Special Hearings — Health Sector Hearings — 1997-06-18

UNKNOWN: I'll keep my presentation brief so that I may be able to respond more fully to questions that may be of more interest.
 This is the submission of the Psychological Society of South Africa and deals with professional psychology associations responsibility regarding human rights. I'll give a brief history as I've outlined in the submission and then go on to the testimony. 
 The first Psychology Association was established in 1948 with a membership of 34.  In 1962 a new association was established, the Psychological Institute of the Republic of South and it was established because the existing body had eventually, after much to-ing an fro-ing had decided to admit Black members to the society.  This new Society was exclusively for Whites and got adulatory responses from people in government and other White institutions in the country.
 Psychology, from its earliest times, has been a very active force within the racism debate and for example three professors of psychology felt so strongly about keeping Blacks out of the first organisation that they arranged a meeting with the Prime Minister to persuade him to extend the powers of the Group Areas Act so that meetings where Blacks and Whites would confer together would be banned.   One of the psychologists le Grange, which included van der Merwe and du Toit fron Stellenbosch University became the first president of PsySSA. 
 The two organisations that served professional psychology merged in 1983 to form the Psychological Association of South Africa and I would like this gathering to note that the racist organisation, PsySAA, did not dissolve and rejoin the other one, but it was - both organisations dissolved as if both had equal access to this joining.
 PsySAA dissolved in 1994 to form the current Association mainly because it was felt that this organisation still was very much wedded to the more conservative interests of psychology and that the previous organisation PsySSA in fact played the major role in this new organisation.   There were also protests from different groupings of psychologists against the existence of this organisation.  
 Some other organisations that served psychology were the Student Counselling Organisation in South Africa, SSCSA, established in 1978 at a meeting of delegates from 15 universities and this organisation continues to represent counsellors at tertiary educational institutions in South Africa. 
 This organisation really did hardly anything to promote human rights or to look at racism or issues of oppression at universities or other tertiary institutions, and a survey of the papers of their conferences between 1978 and 1985 found that not one paper challenged the status quo, analysed the influence of apartheid on counselling or dealt with racism. This organisation in fact had a very cosy relationship with the South African Defence Force at that time, giving donations and promoting visits to the boys on the border.
 A separate organisation, OASSSA, who will present something later on so I won't talk much about them was established in 1985, including psychologists and other social service workers and endeavoured to provide services to communities and individuals who would not usually have access to such services.  
 In 1988(?) a grouping of psychologists were formed called the Psychology and Apartheid Committee and this grouping specifically focused on issues of oppression and Black empowerment within psychology, because up to that time very few Blacks qualified as psychologists due to the active work by White psychologists to keep Blacks out of this training.   
 I'll now go on to look at what kind of contribution to a human rights culture psychology made. 
 It is my opinion that psychology did little to advance human rights in South Africa, and in fact those who did try to advance such human rights were usually subject to censure from main stream psychology. The (...indistinct) of human rights was always considered to be bringing politics into psychology, it was something to be avoided at all costs.  What was curious about this position was that rightwing activism, active political work in psychology was not considered as politicising psychology.
 I'd like to use a few examples to illustrate that psychology has always been involved with politics. As early as the late 1920's three psychologists, E G Malherbe, R W Wilcox and H F Verwoerd advocated job reservation and legislation to inflict severe penalties on sexual intercourse between the races after concluding their research on the poor White problem, psychologists like M L Fick and J van Rensburg, among others, who propagated ideas of Black intellectual inferiority Psychology's general neglect of the issues of oppression, racism and socio-political problems in its teaching, training and research.
 I will also read a quote from the current president of PsySSA who had the following experiences as a health psychologist and health practitioner while a political prison and an aspirant psychologist. This is his quote that he faxed to me.
"Health practitioners in the service of the State, in my experience, were generally under the thumb of the security apparatus in the bad old days. Even when it came to practitioners in hospitals like Groote Schuur, they tended to adopt an attitude that indicated their subservience to the requirements of the Security Police or the Prison Administration.  Indeed many of them, including specialists, used by the Prison Department would rather gather their information from warders or jailers than myself.  I often wondered who the actual patient was. Like the experience of being a Black servant in a racist master's household, I, the patient, became invisible.  With psychologists from General Roux to those he appointed to Robben Island, they were clearly uninterested in the issues presented by the inmates. Theirs was to act as an information gathering conduit for their bosses.  The psychologist who visited me and my fellow inmates from the PsySSA BPC Trail at Victor Verster Prison one month before my release in November '82 rarely interrogated us, or at least tried to do so.  His role was to ferret out exactly what we would do on our release.  He actually told me that if I became a psychologist I would be dangerous to the State because the insights I could bring to political organisations that I would be able to decide who would be an asset and who a liability to the struggle while sifting out agents.
 This theme followed me to Wits University selection for the MA in clinical psychology where I was subjected to interviews, even by progressive psychologists, about whether I could be let loose on the public.  Sterkfontein would not have me as an intern because Head Office decided that I should not put my foot into a State facility. Tara Hospital had to then decide if I was suitable for them.  At UCT they also felt eventually that we are taking a chance on you.  
 Some of these attitudes still prevail when selecting Black candidates despite White protestations to the contrary playing gate-keeper to the Profession, a situation of the problem perpetuating itself". 
This is a statement by Dr Saths-Cooper.
 Other experiences that also bear this out are the experience of Breyten Beytenbach as detailed in his book the Confession of an Albino Terrorist.  He give his contact as follows:
"The prison psychologist..."
or the way he called them, "spychologist".
He describes his meeting with what he called,
"....the big boss of the prison shrinks.  He was short fat balding fanatic wearing glasses.  He was the head of the special wing for psychopathic prisoners in Zonderwater Prison. I talked to people who have been through there they had no privileges at all."
 He goes on to account a conversation with a Dr Roux which Dr Roux later denied had taken place. Dr Roux was the head of the Prison Service and was a psychologist and obviously determined a lot of the psychological standards within prisons and Breytenbach recounts that during one of his conversations with Dr Roux the following took place:
"He gave me a spine-chilling but quite coherent exposure of his own political beliefs. I should not say beliefs, maybe this was more in the way of reactions. He was curiously needing to justify and defend his position, although I had not said a word. It came down to the old line of we are living in a dramatic period of exceptional importance, having to face in combat extraordinary challenges.  We cannot afford to be manacled by a concept such as democracy or even decency, we, meaning them, need to be strong to go all out in a total answer to the total onslaught concept. Our fate is fatal, rather suicide in the desert than anarchy in apocalypse."
 He gives another quote in his book of the resident psychologist of Pretoria Central Prison, Colonel van Alwaard(?)
"He had me go through the gamut of outdated tests, the rash of blots and blobs, squiggles and various IQ examinations.  Naturally I was never informed about any of his deductions.  I was the guinea pig. These perverted practitioners of the spurious science of psychology do not have as their first priority to help the prisoner who may need it, they are the lackeys of the system.  Their task very clearly is to be the psychological component of the general strategy of unbalancing and disorientating the political prisoner."
 Even in the SADF there were projects linked with psychology that have been presented to a secret meeting of this body.
 This brings to the end the formal submission.  Professor Foster was supposed to continue at this point but I don't know whether he is here yet or if he's not arrived. We hope to include a great deal more detail in our final report and we also await other reports from different groupings that we think might elucidate matters in regard to the Human Rights culture.  Thank you.