Special Hearings — Mental Health Workshop — 1997-11-20

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you Lionel.  Dr Wendy Orr?

WENDY ORR: Thank you Lionel, I found your presentation very pertinent, it raised a number of issues which we obviously have to take into consideration and I hope that as we both live in Cape Town, we can continue this conversation at a later stage.
 Just two comment really.  When you were talking about the response of (indistinct) and the South African Police Services, just to reinforce what you were saying.  Thulani and I went to interview a psychologist who used to work for the South African Police in the 1980's, he no longer does, and he said exactly the same thing.  When we said was there any involvement in torture or developing techniques of torture, he said psychologists were involved, but that work was contracted out.  It was not police psychologists who were used.
 So that just, as I say, underlines and reinforces.  I mean those were the words that he used, the work was contracted out.  And then to say that I think a number of us are also extremely concerned at the way in which psychological testimony has been used at amnesty hearings and the diagnosis of PTSD has been tossed around, and we have been in conversation with members of the amnesty committee about it.  I want to thank you for jogging our memory and for prodding us into actually being more proactive about what happens, and I think your suggestion that we have either a TRC or a victim psychologist present, is a very good one, thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Glenda Wildschut?

GLENDA WILDSCHUT: Your comment about the Reparations Committee being a stepchild of the Commission is something which resonates with us in a very interesting way, but perhaps to comment about that is that the Commission is a microcosm of South Africa and society at large in a way.
 And that the issues that are being struggled with or people are engaging with outside, are also the issues that we have to in a sense negotiate within the Commission.
 And in a sense, all of us have to accept some culpabilities with regards to that, because the sort of sensational legal stuff become the focus of attention in the media and in people's minds and the real issues of peoples' pain and peoples' emotional needs in a sense, get relegated to the lesser beings.  It still happens that most of us in RRC are mental health practitioners who have really battled to put mental health issues on the agenda of the Commission, so I am in a sense being a Truth Commissioner in a true sense and actually telling you what the difficulties are with regard to where we - but we have as you say, you know, tried to battle on.
 Wendy has commented about you know, our communication with the amnesty committee with regard to the use or the abuse of psychiatric and psychological diagnosis in the attempt of getting amnesty.
 And perhaps again to those people who are interested in research and looking at this, I think this is something which really has to be written about.  The process of the Truth Commission and how in some instances, it is again being abused by people who have in the past been beneficiaries of the apartheid system, and are now again using a particular forum to be beneficiaries and how difficult it is when one sort of at the cusp of that, to ensure that some attention apart from the sort of sensational media attention, is drawn to those very important issues.
 How can we go forward in the future and make recommendations when these things are being abused like this?  I mean what kind of things do we need to say to the nation at the end of the day?  So that is the dilemma I find myself in.
 What do we say to the nation you know when in fact these things are being abused?  I think I hope that we can engage with the comments that you have made in the workshops, because I think they are really very important and if we loose this opportunity, we are not going to have another workshop.  We are not going to be able to lock horns with each other about how we need to move forward.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.  Professor Magwaza?

PROF MAGWAZA: (Indistinct) that most of the psychologists have said that they were not involved in the type of work and the work was contracted out, I think my issue here is that we need to shift this for future recommendation, that we shift, we don't shift but we balance the focus between omissions and commissions.  That is very important if we see it within the context of non-repetition of the violation of human rights.
 I think in the future psychologists have to come up as a critical mass where they have to take it upon themselves to be watchdogs for omissions and not to be passive and find a way of absolving their guilt by the fact that they didn't actually engage in commissions.
 I think the pattern, if you look even the pattern of violation that has happened here in South Africa, is that even when these human rights' violations were committed in those years, there were very few vociferous psychologists who actually highlighted the omissions that were being made.  We didn't come up as a critical mass and I am also, this is why my concern is that one of the things that we need to highlight for future sake, we should give the balance between the two.
 And then the second comment which I have is related to the diagnosis PTSD that while we feel that it should not be used, that we also have a responsibility as psychologists not to perpetrate the use of the label itself because it also comes from us.  We are using labels and failing to, sometimes we fail to relate to the real experiences of people.
 Probably we should also act as role models that when we talk about people who have been traumatised, we don't see them as labels, but we also relate to their experiences and we use that type of language when we communicate.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.  It seems we are making comment, good comment, but we can go on and asking questions.  Hlengiwe assures me she has got a question.