Special Hearings — Conscription Hearings — 1997-07-23

CHAIRPERSON: There is just one person we are waiting for who is participating at the start of our programme.  While we are waiting we will ask the two gentlemen who are engaged in conversation to please not do so because the proceedings are starting and we will also ask Dr Wendy Orr to do the housekeeping announcements.

WENDY ORR: I believe housekeeping is explaining how the translation equipment works.  We have simultaneous translation available in three languages, English, Afrikaans and Xhosa.
DR ORR EXPLAINS THE EQUIPMENT

CHAIRPERSON: I would like to make a few announcements about one or two people who are present with us today.  When we were preparing for this meeting we invited people from the Defence Ministry and the Minister is held up in some engagements.  Mr Ian Steyn was sent instead to represent the Ministry.  Mr Ian Steyn is the advisor to the Minister and he is present today and we wish to welcome you.
 Another person who is here today is Lt Colonel Botha who is also from the South African Defence Force.  Welcome to you Sir, and he will be participating later on this afternoon.
 I wish to welcome everybody and in particular those people who will be participating.  I do not need to mention them because you will see them as they come up  to the stage. 
 A few other people who are assisting us, Solly Terblanche, who has been helping us throughout our hearings with the sound.  We wish to thank you Solly for your support and for your ready availability.
 Also to our Interpreters who are here today.  We are very pleased that we have been sent a very powerful team.  Welcome to you Pakamai Ntchongwane who is going to be doing the English/Xhosa interpretation and the other way, and we are really glad to have you back. You have been doing impeccable interpretation in the past and we really missed you the past few weeks in some of our hearings.
 Welcome to Larina Venter who will also be doing the interpretation and Brenda Burrough.  Thank you also to you both for your excellent interpretation in the past.  They will be joined later on by Nonkoli Seko Ntobela who is not yet here.
 I'd like to say that this was an effort, a collective effort by a number of people within and without the Truth Commission.  Machela Naidoo, who is heading the Logistics team has been very generous with her time in assisting in all the hearings but particularly in this one.  She has almost singlehandedly handled and managed the logistics around this submission. Thank you also to people who are assisting her, particularly Elizabeth Cloete.
 We would like to also thank the Research Department people, especially Chief Malizela, Nikki Rousseau and Wilhelm Verwoerd.  Thank you very much for your unending commitment to making this a success, for all the documentation and for your advice in times of crisis.  Thank you very much, we appreciate it.
 There are other people who are not Commission people who assisted with this process at the very beginning.  Among them I mention Mike Evens, Ivan Toms, Paula Gopen and Piet Gopen and Nick Boraine.  I wish to mention those people as well as they helped when we started with this process.
 We have here on the panel two lovely women and a very nice gentleman who is also a Predikant.  Thank you very much to you first for coming here Piet and for always obliging when we request you to come.  We are very honoured to have you here.
 Dr Wendy Orr who many of you know, is the convenor of this region and she is also the Deputy Chair of the Reparations Committee.  Thank you Wendy, and she is going to be on the panel.  She is on my extreme right.
 On my immediate right Mr Glenda Wildschut, who has been very supportive at all times and very willing to participate and assist whenever she is asked to.  Thank you very much Glenda.  Glenda is also a Commissioner and is a member of the Reparations Committee.
 This meeting today is a product of sensitive and careful planning that involved consultation with various groups, both in government and outside of government as part of the Truth and Reconciliation mandate to understand the environment within which conflicts of the past occurred.  These special submissions are an inquiry into the practice of conscription during the period under review.  We hope to determine the range of experience among those affected by conscription and to develop recommendations to form part of the final reports.
 The programme starts with critical submissions and we will allow limited input from the audience, followed by individual submissions.  Some of these individual submissions will be summaries read by those on the panel.  A few of these are submitted with a promise of anonymity. This category of people made their submissions voluntarily to the Commission but requested that their identity not be made public.
 The programme will end with a discussion of the way forward and how best we can take this process forward constructively.
 We were concerned that these special submissions should reflect diverse views, or both sides of the story of conscription, that is, those who were hurt by the experience of conscription and those who experienced their conscription experience as being rewarding.
 It is possible to label the submissions today as evidence of bias on the part of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.  One could even argue that this is a pattern in the Commission, with public events such as this one simply giving one perspective.  While such claims are partially true they overlook other aspects.  The kinds of statements that are submitted to the Commission come from people who are deeply hurt by the past.  These are people who are looking for someone, somewhere to unburden themselves and to validate their experience of pain and hurt.  People who reflect more favourably on the past have tended to steer away from the Commission setting in motion a vicious circle of self-exclusion and attack on the credibility of the Truth Commission.
 The testimony of our past is at the heart of our work in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.  This includes a focus on what went wrong.  What were the problem areas?  To pull a cloak of oblivion over all that is painful and unpleasant we will be doing our history an injustice.  
 It is perhaps instructive like General Viljoen's comments on today's proceedings, 
"The ANC during its submissions on abuses in the camps objected to what it called the Commission's focus on the bad aspects of the camps. Perhaps this symbolises the tension between truth and the need to forget, between secrecy and disclosure, but perhaps it is also testimony of just how difficult our navigation of our past is.  Some people wish to forget, but they cannot.  Others need to forget, maybe with different motives, and often succeed in doing so".
 Today we are going to hear stories and critical submissions from people who are going to give us an overview of what it was like to be in conscription.  
 We are going to call upon Mr Jannie Gagiano to come forward please.  And we just have seen Annette Seegers arriving.  So very good timing Annette.  Could you please come up on stage.  Thank you.

WENDY ORR: Before we continue the Chairperson has very democratically or undemocratically failed to introduce herself so I will do that.  Pumla has worked tirelessly and incredibly energetically and enthusiastically to allow today to happen and we are very grateful that she took this on as an issue.  Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela is a member of the Human Rights Violations Committee, and a psychologist by training and will be chairing the panel today.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you Wendy.  Welcome to you Annette, you are very welcome.  Over to you Mr Gagiano.
POLITICAL & SOCIAL CONTEXT OF CONSCRIPTION

MR GAGIANO: You are giving me carte blanche to say what I please.

CHAIRPERSON: Not really.  The limited ...(intervention)

MR GAGIANO: Oh for as long as I please.