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We are today charged with a daunting responsibility.

While many countries in the world have taken the path of a truth and reconciliation commission, we have taken the process the furthest both in content and powers of the TRC as well as the way in which we plan to handle the report by making it a subject of debate in our parliament and in our society.

The eyes of the world are on us.

What we say here today, and how we say it, will shape the debate that has to take place in our society as an integral part of the process of reconciliation and reconstruction.

We need to use the report of the Commission as a platform from which we find ways to encourage an ongoing process of discovering the truth about our past.

Secondly, we need to channel public debate so that the task of reconciliation becomes more and more inclusive - becomes a responsibility of all our citizens, whatever their colour.

Thirdly, we need to scrutinise the recommendations in order to see which ones contain inherent tensions and find ways to address these. We need also to demarcate those areas which remain unresolved or unaddressed and therefore need to be brought out into the arena of public discourse and debate.

Correctly, the process so far has hinged on the discovery of the truth as a bridge between the perpetrators and the victims. We in this Parliament have been the enactors of the legislation which gave birth to the TRC. Regrettably, when we look back, we need to acknowledge to ourselves that many of us failed our people because we could not resist the temptation to portray to our constituencies the TRC as a process of defending our past rather than assisting the process of discovery.

We must not make that mistake today.

Yes, there was a long and bitter conflict and war. One of the key obstacles to reconciliation has been a view propagated in this House that in this war there were two belligerent forces, and then there was a large body of people who were not part of the war, who were not part of the very system which brutalised and dehumanised every one of us in different ways.

In this regard it is a stark reality that the white community has been nurtured to live in the belief that the past should simply be put aside. And this has been underpinned by the view which says: "I was not part of the system. I was not part of the war. Why should I share responsibility?" And when such people are confronted by the realities of the system which generated the war, they retreat into sullen defensiveness.

The idea that there were a group of people who did not know and who were neutral is one of the greatest obstacles to achieving reconciliation and we in this House must take up the challenge together to overcome the tendency.

I am certain that Gen. Constand Viljoen would acknowledge that in his own books there were only two types of South Africans: 'Us' and 'the enemy'. In war there is no neutrality in silence. We all took sides; even if it was just to keep quiet and live our lives, have families and make money. We all took sides. We are all involved. And we must together deal with the unfinished business of the past.

There are those who say: "I cannot help the colour of my skin. That I am white does not make me part of that system. Besides, I did not know."

Lest I be misunderstood, I do not raise this question with a view to apportioning blame or to make such people acquire a guilty conscience, I raise it because the truth needs to be confronted and without a commitment to the truth, the past will blight our future.

The issue for example arose with regards to the Germans. Primo Levi, who survived Auschwitz, was questioned as to why his books contained no expressions of hate for the Germans and desire for revenge. He was asked: "Did the Germans know what was happening in Nazi Germany?" This was his response:

"In spite of the varied possibilities for information, most Germans didn't know because they didn't want to know. Because, indeed they wanted not to know. ..... Those who knew did not talk; those who did not know did not ask questions; those who did ask questions received no answers. In this way the typical German citizen won and defended his ignorance, which seemed to him sufficient justification of his adherence to Nazism. Shutting his mouth, his eyes and his ears, he built for himself the illusion of not knowing, hence not being an accomplice to the things taking place in front of his door. Knowing and making things known was one way of keeping ones distance from Nazism. I think the German people on the whole did not seek this recourse and I hold them fully capable of this deliberate omission."

Are those, who have so far, as members of this House nurtured and perpetuated this "I-am-clean" constituency in our society, able to share responsibility to remove this obstacle in the part of reconciliation.

If we address this task together we will all be able to address the larger challenge of reconstructing our society and addressing poverty as a central concern. We will then no longer be defensive when the facts show that while there is a measure of poverty in every society, in our country poverty has been racially determined and deliberately engendered. Then together we would stand up and acknowledge with Chomsky: "Freedom without opportunity is the devil's gift and the refusal to provide such opportunities is criminal."

Truth, reconciliation and the eradication of poverty are the building blocks of the future which we all so passionately want to bequeath to our children and their children, and we all have to pick up the blocks even if we don't think it really involves us because we never actually carried a R1 riffle or an AK47.

We shaped the TRC so that the perpetrators of atrocities could come forward and speak the truth in the assurance that they could get amnesty. And yet many, far too many, have failed to come forward. And the few who have come forward often did so to avoid imminent prosecution. Those who didn't, more likely acted that way because they denied by their political masters, the shield of acknowledging their responsibility for the acts of their foot soldiers.

The work of the Amnesty Committee is not yet finished, but we as the elected representatives of the people, can already see the problems looming ahead of us. What leadership do we have to offer? We need to find a path for people who have not applied for amnesty as yet but want to find their way into the New South Africa. For people not interested in reconciliation there is a path ready in the criminal justice system, in which they have a right to exercise their choice and face the judicial consequences of it. But for the many others who would like to enter the New South Africa how do we help to structure the debate amongst all our citizens.

I hope that the leaders of the relevant political parties in this House will not again desert them. Together we can take co-responsibility. And the first thing that we need to do in an inclusive way is to recognise and ensure that we correctly define the problem as well as to recognise the need to finding a solution.

We ruled out the Nuremburg type of trials for war crimes because historically they have been problematic as they serve the victor more than justice. And they have done little to further the course of reconciliation in any country were they have been held.

The second option, a general amnesty, was a non-starter because F W de Klerk's Cabinet slammed the door fast on it.

One of the ways forward could possibly be found in the office of the President of South Africa where the powers of pardon and clemency are vested. Perhaps we have to start thinking about encouraging the President to be equipped with a small advisory structure to deal with and make recommendations to him as to how to deal with this issue as he applies his mind to each instance or case.

It is important that this possible advisory structure is lifted out of the narrow terrain of party-political finger pointing and name calling as the issues that the President will ask them to deliberate on are for too important for the future of this country to get reduced to political points scoring.

In our country there are deep wounds that generate powerful emotions and the next stage of the process of truth and reconciliation needs to handled in a manner that we take into account these emotions, and place them in the context of the greater necessity of the nation building.

Issued by the Ministry of Transport, 25 February 1999

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