Human Rights Violation Hearings — Bisho — 1996-09-09

PIK BOTHA: Well you see I could have resigned from the cabinet if I could not stomach decisions of the cabinet.  I almost did so on one occasion, when I said the country would have a black president.  But then I received quite a number of messages from all over the country saying hang in there because the history of splinter groups in this country politically, is that they disappear, they dissipate, they disappear.
 Naturally I didn't personally agree with quite a number of decisions but I was on the point of resigning when, on one occasion I couldn't get a decision through on accepting Resolution 435 in respect of Namibia.  That would have been, if the government did not accept it I would have resigned.
 I would also have resigned if at that time, shortly before the late Dr Andries Treunicht broke away, the five western countries and Security Council then submitted to us Constitutional principles for Namibia and Dr Treunicht and Dr Hartzenberg opposed it and I would have resigned if the cabinet supported them then, but luckily they broke away there and they supported me.
 There were a number of issues on which I would have been prepared to go but somehow they didn't come up.  That doesn't mean that one agreed.  I remember the tremendous battle to get the Pass Laws removed.  Quite apart from that, the Immorality Act, you know, and how anybody could think, you know, how you should defend this abroad.
 In Sweden or Germany you wake up and you see a headline that a Norwegian sailor was arrested yesterday in Durban for having slept with a coloured girl, or a black girl or an Indian girl.  It was degrading, but that we changed, we could change it.
 Looking back today, maybe there are some of us who could have broken away and created a greater turmoil, yes, but as I said earlier, you cannot recover the past and for us there was only the trying.  The rest was not my business as T S Elliot said.  If I did not succeed, if I did too little too late, then I'm guilty and that's it, and I'll have to account to myself to God then for not having done my duty.
 On the other hand I would in all humble just warn, we must be careful in this country not to ascribe everything that goes wrong, to the past.  There is a danger in that.  There is a danger that we then will never rescue ourselves from the past because where do you end then?  Where do we end then in five years, ten years from now on?  There must come a time that you cannot say that because a certain road is not tarred, it's because of apartheid.  
 There must come such a time also and that's why I personally, you would have noticed in public statements, welcomed the establishment of this Commission.  I saw the need for it historically speaking and I do believe that after completion of your work and as we move towards the next election, the new regrouping of political parties in this country have not yet taken place.  It is inevitable as apartheid recedes, as the emotions and revenge and anger surrounding apartheid becomes somewhat more blurred, and it will, human emotion is like that.
 Then there will come in this country a new regrouping, restructuring of political parties where blacks and whites and coloureds won't even notice each colour any more.  It will be a question of principles, objectives in which they believe and it will be a more natural division.  That is the way reconciliation will really be achieved.  It will not be achieved in an artificial way and this Commission can of course assist.  
 You are already assisting.  You are giving all sides in this country and I want to appeal to all my countrymen to come to the Commission and talk as we have done here today.  I think it is an excellent opportunity for all of us as fellow South Africans to be able to sit like this and exchange views with each other in an open, completely open and sincere way and you have done it and I hope my compatriots will feel the same.
Also those who were in government before and elsewhere.  Come and make a contribution but the real reconciliation will only take place if the present political grouping of parties which is still based on the apartheid era, the ANC, PAC, SACP are still, they came into the election as an extension of the struggle against apartheid.  Which is correct.  I'm not criticising it, I'm stating a fact.  National Party the same, it didn't even change its name, it just carried on.  
 Then the DP - same.  There's is still this image, even if Tony Leon says 'what' there is still the image it's a relatively high class super white kind of party belonging to Houghton.  It's a fact etc.  Now what I'm saying is that we must move out of that and it will come.  I already have discussions with ANC members, business people, who say things to me which they will not repeat here, or publicly and I'm not going to mention their names but they are prominent people and, all over and in the National Party and all over there is a new movement coming into being I predict today here which will then undo the divisions of the past and a new restructuring of political parties where prominent black leadership, maybe a part of the National Party, part of the ANC, part of the DP, I don't know what INKHATA will do, it seems to me it's going to be a very tough one that.

CHAIRPERSON: Order please!

PIK BOTHA: But I'm all seriousness to answer your question and thank you for it, it's very important.  I predict a new political regrouping for South Africa in the next two to four years.

CHAIRPERSON: I want to express our very deep appreciation to you.  Just before you responded to Dr Ramashala's questions, you had, in fact you began responding to her first question before she asked it and I think that many will say that they were touched by your speaking your heart when you said something like it is one of the tragedies, of course you can't recall it but it is one of the tragedies that a people who went through the kind of experience that your people went through, should have forgotten that and forgotten the, sort of the parallels you say but it is again something that you said, you cannot recall the past but you can say, I mean that we are an extraordinary country.  
 We are an extraordinary country for you can sit here in a crowd that is overwhelmingly black, representing an old dispensation that caused very considerable anguish and pain and you can feel that you are able to say the things that you said.  Some of which are things that were not popular, and yet we can sit here and people can laugh at the things that you have said.  And you can also have spoken and we want to thank you, we want to thank you for coming.  
 We want to thank you that you bared your heart in the way that you have done and that we can stretch out hence to one another, not in a false kind of way, not in a way that pretends.  When you come as who you are and when we accept you we have to accept you as who you are with the kinds of experiences that you have had and the things that you have learned and that this is a country that, I think in a way is unique in the world and I hope.
 I mean that your plea to people in your community to come and know that they can say whatever it is that they want to say, so that we can begin to learn to accept one another as who we are and we want you to be able to make your particular kind of contribution to the richness of this country and you have made an important contribution and we want to thank you for that.

PIK BOTHA: Thank you very much.

TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION: BISHO MASSACRE - DAY 1 - 9 SEPTEMBER 1996