Special Hearings — Mental Health Workshop — UNKNOWN

PARTICIPANT: I want to support the approach of Lionel but I also want to raise a caution that this is within the context of the TRC and we should be very careful about raising or pushing territorial issues which actually can detract from the basis of the TRC and it's recommendations. Because we can be - alright I'll restrict myself to psychology because I know it better than other areas. If we come here as psychologists and want to use this as a forum for clarifying the future for psychology it will be an abuse of the process. If we raise the past exclusions of psychology in terms of positive contribution that are likely to be made then it's one thing. And I can see that we can end up raising various territorial battles which will completely move away from the primary purpose of the commission. And I think we need to always link whatever we're coming up with in terms on broad sweeps to the particular what do we do to enable people who have been mutilated both physically and psychologically by gross and lesser human violations in the past? Where do we locate an institutional entablement for treatment or rehabilitation, or any other word that's more politically appropriate to use for those people, who have come to the commission. Primarily victims but also what do we do with the perpetrators in our midst? Just leave them there and allow them to perpetuate a culture of socialising those whom they influence?
 And it would seem to me that this institution should be an enabling institution with a limited life. Otherwise it can become an institution forever. With a limited life after the commission ends and it should traipse, it should rely on traipse both the ministries of health and welfare, as well as education and maybe trade and industry for economic entrepreneurship. Helping those, that group of people to move on in life and be more productive than they can be right now. So I would urge that type of mechanism. I (...indistinct) without saying we shouldn't comment on the larger issues because I think it's appropriate for a commission like this. Which is very central to the future of our country to comment about the fractured nature of policy making, about the fractured nature or delivery service. I think we should do that but then always go to the specific in terms of those recommendations. That's what I would just do to be focused on. Thank you.

PARTICIPANT: I don't want to sort of change very much the format of this discussion but certainly in group 2 when we looked at issues of training we also said that there are other stakeholders apart from, for example health and welfare and Saths has sort of reminded me of that when he brought in the issue of trade and industry. But we certainly were saying that if we want to be holistic we shouldn't exclude for example arts and culture, science and technology for example. Because there the symbolic nature of healing and reconciliation, whatever one wants to use, words one wants to use, can happen quite appropriately. And that can impact on legislation. It can impact on training, etc. So apart from, I mean I worry when we say these are the two main departments that need to be collapsed and called something else when other departments in a sense can also play a very vital role in the healing of the nation and moving forward and service delivery.

PARTICIPANT: Any other contributions in this regard?

PARTICIPANT: Just one (...indistinct)

PARTICIPANT: Okay.

PARTICIPANT: (...indistinct) office of national, the crime prevention office. Now that uses as many ministries as are possible to create an over arching understanding but also begin to look at bigger policy issues. In this case it should be looking at those but very specifically at the deliveries. Deliveries for a particular defined population. And reintegration into the greater society. So that it's very important for victims not to feel that they're just victims. Because those victims have brought us to where we are and without those, in a very selfish way, if we didn't have those victims we're unlikely to have been here. And we need to affirm those victims. Rather than in, often at the best of times there's some what dismissive, supercilious attitude that has come from certain sectors of the commission about victims. Well these are people who really were like the foot soldiers and we'll treat them in that manner but there's almost a second classicism about some of the victims who have come forward. And it's only been the big names and the people who have stood out and been forceful about their roles that have got the type of respect that I think the commission has given.
 But in the main my impression is a lot of victims out there have come through a process that has perpetuated a victim syndrome in them. And even the understandings from the commission. I know the section of critique of the TRC that many colleagues here have had. But I think it's important for the TRC to understand some of our concerns. That maybe we're guilty of perpetuating a victimology amongst those people. That there hasn't been the degree of affirmation. Indeed of respect that those victims deserve by moral and here by legal right into the future. It's been like: well these are victims, you know, they've suffered so let's get on with work chaps.

PARTICIPANT: Ja, okay. That's also in line with the whole thing, issue of naming what we deal with. I should think it's quite pertinent, it's well said. Any other contributions?

PARTICIPANT: Thank you. I would like to second Dr. Saths Cooper's earlier statements about ensuring that the TRC concentrates on abuse and the past and what has happened. Psychology and psychiatry are the curators essentially of the field of the mind. This is the area we're dealing with. And as a direct consequence we're looking at mental abuse. We're not only looking at the mental abuse suffered by the individuals, the nation has been abused. The people, the citizens of this country have been abused on a massive scale. I'd like to reiterate my, the earlier points that the perpetrators of the earlier, the false studies that suppress, made a massive contribution to the creation of Apartheid and the suppression of black people, that their names should be as well known and as well discredited as the names of the founding fathers of Apartheid; B.J. Vorster and Nico Dedericks and those others. Thank you.

PARTICIPANT: Okay we'll take one more point and see how we sort of move onto, and move onto the next point. Zanele?
Dr. BAQWA: Yes I wanted to say that I wanted to thank Saths Cooper for clarifying what was tending to be a clouding of the issue at hand, of bringing back the issue to the TRC and also of looking at the history of our violent country. And in that sense really in affirming or healing the problems that you as a TRC and we as a nation have been seeing. Whether in private context or in the television or in our knowledges of what has been happening in our communities, I really do not, cannot see how it cannot be but that they should be created, creation of a programme, whatever name it shall go under. There should be a programme that will be specifically created by the TRC to see for the movement forward of these very people who should be seen, they, not just heard. But to be told that they are seen and we know what's happening to their lives and we want to aid in their integration into society. I cannot see anything more worthy than that. It is full of dignity and it is right. That's just what I wanted to say.