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Social Justice is that tenet, or notion of our being, which we as civilized humans have come to embrace as the vehicle by which we define our own order in society today. This very notion has been relevant in contempory South Africa, due to our past and the previous Apartheid Regime. Since justice is almost a science in the form of the Naturalist approach to the study of law, it would be in our best interests to define the very notion of justice itself and how this applies on a macro social level. In relating the concept of social justice and it feasibility in contempory South Africa, perhaps it would be in our best interests to undertake a case study of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The TRC has come to embody a great deal of things to a great deal of people in contempory South Africa. Central among the discussion regarding the TRC was the very notion of justice itself. In this context, many saw justice offered up on the alter of compromise, whilst many regarded the process as of one truth seeking and reconciliation. What effect has this body had on contempory South Africa? In this essay I shall attempt to discuss the various stances regarding the conclusion of the TRC. Also, in understanding the notion of the concept ‘social justice', it is in our best interests to understand how social contract theory allows a form of social justice as we perceive it today.
The TRC sought amnesty for crimes of a political nature and was perhaps part of the ‘compromise' that swept post- apartheid South Africa. This motive was written into the Interim Constitution and perhaps epitomized the very nature of the TRC. As a body, the TRC comprised of two distinct halves; that of the main Commission, which via a transparent process allowed for the consideration of nominations by those stakeholders concerned. Subsequent to interviews, the panel submitted a short list of 5 individuals to the then president Nelson Mandela, who subsequently appointed 17 commissioners on the th of November 15. The second ‘arm' as it were of the TRC was the Amnesty Committee, which was established after the main Commission and independently of it, but lacking the same process of transparency. Nelson Mandela appointed these three commissioners and two judges on the 4th of January 16.
The TRC sought to utilize a form of a galvanizing and self- critical vision of the goals of our society, which in turn required a ‘clear sighted and constantly debated grasp of what was wrong in the past.' This in turn created another dilemma in the capacity of the TRC's ability to achieve this form of reconciliation amongst the people it sought to unify. The decision by the government to establish a non- legal form of hearing was an attempt to avoid a possible Nuremburg- type situation. It sought to avoid all the necessary legal pedantics, which arrive with such a process, but rather sought to acquire a form of confessional atonement of past wrongs. It is in this very first step that the TRC became a vehicle of subjective morality and callous truth seeking. The very fact that these hearings were based on assumptions and more appointed versions of the struggle, rather than the exact state of affairs, further detracted from the initial statement of ‘Truth and Reconciliation'. As the hearings were conducted in public with mass media coverage, a presented view of truths were established that was one of marginalized capacity to attain a complete form of truth. The lack of due process surrounding the establishment of guilt or innocence was neatly circumvented via a form of blas subjectivism and this further detracted from the very postulates of justice. The need for a documented trial, with legal professionals at the fore, was ignored by the excuse of cost and time. One could argue that legal process would present a version of truth that is entirely subjective to that of strict legal morality, but in response to this, the TRC came to actually prop up the old apartheid evils that glare us in the ace today. The TRC only catered for those who were subject to political violence or any wrong committed that was illegal during the time of apartheid. Essentially it ignored the largest facet of policy, which made apartheid the evil it is today. It is all well and good to perform a witch hunt for the perpetrators of crimes against humanity, in terms of politically motivated crime, but such injustices as the forced removals and Group Area's Act, managed to slip the TRC's definition of ‘evil'. The .5 million involved in this TRC oversight, comprises faceless communities, not individual activists, which in turn illustrates a social catastrophe and not merely a political dilemma. This is testament to the fact that the TRC only considered a gross violation, a gross violation under the laws of apartheid! Thus in focusing on the atrocities that fell outside the laws o apartheid, the TRC came to establish a form of moral compromise in terms of what was legal and what was legitimate, and essentially between the law and what was essentially ‘right'. Thus although the act of torture, murder and rape came to the fore, with the commission neglecting the very make- up of what made apartheid fundamentally wrong. This narrow- lensed truth created the TRC's own marginalized version of truth, which failed to facilitate a general consensus of evil that was apartheid. Another mistake of the commission was to establish an air of humiliation, rather than that of fostered forgiveness, when dealing with the beneficiaries of apartheid. This in turn resulted in strong opposition to this process by white, and more predominantly, Afrikaner people. The intended aim of this commission was to facilitate reconciliation and not to drive a stake into the very heart of this process. By the subsequent marginalization of these individuals, an air of retribution and not of reconciliation was achieved. This ensured that the need for a mass social debate regarding the future of a post- apartheid South Africa would never be considered fostered on both sides of the divide. Thus by reinforcing the political compromise of 14, The TRC turned the political boundaries of compromise into analytical boundaries of truth seeking, thus effectively turning that very political compromise into a moral compromise, and effectively obscuring the truth. This resulted in the senseless suffering experienced by the victims was never really, other than in exceptional circumstance, answered with confession and accountability.
Thus' a result of the ethic of reconciliation propagated by the TRC, many on both sides feel that a form of ‘closure' has been consigned to the annals of myth. The process surrounding the details of many of the enquiries lacked a form of moral objectiveness, which would allow the scope for moving forward in our fledgling democracy. What the TRC hearings did manage to achieve was the categorical establishment on both sides, as to the very nature of apartheid, and the evil that it has come to represent. The miracle that we are living today owes a great deal to this very establishment of this standard and has ushered in a form of quasi- unity amongst South African people today. What it failed to achieve was an official, neutral, written history of our land and it's people. Instead the TRC managed to write off a majority of the evil that was apartheid, and established a form of bastard- morality in its place. If we are to move forward a people perhaps, it is the evil of yesterday which should be the constant reminder of the need for social equality, before an established form of what is deemed morally and ethically correct. The standard was never properly established and as a result, served to further inflict the pain of the past via a marginalized truth, which lacked any form of substance. The concept of reconciliation is one of mutual commiseration and not that of who was most correct or incorrect. There is not one person who would deny the evils of our past, but at the same time, the need to move forward as one people requires a form of compromise and atonement on both sides. History reflects the version of the winner, but in the case of South Africa, where such morality requires blatant transparency, we as a people must transcend the vice that makes us human, and be the first to establish that we are indeed the society humans have always wanted to be, above our own selfish interest, above all that constitutes the greed of humans. The South African paradigm is perhaps indeed the vehicle the human race needs as a whole, to escape the negative characteristics that has shaped the evolution of our race. It is indeed in South Africa that we illustrated the goodness and potential of the human spirit, and the ability of the individual to enjoy the right to equality, life and happiness. The TRC was instrumental in establishing the evil of apartheid in the mind of most, but the process facilitated a form of subjective morality and marginalization of the greater truth with regards to our perception of social justice.
Bibliography
Kader Asmal, Louise Asmal and Ronald Suresh Roberts, 16, ‘ Reconciliation through Truth' Cape Town David Phillip.
Mahmood Mamdi, 000, ‘A Diminished Truth', in Wilmot James and Linda van der Vijver(eds.) After the TRC Reflections on Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa, Cape Town David Phillip, pp 58-61.
Fredrick van Zyl Slabbert, 000, ‘Truth Without Reconciliation, Reconciliation without Truth', Cape Town David Phillip.
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