Special Hearings — Mental Health Workshop — UNKNOWN

MR GREY: Thank you I was relieved that the first contribution didn't quite go as far as to suggest the firing of the big guns because that could be rather noisy and unpleasant.  I'd like to say that you have been struggling with the problem that a process that ideally ought to be extremely inclusive has a number of limitations on it that have limited that process.  I know that there are a lot of people who feel left out and have been and I also know that you have made some sincere efforts on the part of all of you to try to minimise that.  I think that particularly at this phase you have the problem of the lack of time and resources but for whatever structures grow out of this, talking of the health and human rights watchdog and what have you, it is absolutely imperative that even if the work done in Cape Town is brilliant and comes up with the best plans conceivably produced by man and woman, unless those plans feel owned by the entire community of people who were active in this field, it will have serious handicaps.
 I think I'd like to also address a challenge that is often I hear put to the whole Truth Commission and particularly to this Committee and I think very unfairly.  I've heard a lot of people, particularly those from the perpetrator and more than ever the bystander community and we must never neglect and I hope you will all remember in your report the vital, essential, life-giving, evil role of the bystander throughout it and they say why are they just digging it all up, why don't we just put it behind us?  Well of course you can't put it behind you until it has at least for some time been in front of you, you can't get past it until you have seen where it is and what it is that needs to go past.  I think it's important to understand that we're not indulging in mere morbid story-telling when you do, when we do and when we urge from all people to listen to the stories of the victims.   It's not merely concentrating on terrible things that happened.  One of the things that we are concentrating on doing in this process is gaining the material with which to celebrate the small victories and the transcendence of evil by ordinary people, on the strength of ordinary people and their capacity to do that and that is one of our great national strengths that we need to recognise and value.  And we need to understand more of what is happening to the perpetrators because these were not monsters that were slobbering at the mouth like some creations of a Hollywood script writer.  The tragedy of South Africa's horrors, as it was of the holocaust and other such periods, was not that there are some special monsters who occasionally do terrible things, but that in certain situations, in certain circumstances, ordinary people; and listening to some of the perpetrators, extraordinarily ordinary people are capable of doing very terrible things and it is only by a proper examination of that that we can have any real chance of hoping that we will prevent this happening before.  If we don't know how it happened we won't be able to prevent it happening.  The more we try and understand it we may not be able to prevent it, but we'll never have a realistic chance of trying that.
 I think Saths raised another very important point that we do need to recognise and record in our findings of this meeting.  You have been I think in this meeting as in many others, very broadly inclusive in your invitations and there has been a very relevant response.  We should take very clear notice of who is here.  I have no doubt in my own field for example, that if you had chosen to hold this hearing in Hong Kong or in Acapulco, or in Vancouver, every single professor of psychiatry would have been here with lavish support from every drug company that they phoned the day before without question.  Those who claimed in their initial - those institutions and individuals who apologised that somehow with some sort of scatoma, some temporary blindness they didn't notice with apartheid was happening are in fact showing by their absence that whatever blindness they had, they still have, they are still as comprehensively blind as that.  I think we have to be wary of how these individuals have learned this new language, the 12th official language of South Africa, political correct speak.  And some of them make those same noises just as convincingly but don't listen to what they say, look at what they do and I remember, I wish I could remember the great author who said it, that the man who said, 'I can't hear what you're saying because what you are is shouting so loudly', and I think that is what our absent colleagues have said and we should hear what they have said.  Thank you.

MS MKHIZE: Thank you, any other comments?   As we have said, this is an open session for people to review what we have gone through and those who were in the May/June Health Sector hearings can reflect on that as well, including the subject matter that we have dealt with.
    The only problem which I foresee for our records is that people don't say who they are, then I don't know what's going to happen.  Please let's just make sure that people say I'm so and so from this place..

MS MAKASOMAHAPE: Okay I am Jeanette Makasomahape from Chris Hani Baragwanath Nursing College.   From what you have been doing since yesterday I feel that it was not done in vain.  It has given us an opportunity to say things we couldn't say before like I said yesterday that sometimes unintentionally find yourself being involved in implementing some of the things because of situations beyond your control.  I know that many people have no faith in what the TRC is doing, that it won't bring back their loved ones but I feel to some extent there are benefits in the talking therapy which as we are currently doing and it will help us in the future not to repeat the same things. And then about today, I also feel that we did benefit something. In the past like we said we were not here to engage about a power struggles between the disciplines and so on at the competitions but for the mere fact that the nurses are here today also and did say their say.  It means we are heading for the same direction, there is hope, more especially about us recurriculating and having this trans-interdisciplinary teaching which we are planning so that there is no discipline which will be above any other.  I think we are taking a step in the right direction.

MS MKHIZE: Thank you, any other comments about the process?

MS RADEBE: My name is Ethyl Radebe, I come from the Chris Hani Baragwanath Nursing College.   I feel that being here in the TRC, I was there in the June hearings and I'm here today.  I think that in the history of our people we have covered tremendous ground.  What the TRC is doing nobody has ever done before and I do take note of the fact that we are few.  I think even the TRC Commission itself did comment yesterday that it would we are a small number.  I'm just impressed by the amount of content and work we have done, but my future thinking would be, it will be a pity if for whatever the content we have discussed today, we have listened to those voices of victims if torture, it will be the greatest pity in the history of mental health if nothing can be done about these victims and even if it's a small something, I think the ordinary people will appreciate it and we hope that the TRC will note this part of the process very very seriously.  We may not have the great things, the buildings but we do have our people who can benefit from the process, thank you very much.

MS MKHIZE: Thank you, any other specific comments besides the process, maybe more about the content, the input which was made and the discussions.  We allowed the people to comment about the process because we are fairly open about it.