event and what it signified. In any case, that was only one of the many visuals of the apparent collapse of the Hussein regime beamed out of Iraq in the last days of the military invasion of the country. Among the others were innumerable photographs of United States soldiers pulling down, painting over and peering out from behind torn portraits of Hussein and, quite memorably, a close-up of a shoed foot standing on the stony face of the fallen leader.
Among the few critical comments in the U.S. media on the bringing down of statues and the destruction of buildings that marked the apparent capture of Baghdad by the so-called coalition forces, was one by editorial writer Louis Freedberg in The San Francisco Chronicle on April 14.
Having witnessed the fall of apartheid in South Africa nearly a decade ago, he focused on the way Nelson Mandela had discouraged the destruction of symbols of the old regime, despite his own experience of political harassment and prolonged incarceration. The new government he headed went so far as to set up a Commission on National Symbols to deal with the contentious issue of what was to be done with statues, portraits and names associated with one of the most oppressive and brutal political systems created by humankind. According to Freedberg, the first president of democratic South Africa had a number of important reasons for wishing to ensure that decisions were made not in the heat of the moment but after due consideration of the many complex factors involved. Thanks to his civilised approach, "Slowly, the most offensive names and symbols disappeared in South Africa. But the changes occurred gradually as it matured into a functioning democracy."
Freedberg used this example to argue that "by relentlessly bombing government buildings and tearing down images of Saddam Hussein wherever it encountered them, the United States must take some responsibility for encouraging the vandalism" that destroyed a wide range of Iraqi institutions, including at least one major museum and an important library full of invaluable treasures marking the progress of human history. But the unique manner in which South Africa handled this and other aspects of "regime change" holds lessons not only for "post-war" Iraq but also for many other parts of the world emerging from violent conflicts of various kinds.
A remarkable book titled, A Human Being Died That Night: A South African Story of Forgiveness, by Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela (Houghton Mifflin, Boston/New York, 2003) reveals the relevance of the South African experience to the rest of the world in an unusual and powerful way. It brings to mind not only Iraq and the post-9/11 U.S., but also many parts of South Asia, including Sri Lanka and, even closer home, Kashmir, Gujarat, "the north-east," as well as other places in India that have suffered chronic violent conflicts based on caste, religion or ethnicity.
Gobodo-Madikizela is a South African clinical psychologist who was invited to serve on the historic Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), established in 1995 to help the country move towards justice in cases involving violent atrocities committed during the apartheid era by means of "a process uniquely designed as a forum where victims could break their silence and face their abusers for the first time."
The book emerged from her research into violence under apartheid. Her doctoral study was originally based on interviews with young black anti-apartheid activists who had killed suspected black police collaborators in brutal "necklace" murders (so named on account of the burning tyres hung around victims' necks). However, by the time she was able to get back to work on her PhD dissertation, after serving on the TRC, she had also conducted extensive interviews with Eugene de Kock, head of the notorious Vlakplaas (an institution devoted to "counter-insurgency" activities or state-sponsored violence against political opponents) and considered by many to have been "the most brutal of apartheid's covert police operatives".
She decided to incorporate the two sets of interviews in her doctoral work "so as to examine the extremes of both sides of the political conflict, in particular the dynamics of politically motivated atrocities committed in the context of a group, and state-sponsored atrocities committed by an individual". Her somewhat controversial work on the man popularly known as "Prime Evil" eventually led to a PhD thesis that she describes as "purely scholarly", as well as the book, which she says is "a deeply personal account of my conversations with de Kock".
Her interviews with de Kock were catalysed by the response of Pearl Faku and Doreen Mgoduka, widows of two black policemen killed in a car bomb because they threatened to expose white colleagues' role in the death of four black anti-apartheid activists. After his first appearance before the TRC, during which he testified about the "Motherwell bombing," de Kock had requested a private meeting with the widows so that he could apologise to them for his involvement in their husbands' violent deaths. When Gobodo-Madikizela met the women a few days later she was struck by what Faku said: "I hope that when he sees our tears, he knows that they are not only tears for our husbands, but tears for him as well... I would like to hold him by the hand and show him that there is a future, and that he can still change."
According to her, this uncommon response raised "fundamental questions surrounding remorse and forgiveness after mass atrocity", which are discussed in the book. "How can we transcend hate if the goal is to transform human relationships in a society with a past marked by violent conflict between groups?" she asks. "This question may be irrelevant for people who do not have to live as a society with their former enemies. But for those whose lives are intertwined with those who have grossly violated human rights, who sometimes even have to live as neighbours with them, ignoring the question is not an option." Clearly, then, the question cannot be avoided in the Indian context.
Among the many important and interesting issues discussed in the book, some are especially significant and relevant in many current conflicts and post-conflict situations across the world. One is the question of who or what is responsible for creating individuals capable of committing terrible atrocities. In other words, what kind of society or ideology enables people to suppress their conscience so effectively that they can engage in such extreme cruelty? As Gobodo-Madikizela explores de Kock's evolution into the "behind-the-scenes engineer of apartheid's murderous operations", it is easy to see parallels elsewhere in the world:
"By buying into the ideology and mission of apartheid... (he was able to) persuade himself that there was something morally right about apartheid's covert programme" and start believing that he was committing systematic murder and other atrocities for `the greater good.'
Similarly, as she raises questions about the culpability of society at large, it is impossible to ignore situations in India and other parts of the world that are dissimilar only in detail: "... it was not just de Kock's conscience that was stilled. White society in general became numbed... Even the Afrikaans Church actively participated in providing justification for killing `enemies of the state.'" She highlights "apartheid of the mind", a phenomenon that involves "psychological splitting" and results in a veil of silence being maintained for `the greater good.'
Nelson Mandela ... a civilised approach to the regime change.
"Tacitly or openly, most white people supported the regime of terror as something grim but good," she says. "De Kock and many of the apartheid government's operatives have said repeatedly that what kept them going — what sustained their zeal and conviction in the rightness of crushing the heads of thousands of black activists — was the tacit but powerful support they felt they were receiving from the beneficiaries of apartheid privilege... It is at their feet that the responsibility for apartheid, ultimately, can be laid."
According to Gobodo-Madikizela, "Those who turn out to be violent are more likely to have had direct or indirect encouragement to be violent. De Kock's given role ... as apartheid's crusader indicates right away that he had a future of violence carved out for him by national leaders." This is why she argues that "one of the problems with trying individuals who have committed crimes under the explicit or implicit orders of their governments is that the law focuses strictly on the question of individual responsibility" and on "particular individual crimes" rather than on "the question of structural and systemic crimes." In de Kock's case, for example, the latter would include "the surrounding ideological/political philosophy, the setting up of Vlakplaas, and an administrative-executive system that protected and directed (him) to commit the crimes... "
As she explores the theme of state support for violent "solutions" to political problems, it is difficult not to think about Gujarat 2002 and the responses of political leaders to the murderous events there: "Asked by the TRC whether they had authorised the crimes that were committed by apartheid's foot soldiers, the master architects of apartheid responded time and again that there was no official policy that supported illegal acts of violence." Comparing apartheid's politicians with other leaders of "criminal and genocidal regimes," and discussing the ways in which the former tried to "distance themselves from the ugliness of apartheid violence by denying that it existed at all," she asks: "Which leadership type betrays the greater level of depravity? Is the politician who plunges openly into criminal behaviour and, Nazi-style, shamelessly denies there is anything wrong with it more or less morally degenerate than one who lies about his criminal behaviour to cover it up?"
As the title of the book indicates, it includes a detailed and complex discussion of the possibility, role and nature of forgiveness at the individual as well as the societal level. But in the end the question, says Gobodo-Madikizela, "is no longer whether victims can forgive `evil-doers' but whether we — our symbols, language, and politics, our legal, media and academic institutions — are creating the conditions that encourage alternatives to revenge." According to her, "We have come to rely too narrowly on retribution as the only legitimate form of justice and on the Nuremberg trial model as the only one capable of adequately addressing state-orchestrated atrocities."
"Our knowledge of the dynamic between victims and perpetrators has ... been influenced by narratives from the Holocaust experience," she says. "The Holocaust discourse has sometimes emphasised remembering but not so clearly dialogue, which is critical if victims are to live again with perpetrators in the same society, or indeed if they are to live in greater harmony with themselves." Acknowledging that dialogue may not solve "every problem faced by a society that has suffered sustained violence on a large scale," she points out that it does "create avenues for broadening our models of justice and for healing deep fractures in a nation... "
In addition, she argues, "Dialogue creates the possibility of setting the person's actions, through testimony and witnessing, in the broader framework of the political-ideological context that may have supported and even directed his deeds. It is this component of the crime, the one that resides at the systemic, institutional, and policy levels rather than at a personal level, that is notoriously difficult to substantiate within the strict evidentiary rules of a purely judicial process. Thus the politics of abuse that were enshrined in the policies of an oppressive system can be acknowledged and confirmed in ways that the more rigid, adversarial relationship of courtroom exchanges cannot." This insight could be of particular relevance in Iraq today, as the contentious and presently flawed process of dealing with the past and planning for the future gets under way. But it may be equally useful in a number of other situations, too.
According to Gobodo-Madikizela, "... Lessons from the TRC proceedings, approached with an open mind — and heart — can help us chart a path along which forgiveness may occur, as well as the conditions that make it difficult, or even morally inappropriate, to forgive... " Acknowledging the difficulties of determining genuine regret after radically evil acts, she argues that, nevertheless, "Philosophical questions can and should give way and be subsumed by human questions, for in the end we are a society of people and not of ideas, a fragile web of interdependent humans, not of stances." Finally, while "what happened at the Truth Commission may not be generalisable to all other situations," she says, "what the work of the TRC suggests is that cycles of political violence can indeed be broken and that there are alternatives to revenge and retributive justice."
This is a book with a message whose time has surely come.
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