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

MR ANTHONY: Mr Chairperson.  My name is Lawrence Anthony and I'm a Commissioner with CCHR and I will be discussing the politics of the effect of psychology and psychological - psychological and psychiatric studies in the formation of the apartheid political system, thank you.
 In order to fully understand the origins of apartheid, it is necessary to examine the intellectual justification for institutional racism and the rationale which motivated the creation and implementation of one of the most evil social and political systems the world has ever known.
 Apartheid was based and a simple but firm ideology, essentially that Blacks were racially, intellectually, mentally and culturally inferior to Whites.  These spurious ideologies - as CCHR clearly demonstrates in it's submission, are rooted in extensive psychological and psychiatric studies specifically designed to demonstrate the inferiority of Blacks which were then disseminated into our society and into the minds of the nation with disastrous consequences.
 While the Psychologist Association touched on this in their June submission, it fell far short of the inherent role of psychology in creating apartheid.  The apartheid system came about as a direct result of political acceptance and implementation of pseudo scientific, psychological and psychiatric racist theories and ideologies - factually, apartheid was a symptom not the cause.
 With the democratic elections in April 1994, only the political system was destroyed, the cause remains unaffected.  The racial fires were lit by psychiatry a long time ago, psychiatry's relationship with racism and eugenics continues even today.
 1797, Benjamin Rush the father of American psychiatry whose face still adorns the seal of the American Psychiatric Association, declared that the colour of Black skin was caused by a congenital disease akin to leprosy, called Negritude - the evidence of a cure was when the skin turned white.
 In 1851, Samuel Cartwright discovered a mental disease he said was peculiar to Blacks, named Drapetemania, in which Black slaves exhibited an unnatural and uncontrollable urge to run away - the cure for this was whipping the devil out of them.
 In Germany in 1897, Professor William Vund conducting research in experimental psychology, promoted that: "As a man's soul could not be measured by instruments, it obviously did not exist" and thus man was just another animal.  Vund's pupil, Pavlov subsequently became famous for his experiments on dogs, the results of which were then transferred to human beings.
 Rats became a major focus of psychiatric and psychological studies from which human behaviour was predicted.  Stripped of his soul, man was now only a collection of chemicals and genes and presumably could now also be treated as an animal.
 Accompanying these studies and theories was a new-found science of eugenics.  Here began a paradigm shift away from spirituality and religion as the assent of materialism took place and the new psychiatric and psychological perceptions of man evolved. 
 Definition of the word: "eugenics" - according to Websters, is a science concerned with improving the breed or species - especially the human species, by such means as encouraging reproduction by persons or races presumed to have desirable genetic traits and discolouring the reproduction of those people and races deemed to have undesirable genetic traits.
 Concepts of social and racial hygiene had already emerged and together these horrific concepts created psychiatric eugenics which glorified superior races and justified denigration of so-called inferior races, especially the coloured races.
 Immuel Kreplin - the most influential psychiatrist of his time in 1918, announced in Germany: "An absolute ruler guided by our knowledge of today would be able to intervene ruthlessly into the living conditions of people".  His prediction subsequently found expression in two of the most evil systems of our time - nazism and apartheid, as will be revealed.
 Earlier this century it became clear that racism justified by an international psychiatric eugenics movement was becoming scientifically respectable.  American eugenist, Doctor Paul Popenhou in a 1928 report to the United States Government, claimed that the IQ of Blacks was determined by the amount of - I'll say that again - the IQ of Blacks was determined by the amount of white blood they had.  The lighter the skin, the higher the IQ and visa versa.
 In 1921, CT Laurim of the South African Native Affairs Commission declared: "Just as the war needs the chemist, the physicist and the engineer, so the native question needs nature scientists, namely the political scientists, the psychologist and the sociologist.
 Director of the Keizer Wilhelm Institute in Germany, Psychiatrist Eugene Fischer urged the annihilation of Black children and stated that Black were devoid of value and useless for employment other than manual labour.
 Ernst Ruden, Professor of Psychiatry at Munich's University urged that psychiatry should take the major role in purifying the race.  Ruden, President of the International Eugenics Organisation, later implemented his psychiatric eugenics theories which were embraced by the Nazis as the architect of Hitler's Holocaust in which millions were murdered, earning for himself the title of one of the most evil men ever to have lived.
 Psychiatric eugenics had influenced a major nation on a massive scale.  Practical implementation of psychiatric eugenics principles had begun with vengeance.  Ruden and his fellow psychiatrists - and there can be no doubt here, did not inherit eugenics from the Nazis, it was they who fed it to the Nazis cloaked in the respectability of the science of psychiatry.
 It was estimated that over 300.000 mental patients were murdered in German institutions before, during and after the war.  This was a separate programme independent of the Jewish Holocaust, instituted and implemented by the psychiatrist into whose care patients were entrusted.
 In South Africa the eugenics movements took root early this century and deliberations and conclusions on the inferiority of Blacks were disseminated nationally.  As an example, in a massive disinvestment - I beg your pardon, massive disinformation campaign between 1920 and 1928, over 2.000 copies of racist theories and ideologies were regularly distributed to universities, educationalists and politicians by HB Thanthom, President of the South African Eugenic Society.
 Doctor Ernst Ruden was the International President of the same society at the same time.  Thanthom stated: "Man will go to endless lengths to get well bred animal sock and maintain it well bred and the same care should be applied to human beings.  Unless Whites continue to take pride in racial purity and maintain it, there will ultimately be a mixing of the races.  Left to himself, the native's evolution has been extremely slow and even now hardly rises above barbarism.  Only the nobler or intelligent citizens of the present should be the ancestors of the future generations"
 Shaun Wittaker, in his impelling book: "Knowledge and Power", writes of these early intellectuals as racists theories were exposed, a new stratum - this is in South Africa:  "As racists theories were exposed, a new stratum of intellectuals arose in the early 1900's to scientifically demonstrate racial differences.  Chief amongst the new techniques was the intelligence test which ensured the rise of psychology as a discipline.  
 Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, psychological testing - especially intelligence tests in South Africa, could be perceived as a scientific means of justifying class inequality through racism, educational selection and individual merit"
 Doctor Hendrik Verwoerd - himself a prominent psychologist, left South Africa to further his studies at German universities in Leipzig in Berlin.  Psychiatric eugenics theories were rife in German universities and academic circles at that time.  On his return, Verwoerd took up the chair of Applied Psychology at Stellenbosch, from where he went on to espouse and politicise prevailing psychiatric eugenics theories.
 As is well known, Verwoerd - the father of apartheid, thereafter practically implemented these false ideologies into law and in so doing created in South Africa the most effective psychiatric eugenic based society in history.  Verwoerd's infatuation with eugenics is further exemplified by his 1936 statement on Jewish refugees to South Africa from Germany, he said: "The inflow is abnormal and a danger to the country".
 Former Prime Minister, BJ Vorster, former President, Nico Diederichs and others as young men, followed Verwoerd to Germany on German Government bursaries.  Strong links between Afrikaner nationalism - the Broederbond and the German Nazi Government prior to World War 2 and during World War 2, are well known. One shudders to think of the consequences for Black South Africans at the hand of Doctor Ruden and his psychiatric eugenics if Germany had won the war.
 In South Africa in 1927, psychologist, ML Fick developed a standardised intelligence test for South Africans, in the South African Journal of Science he concluded: "The inferiority of the native ineducability as shown by the measurement of actual achievement in education, limits considerably the proportion of natives that can benefit by education of the ordinary type beyond the rudimentary".
 Fick wrote of the Zulu: "The medians were so low that they almost tally with those found in the case of educable defectives".  Fick equated the intelligence of Blacks generally, with that of mentally defective Whites.  Subsequently, Fick was involved with the development of the South African Group Intelligence Tests with psychologists, KR Wilcox and ID McKrone, using a grant from the Union Department of Mines.
 In 1928, racist psychologist KR Wilcox - who was Verwoerd's mentor at Stellenbosch, authored a report for the Carnegie Commission which had been appointed to investigate the poor White problem.  Wilcox recommended that Blacks be - I beg your pardon, Wilcox recommended that Blacks we prevented from competing with Whites for work and be used for cheap labour only.  
 Wilcox also provided various racist theories as a major means of dividing the colour casts.  He strongly advocated criminalising sex between colour casts and advocated that Black were to be kept well away from White communities as poor Whites were considered to have a germ plasma which could be rehabilitated and their stock improved.
 Thus began a national programme rooted in scientific, psychological and psychiatric eugenics theories as a primary means of addressing the problem of the poor White - principally the poorer Afrikaner. 
 According the Shaun Wittaker, Black people were to be the chief source of cheap labour, the exploiting of the cohered labour thus had to be justified by building the myth about the inferiority of people with colour.
 In 1940, British Psychiatrist, Colonel JR Reece at the annual general meeting of the National Council of Hygiene, outlined psychiatry's responsibility for taking over all major fields of social endeavour.
 In 1945, British Psychiatrist, Doctor Brooke Chism - who subsequently became the President of the World Federation of Mental Health, declared in a speech affirming the future role organised psychiatry: "Psychiatry must now decide what is to be the immediate future of the human race, no one else can".  Chism continues: "If the race is to be freed of it's crippling burden of good and evil, it must be the psychiatrist who takes the original responsibility".  
 Psychiatry's prominent role in Russia during communism in the Goo Lakes, concentration camps and re-education camps gives further expression to Chism's statement. 
 Prominent Australian psychiatrist, Harry Baily on a visit to New Orleans in 1957, boasted that it was cheaper to use niggers than cats for brain experiments because they were everywhere and they were cheap experimental animals.
 Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA, California, Doctor Jolly West - who is best known for killing a full grown elephant cow with an LSD overdose during experiment, stated during the 1960 riots in Los Angeles: "Genetic and racial factors make young urban Blacks prone to violence", for which he recommended castration and psycho-surgery.
 In South Africa, Educational Psychologist EG Malherbe, originally headed the educational Committee for the Carnegie Commission, in one paper published as late as 1950, he said: "In tests applied to non-Europeans, there was a lower average intelligence in Europeans.  Natives learn more slowly than the European in activities requiring thinking in order to overcome difficulties.  That myth was legitimised by fabricated psychological IQ tests.
 ML Fick went on to become a psychologist for the South African Bureau of Educational and Social Research where together with other racist psychologists and psychiatrists, Wilcox, Dunstand and McKrone, he contributed to the development of the South African Group Test of Intelligence, using a grant from the Union Department of Mines.  The design and purpose of the test clearly was to demonstrate the inferiority of Blacks.
 Doctor JT Dunstand, South Africa's first Commissioner of Mental Disorder stated: "There are prima facie grounds which suggested that the native - even of the best tribes, possibly belongs to a race which is mentally inferior to ours.  Some of the evidence he espouses as proof of this, is that the natives are oriented in time in the vaguest way and even their dancing of which they are very fond, presents no delicate motions.  He notes that this is an important psychological point which should be carefully studies.
 Dunstand further stated that American psychiatrists and psychologists of the higher standing agreed with him and that American Blacks produced only inferior lawyers and doctors, no surgeons of note and that Black do not develop poets, investors, scientists or painters and any art they may display is generally of the crude type.
 In a presidential speech to the Association of the Advancement of Science, Dunstand said: "All of the considerations I have placed before you and many others suggest that in natives there is such a deficiency of brain cells that neither education nor environment, nor any other factor can lead to their rising to the level of the advancement of the higher White races.  From the investigations we have made, it would appear that the intellectual capacity of the average native is very much lower than the average European"
 DA McKrone's works included a psychological study where he stated that native Black children aged between 11 and 12 years appeared to have reached their average level of performance and thereafter there is a distinct and a progressive slackening in the rate of growth of their ability.
 I pause just to mention that anybody involved in this field will recognise all of those names, there are some of the most prominent South African psychologists and psychiatrists who were responsible for the creation and design of all the testing throughout South African society at that time.
 Eugenics theories even went to far as to prompt the measurement of the brain capacity of natives compared to Europeans.   Based on a 1934 survey, Eugenist HL Gordon, claimed that the ranking order for brain capacity was one European, two educated natives, three psychotic natives and four normal natives.
 In 1941 - by 1941, these racist ideologies and psychological tests that propagated them were heavily entrenched in all sectors of the South African bureaucracy.  The Airforce Aptitude Test Board was by now headed by one of South Africa's foremost psychologists, Simon Bicheval.  Bicheval's stated aim was the modifiability of African behaviour. 
 He was joined by psychopharmacologist, David Tebatsnic who is mentioned in the CCHR submission, as being a major shareholder and founder of the Smith-Mitchell Group, later known as Lifecare.  This company owns the private psychiatric camps investigated in the 1970's by CCHR, the United Nations, the World Health Organisation and the American Psychiatric Association.
 In 1946, the Aptitude Test Board was replaced by the National Institute of Personnel Research - NIPR, of which Bicheval and Psychiatrist RWS Cheetham, later became founding members.  The NIPR dealt with personnel tests for industries, Government, education, commerce, civil service, defence force and social welfare and was able to permeate every part of South African industry, employment and education.
 Bicheval was it's director and with him at the helm, a host of psychological instruments for screening African mine workers were developed that determined why Blacks should be kept as labourers.  Bicheval is quoted as saying: "The African makes up for his lack of speed by his liking for repetitive action, Africans may therefore prove far more tolerant of machine operative work than Europeans".
 Wittaker in knowledge and power states: "The NIPR carried out the most intensive psychological research for expropriating the labour of African mine workers and it was with grave concern that this author notes that much of this has remain confidential and unavailable to the public".  He continued: "Scientific racism infiltrated every sphere of South African life through Government agencies like the NIPR".
 This remains true today and it's clearly demonstrated that the Oranje Institution in Bloemfontein were recording to reports received in 1996, White patients - after entering the institution, were given a full blown psychiatric evaluation, new Black patients on the other hand were only given some coloured blocks to play with, to determine their mental state.  This I must disclose, is two years after the democratic election.
 This amazing disparity of assessment techniques between Black and White patients at a prominent psychiatric institution under a prominent South African Psychiatrist, adequately proves that nothing has changed and that psychiatric eugenics is alive and well in South Africa today and still operating under the guides of help and therapy.
 Whittaker sees the NIPR as a functionary of the Government and the industries need to exploit Black labour.  The aforementioned is clear, Africans were to be used for manual labour and the monotonous work while the better paying and academic jobs were to be reserved for the Whites.  And it had all been perfectly justified with pseudo-scientific rhetoric by psychologist and psychiatrists degrading and dehumanising Blacks and tragically denying them their right to be equal citizens.
 In 1948, the apartheid regime rooted in eugenics ideology, took political control of South Africa and Verwoerd's grand plan went into effect.  Verwoerd told Parliament that South Africa would be doomed if it allowed the native to improve his skill, draw better wages and provide a better market within White South Africa.
 His eugenics logic argued that if Black competition in towns meant fewer jobs for Whites, then send the Blacks back to the rural areas - even if there were no jobs for them and give the Whites what was supposedly rightfully theirs.
 The Immorality Act was strengthened to further tighten the noose around freedom of choice for Blacks.  Minister CR Swart told Parliament: "We want to prevent any further admixture of blood between European and non-European which would aggravate our problems in the future.  He was echoing the psychiatric eugenics theories of the 1920's when he said that.
 Education standards for Blacks were to be lowered, influx control was to be implemented.  Ruden's psychiatric eugenics principles had taken hold in South Africa, having been given a new lease on life by the apartheid Government which remained in force until just a few years ago.
 The concept of apartheid was developed and refined in the pseudo-scientific studies and treaties of psychologists and psychiatrists, decades before the apartheid Government came into power.
 The principles of a superior race and the concepts of inferior races given  infinite credibility by the psychiatric and psychological communities, were seized upon by morally bankrupt politicians who could now comfortable proclaim that there was a wealth of scientific proof that justified the suppression of Blacks.  The Black had after all, already been dehumanised by the studies.
 As Witney Harris - a Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials after the Second World War, wrote in his book: "Tyranny on Trial" - "Hitler realised that his aims were in direct conflict with the moral teachings of Christianity, he therefore needed to convince a nation that what he was doing was right and the easiest way to do this was to give such wanton destruction a scientific label of approval".  
 Psychiatric eugenics provided both Hitler and Verwoerd with ample pseudo-scientific proof, all - with ample pseudo-scientific proof - I beg your pardon, with all the pseudo-scientific proof they required to create two of the most evil systems in history.
 The proof of the inferiority of people of colour provided the ammunition for the apartheid Government to embark on a masterpiece of disinformation and propaganda which laid into the minds of South Africans, to the extent that many Whites - not being aware of the true origins of this false information, considered that they had some sort of God-given right to be the superior race.
 Conversely, many Blacks subjected to a barrage of repressive laws and social and political exclusion, tragically considered perhaps that their lot in life too was a status quo determined by a higher power.  
 It is incumbent upon us and our duty - as our duty and responsibility to locate and identify all false psychiatric, psychological and eugenic study, aptitudes and IQ tests and to expose and discredit these.  
 It is further incumbent upon us to advise the nation of the truth of what took place, to describe to the people in detail the nature of the disinformation and propaganda which we have been subjected to and to publicly invalidate the studies and their authors - South Africa will not be truly free until this is done.
 In July 1996, the President of the Society of Psychiatrists on a national radio show about psychological and psychiatric testing, indicated that where possible we will try and develop new tests that are culture free and would apply across all culture groups.  
 The question that begs an answer is: "If the testing was always scientific in the past as was claimed, what is the basis and the nature of the changes taking place or is this in fact an acknowledgement that the original scientific tests are being altered by the Society of Psychiatrists and other, only because it is now politically expedient"?  These tests were used as the basis to justify massive human rights abuses, are they now to be arbitrarily changed? - either way, the test were politically motivated.
 It is important at this point that we recall the World Health Organisation Report of 1983 on The State of South African Psychiatry.  Although psychiatry is expected to be a medical discipline which deals with the human being as a whole, in no other medical field in South Africa is the contempt of the person cultivated by racism, more precisely portrayed than in psychiatry.  
 And this situation has no parallel in the history and present state of psychiatric care, it certainly does have a parallel in the ownership and trading of slaves.  
 As unpalatable as organised psychology and psychiatry and the individual psychologist and psychiatrists may find it, the inescapable conclusion is that these professions created and continued a massive contribution to apartheid by providing the tools with which the politicians could justify their inhuman policies - they are a day factor cause of apartheid.  This may not be easily confronted or faced up to but then the entire purpose of the TRC is to confess crimes and claim amnesty. 
 From the evidence provided to you about the abuses and deaths in the private psychiatric institutions and elsewhere, it is clear that psychiatry's racist ideology has destroyed lives.  And under apartheid many psychiatrists and psychologists exploited and profited from this system.
 The treatment of Blacks by these professionals during apartheid was not therapy.  As the TRC has already heard, these practices assisted the security police and others in the most brutal tortures as well as psychological warfare. 
 Under ...[indistinct] all this, was always the insidious ideology that provided the justification and excuse for the heinous crimes to be committed.  The invalidation, refuting and disregard for Blacks is no less a crime and we must take effective action to correct that.
 As such, we formally request of the TRC: 
That the TRC fully acknowledge psychiatry's and psychology's prominent role in the creation and perpetuation of apartheid.
That the TRC recognises that racist psychiatric and psychological ideologies and instruments, have destroyed lives and severely violated fundamental human rights of millions of Black South Africans. 
That the TRC investigate, identify and subpoena those persons living today, who were in any way party to psychological and psychiatric proof of the inferiority of South Africa's Black citizens.
That the TRC conduct an extensive investigation campaign to identify and locate all eugenics, psychiatric eugenic studies, papers, treaties, documents and conclusions and any related written or taped material that exists within our universities, the NIPR, HSRC, Psychiatric Institutions, Political Parties, Government Office or at any other location and to have these expunged.
That all psychiatric and psychological materials relating to scientific proof or justification of the inferiority of Blacks, be located, exposed and publicly invalidated.
And I must reiterate, the vehicles for the usage's of such ideologies  - such as the private psychiatric institutions, must too be shut down.
Thank you very much.