Bearing Witness: Women and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Anthropology, Culture and Society)

213 Pages·2002·0.78 MB·English

by  Fiona C. Ross

BEARING WITNESS
Women and the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission in South Africa
FIONAC. ROSS
P
Pluto Press
LONDON • STERLING, VIRGINIA
First published 2003
by PLUTO PRESS
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and 22883 Quicksilver Drive,
Sterling, VA 20166–2012, USA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright © Fiona C. Ross 2003
The right of Fiona C. Ross to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
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the British Library
ISBN 0 7453 1892 4 hardback
ISBN 0 7453 1891 6 paperback
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CONTENTS
List of Tables vi
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction 1
1. Making the Subject 8
2. Testimonial Practices 27
3. The Self in Extremity 51
4. Narrative Threads 77
5. Considerations of Harm 103
6. In Pursuit of the Ordinary 133
7. Epilogue 162
Appendix A: South African Security Laws 166
Appendix B: Detention Data 168
Glossary 173
Notes 175
References 190
Index 200
v
LIST OF TABLES
1.1 Relationship of testifiers to those about whom they testified 18
3.1 Women’s political identities as declared in specified
public hearings 54
3.2 Womens’s primary political affiliations 58
B.1 State detention data, 1960–94 169
B.2 Detention data, 1960–94, according to extra-governmental
sources 170
vi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Indebtedness and reciprocity are core to social life. While acknowledgements
cannot and perhaps never should do full justice to the intellectual debts
incurred and the relationships which provide emotional sustenance during
research and writing, and while I don’t want to cancel my debts entirely, this
page offers an opportunity to express thanks to particular people whose
support has been invaluable in the making of this book.
The study on which the book is based was part of an ethnographic study
of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission conducted by Professor Pamela
Reynolds, then of the Department of Social Anthropology at the University
of Cape Town. Her vision, determination, courage and intellectual
stimulation have been inspirational and I am both grateful for her encour-
agement and glad to have worked with her.
My greatest thanks go to those with whom I worked closely in
Zwelethemba: Nowi Khomba, Yvonne Khutwane, Nomeite Mfengu, Mirriam
Moleleki, Neliswa Mroxiswa, Nokuzola Mtamo, Nothemba Ngcwecwe,
Ntsoake Phelane, Noluthando Qaba, Thandiwe Silere, Ntombomzi
Siwangaza, Nokwanda Tani, Xoliswa Tyawana, Vuyelwa Xuza, and
Noluntu Zawukana. I also worked with some members of their families. I
intruded on their time, their memories and their personal experiences – and
on their kindness in allowing me to do so. I am especially grateful to Sylvia
Khomba and Monica Qaba, who welcomed me into their homes, to Nana
Khohlokoane and Xolile Dyabooi who assisted me in verifying data and
obtaining permissions to conduct research, and to Mandoyi Tshandu for his
assistance in arranging meetings. Mirriam Moleleki and Mawethu Bikane
were important in establishing the initial contacts from which I generated
my research network.
Thanks to all my colleagues, past and present, in the Department of Social
Anthropology at UCT. Susan Levine gave freely of her knowledge of
Zwelethemba and worked with me on a film about the young women with
whom I worked, and Linda Waldman and Stuart Douglas read drafts of early
chapters. I am grateful for Sally Frankental’s critical eye, kind support and
generous comments. Patti Henderson, friend, artist, performer, political
activist and anthropologist, was my intellectual companion and emotional
support. Thank you, too, to Colleen Crawford Cousins and Lindy Wilson, to
my family, particularly Andrew Ross and to a circle of supportive and caring
vii
viii A History of Anthropology
friends, especially Delia Marshall, whose encouragement sustained me in
draining times.
Anne Beech and the staff at Pluto Press have been enthusiastic about this
project and wonderful to work with. Thanks to Sandie Vahl for the indexing.
Richard Wilson, Jane Taylor and Peter Geschiere commented on the work
in its previous incarnation as a doctoral dissertation. I thank them for their
enthusiasm, advice and criticism. I am grateful too, to anonymous reviewers
of the manuscript proposal for their comments and encouragement. I have
tried to incorporate some of the suggestions – omissions etc. of course reflect
my own failing.
I am grateful to Ingrid de Kok for permission to use her poem, ‘Bandaged’;
to the Cape Timesfor permission to use Roger Friedman’s article ‘ANC veteran
tells of sexual abuse’ and to SAPA for permission to reprint the report
‘Woman tells truth body of sexual abuse’. The University of California Press
granted me permission to use material earlier published in my paper ‘Speech
and silence: women’s testimony in the first five weeks of public hearings of
the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission’ in Veena Das,
Remaking a World: Violence, Social Suffering and Recovery, copyright © 2001,
the Regents of the University of California. The Truth and Reconciliation
Commission granted permission to cite from its Report. Geoff Grundlingh’s
wonderful photographic exhibition of Zwelethemba and its youth activists
remains inspirational and I am grateful for the cover picture that he provided.
And finally, thanks to Andy Hackland, whose love, support and caring
sustained me during emotionally exhausting and intellectually challenging
research, and whose critical engagement helped me better to envisage the
import of both the TRC process and the roles of those who opposed the
apartheid regime.
INTRODUCTION
An ear for this, an ear for that. Who to believe? ... The struggle for truth
continues ever afterwards. Because afterwards is where we live ... Afterwards
is where stories begin. (Nicol, 1995: 1)
Aspartoftheefforttoreorganisestatesandsocialinstitutionsintheaftermath
ofviolentorauthoritarianpoliticalformations,recentdecadeshaveseenthe
emergenceofnewformsofenquiry.Alongsidetrials,tribunals,commissions
ofenquiry,courts-martialandotherinstitutionalisedforms,‘transitional
justice’,drawingonhumanrightsdiscourse,hasemergedasamechanismin
establishing democratic states. Within its ambit, phenomena glossed as
‘Truth Commissions’ are becoming important means by which political
formationslegitimatethemselvesandcreateanewsenseofbelonging(Wilson
1996,2001).Todate,21suchcommissionshavebeenheldworld-wide
(Hayner2001),anumbermorehavebeenmooted,andthemodelhasbeen
adaptedandadoptedincertaininstancesbytheUnitedNations.
Truth commissions link together complex ideas about suffering, justice,
human rights, accountability, history and witnessing. Alongside legal
practices, they involve and invoke memorial and narrative practices that
have important effects in shaping understandings and sculpting new social
possibilities. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission
(henceforth, the Commission), frequently described as offering an alternative
to both ‘amnesia’ and ‘Nuremburg trials’ (Minow 1998), has captured the
imagination of the international community. Close attention to its working
offers a means to reflect on how suffering is given voice and acknowledged.
Contemplating women’s testimonies given before public hearings of the Com-
mission’s Human Rights Violations Committee (HRVC) and their local effects,
my study questions conventional ways of attending to suffering and
recovery. Its focus on women emerges from the Commission’s work: as I
show in Chapter 1, ‘woman’ was a category with a history. In tracing local
effects, I chose to reflect on the Commission’s work in Zwelethemba, which,
since the 1950s, had been the epicentre of resistance in the Boland, the
Western Cape’s wine and fruit region. There, working with two generations
of women who were involved in anti-apartheid organisations and activities,
I examined how the Commission’s grammar of pain, couched in terms of
violations of human rights, permitted the expression of certain kinds of
experience while eliding others.
1
2 Bearing Witness
There is already a large and growing literature on commissions,
sometimes critical and sometimes adulatory, especially in relation to the
South African experiment.1Unlike most studies of truth commissions, this
book is not comparative. Comparative studies tend to homogenise and often
are not sufficiently mindful of the particular – the grounds on which sociality
is built. My aims are more intimate and immediate: I have paid close
attention to testimonies generated before the Commission and to the
experiences and words of women activists in order to reflect on the
singularity of the local. The project would not have been possible without
the ‘politics of intimacy’ (Appadurai 1997: 118) that frames anthropologi-
cal thought and the ethnographic method; philosophical bearings that take
seriously the shaping of local worlds and the socialities they enjoin. The book
differs from most ethnographic studies in that it traces the work and social
effects of an institution with a finite life, rather than focusing on ‘a people’ or
‘a place’. I have used both conventional anthropological techniques and a
multi-sited research method, a kind of travelling anthropology (Hastrup
1994; Augé 1995; Marcus 1995; Clifford 1997; Gupta and Ferguson 1997;
Nordstrom 1998), following the Commission’s public hearings from place
to place around the country and then working closely with political activists
in a small town to trace the ramifications of the Commission’s work.
Dataonwomen’stestimoniesandrolespresentedinChapters1and2
are derived from the public hearings that I attended,2 from informal
discussionsduringandafterhearings,fromthemediaandinterviews.In
addition to these sources, Chapter 3 draws on transcripts from selected
publichearingscarriedontheCommission’ssiteontheWorldWideWeb
<www.truth.org.za>andtheCD-ROMofthewebsite(TRC(TruthandRec-
onciliationCommission)1998).MaterialpresentedinChapters4,5and6
is drawn from research conducted between 1996 and 1999 in
Zwelethemba.Theexperiencesandeventspeopledescribedwerefrightful.
Sufferingwasgreat.Manypeoplewerebraveinthefaceofviolenceand
apartheid’s devastating effects on social life. Many were hurt. Notwith-
standingtherhetoricabouthealingthataccompaniedtheCommission’s
work,andhistorians’claimsofrecording’semancipatoryeffects,peopledo
notnecessarilywanttheiractivitiesandexperiencestobewidelyknown.I
havethereforerefrainedfromnamingorotherwiseidentifyingthosewith
whomIdidnotworkcloselyinZwelethemba.Aneffectofthisstrategyisa
winnowingofgeneralitythatmayseemdiscordanttoreadersfamiliarwith
broaderethnographicandhistoricalclaims.However,asIshowinChapter
5, itis difficult to come to a detailed understanding of the local and the
singularinthepresent.ThefilteringIdescribeisausefulmethodological
tooltobegintoaccessthecomplexwaysinwhichpeoplemakeandinhabit
socialworldsduringandafterviolenceandrepression,andinthecontext
ofpovertyanditsenduringeffects.
Introduction 3
RESEARCH AS WITNESS
Stories of harm are intricate, oddly delicate. Their complexity emerges slowly
over time, the product of careful and sustained mindfulness. Without focused
attention, certain kinds of experience slip easily from the record. An example:
siblings, a young man and a young woman, were detained and held in
separate prisons in terms of Section 29 of the Internal Security Act No. 74 of
1982 that allowed for indefinite detention in solitary confinement for inter-
rogation. Once, during an interrogation, the Security Branch interrogators
played the young man a recording of a woman’s torture. He recognised his
sister’s screams. His mother, coming to visit him in prison one day, heard his
cries echoing down the corridors. She recognised her son’s voice. The young
woman does not know that her screams were recorded and played as part of
the torture her brother endured. The young man does not know that his
mother heard his torment.
A space of silence exists within the family. It may be respectful, a kind of
will to silence, generated to protect one another from the knowledge of the
extent of hurt. It may also be the silence of being unable or unwilling to meet
the extent of pain suffered. To confront any member of the family with the
knowledge would be to breach the barriers they have constructed and to
force new spaces of acknowledgement that may not be beneficial to any
concerned. Here, one can only acknowledge the strategies used to cope with
violence, acknowledge the need for silence and amnesia of particular kinds.
Such cases suggest that research and writing may offer a form of witness,
a term I use throughout in the general sense of recognising and acknow-
ledging suffering. Witnessing requires attentiveness. Shoshana Felman and
Dori Laub argue that it is a social process that rests on careful attention,
‘listening’ (1992: 70). Although what they write is addressed specifically to
the testimonies of Holocaust survivors, it can apply in other contexts. They
argue that ‘Testimonies are not monologues; they cannot take place in
solitude’ (p. 71), and warn that ‘The absence of an empathic listener, or more
radically, the absence of an addressable other, an other who can hear the
anguish of one’s memories and thus affirm and recognise their realness,
annihilates the story’ (p. 68; emphasis in the original).
Writing about Argentina’s ‘Dirty War’, and drawing from Felman and
Laub’s work, Diana Taylor (1997) points out that
The term ‘witnessing’ is highly problematic, both in the sense of the Western
scientificidealofthe‘objective’observerandinthetraditionofGreektragicdrama.3
The first erroneously suggests that the viewer is ideologically and physically
positionedoutsidetheframeofthegiven-to-be-known/onlookers.AndGreektragedy
… casts viewers as passive onlookers, thus discouraging them/us from active
involvement.[Taylor1997:25]
Taylor is not oblivious to the difficulties of witnessing in Argentina. She
argues that during the ‘Dirty War’, Argentinians were forced to ‘see’ in some