Special Hearings — Health Sector Hearings — 1997-06-17

CHAIRPERSON: It's a bad thing to do but we start with an apology.  We are waiting for some of the presenters who have not yet arrived and we are sort-of at the moment re-adjusting the schedule to some extent, so I hope you will bear with us for a little bit.

WELCOME IN AFRIKAANS: I would like to welcome you all to this public hearing of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.  This is the first in a series of sittings.

WELCOME IN XHOSA: We welcome you all to this Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearing.  We welcome you all very warmly to this hearing of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
 This is the first in a series of professional or institutional hearings and in this one we intend to be looking at the role of the health sector in perpetrating, colluding with or resisting human rights abuses during the period under review.  This is perhaps appropriate as the TRC is so often described in terms of medical metaphors, opening wounds, cleansing and healing.  There has been very considerable support for and interest in these hearings both locally and internationally.  This is very encouraging and we are most grateful for this.
 I want to express our appreciation especially to the special task group that has put together the hearing and been responsible for eliciting contributions from various people.
 I also want to say a very big thank you to my colleagues, Commissioners and Committee members and also staff persons for all they have done.
 Thank you to the Police who had their dogs come through sniffing to ensure that no one wanted to send us to "Kingdom Come".
 Two years ago I was at Nuremberg, part of a BBC panel discussion on the legacy of the Nuremberg trials fifty years or so ago.  We met in the very court room in which the trial had taken place.  I am not wanting to evoke any special associations or responses by reference to this.  
 After the session in the court room I visited the nearby Dachau site of one of the notorious concentration camps of the Third Reich.  It contains a museum of what happened there in the times of the Nazis.  And then at the entrance you will find the haunting words,
"Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it".
 I was appalled by certain photographs that were on display in that museum at Dachau.  Some showed inmates having been constrained to play their band clearly leading one of their number to be executed by a firing squad.  And there are pictures also of some of the prisoners being strung up on trees by their hands manacled behind their backs, exquisite torture. 
 The Germans ever so methodical took pictures and kept immaculate records that were later to incriminate and were used perhaps to convict them, very much like a picture that appeared on the front page of The Argus of three police officers seemingly with a trophy after their hunt.
 Then a little further on in the museum were pictures of people caught in grimaces and with their faces distorted in experiments, some of which were to see how much depth the human person could stand or how much altitude decompression. And one recalled too how you had accounts of psychologists in the Soviet Union keeping dissidents as certified inmates.  
 I didn't think here in South Africa we might be so blatant.  I myself have a very high regard for the medical profession in our country whose very high standards compare favourably with those in other countries.  After all we pioneered things like heart transplants.  
 And just as an aside people might want to know that the President called me in to give me a gentle ear-full about going to the United States for treatment.  I do want to point out that I myself would have wanted to receive all of my treatment here, though in consultation with a panel that includes two Professors at UCT Medical School, their consensus was that I should accept the offer that was made by the Sloane Kettering Kensa Institute and I buckled under the pressures from the rest of my family.  But I would like you to know that there is very close collaboration between the medical team here and the medical team overseas.
 What we have heard that there has been collusion between healers and the security forces.  And outstanding instance being the Steve Biko case when doctors appeared not to have given the welfare of their patients the priority that we would have expected them to have done.  That is the sombre side.
 There is a bright side in the witness of the medical profession where people like Professor Ames and others ensured that people who had behaved, in what was to their view, unethical conduct, were to be brought to book.  And sitting next to me is my colleague here who was very instrumental in getting an interdict against torture, against the police, to prevent them from torturing detainees so that there are very, very considerable bright spots.
 May I quote from a Professor Ralph Kirsch.  
"True healing demands that we examine, face and record the acts of commission as well as omission of the medical profession.
 We have recently been reminded that membership of the health care profession includes the responsibility for what we ought to do, an ought that derives from dealing with people who are in a dependent, vulnerable, exploitable state of weakened humanity.  
 In this context we all share the blame of those physicians who assisted in the torture of prisoners, falsified reports or suppressed knowledge of mistreatment.  
 Facing our past failures will, we hope, increase our resolve to meet the responsibilities of our profession".
 I want to pay a very warm tribute to all of those in the health care professions who have distinguished themselves, among other things, through working in deprived areas, those who at very great cost to themselves supported instances such as the End Conscription Campaign.   What we are about is to say this is what happened.  This is part of our history good and bad.  And that we may emerge from these hearings with suggestions, perhaps our safeguards that will ensure that the awful things that we will be hearing about do not happen again.  That we face the past honestly, acknowledging responsibility for the frequent failure of the health sector to uphold human rights, celebrating those who did fight for their patient's rights and facing the future not only with the resolve to prevent the violations of the past, but with firm recommendations on how to ensure non-repetition of past atrocities.
 May I, in conclusion, introduce my panel colleagues.  Dr Fazel Randera is Commissioner and member of the Human Rights Violations Committee and he is our regional convenor in our office in Gauteng.  Glenda Wildschut is a Commissioner and member of the Reparations and Rehabilitation Committee and she is based in our office here.  Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela is a member of our Human Rights Violations Committee and is based in our office here.  Denzil Potgieter is a Commissioner, a member of the Human Rights Violations Committee.  He is probably going to be moved to another Committee.  Then Alex Boraine, the Deputy-Chairperson of the Commission, based here.  Wendy Orr, Commissioner, Deputy-Chairperson of the Rehabilitation and Reparations Committee based here and she is also our boss-woman here.  She is the regional convenor in this office.  Dr Mapule Ramashala, a Commissioner, member of the R & R Committee and based here.  Hlengiwe Mkhize, Chairperson of the R & R Committee based in Gauteng.
 I'd like to hand over to Wendy who is going to welcome specific persons.