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

PROF SIMPSON: Yes, because I think that - thank you again Glenda, that's a tremendously important point.  Some of us were sad that although certain conditions were laid down for the granting of amnesty, what we would like to have suggested - if we'd been asked in time, was that one of the conditions should be that people applying for amnesty - perpetrators, should make themselves available for some extended interviews with behavioural scientists interested in exactly the question that you were asking.
 One of the reasons the question is difficult to answer is that we've not often had access to more than a handful of those sort of people to get enough of a clear idea, we can't answer that question on the basis of two people.  I know that there are some people in the TRC - some of the rest of us, who have an active interest in this and are in the process of interviewing perpetration - I think that's still something we should invite perpetrators to do in order to try and understand that.
 Our impression is that in a great many of them, some have may a borderline personality disorder - I understand that issue has been raised by some, the probability is that many of them suffer from an anti-social personality disorder and that is exactly what they're showing. 
 What is interesting is that during the apartheid era in the human rights trials, that is something I was always asked in the opposite direction - they would always ask me: "So and so is accused as a mad bomber, isn't he a psychopath"?  And I made it part of my routine that in fact I - every single freedom fighter I assessed for those purposes, I always gave them a comprehensive assessment for personality disorders and particularly for anti-social ...[indistinct] and I didn't find one.
 And I think it's very interesting and it may well be - and it's not surprising, that few freedom fighters - people who were actually committing and risking their life and soul for a larger cause than their own, is that's not a job description that attracts psychopaths.
 Whereas torturers - torture is in fact a psychopaths absolute dream, what more perfect job description could you have than: "Come along, we'll pay you well, we'll guarantee you'll get away with it" - because internationally over the centuries the number of torturers who have ever spent any time in any prison on earth are minute compared to the numbers that do it, there I would expect to find a much instance and that seems to be - that explains the lack of remorse.
 I think we're seeing some who simulate remorse because they're clever enough to know that that's fashionable and helpful, and some who don't have the skill to simulate it well but I'm not too sure that we - except in a handful of cases of people who may indeed have been caught up in a system that carried them along, that we're seeing much more than ordinary ...[End of tape 5A - no follow-on sound]

PROF MAGWAZA: I'm very much interested in your comments about the kind of research which should be pursued in this area.  When Doctor Bhana was talking she kept on referring to or ...[indistinct] and a few people, I had a question for him but I didn't have time.   In the past we have had people doing some work and sometimes we as progressive professionals moving in to assist to empower - as you always call it, but leaving really having disempowered people even more - I mean, the classical example I was thinking about progressive work around the effects of violence, human rights violation in Natal and I thought of people like ...[indistinct] who went to Natal in 1990's.
 So, when we look at follow-up to the work which is done here, I accept your point - I mean, I can see page 4 - 11 and 12, there's emphasis on a need to gather relevant information, I'm just wondering as to whether you have thought through your recommendation as to how this can be done - especially in ways that won't impoverish communities as our progressive work in the past has tended to do.