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

CHAIRPERSON: Excuse me Doctor Baqwa ...[intervention]

DR BAQWA: Am I taking too long?

CHAIRPERSON: No, I mean I like it, I was dreading this moment all week but I am going to have to say: could you summarise and also could I have - just in terms of time, the section where you want to do a critical analysis of the health sector hearings, could we perhaps leave that to the end and incorporate - maybe have a session on process.

DR BAQWA: ...[inaudible]

CHAIRPERSON: Yes, I'm not saying we don't want to hear it.

DR BAQWA: ...[inaudible]

CHAIRPERSON: I'm saying: let's put it to the end of the workshop so that we can evaluate the whole process, maybe have a section of the whole Truth Commission and the process.

DR BAQWA: ...[inaudible]

CHAIRPERSON: So, maybe you can take a second to just sort of think what you're going to summarise, then we can go onto questions.

DR BAQWA: ...[inaudible] so you're psychologists, your psychiatrists, your people now who are in leadership who, like ...[indistinct] just giving excuses and are now in the front field for reformation but I wanted to quote - maybe let me quote Doctor Aldo Martine - a very well known psychiatrist of psychoanalytic training, who came to address us in Cape Town when we were having a conference on torture and rehabilitation and torture and victims of trauma.  He wrote a paper called the phenomenology of guilt in a society which forgave Cane - do you remember Cane?, he said
"When an active attitude against discriminatory acts is not taken or when the State does not take a firm stand, the person faced with his or her unethical acts and desires is granted the possibility of magically excusing his own participation"
 I'm really talking of a process now of us, of them, of change and of the future, it's a mass - it's a morass and if we do not go through that properly, we are just going to making reforms like in basis of philosophy that you were talking about.
 Given his granted of magically excusing his own participation of recovering his ethical conduct, given the opportunity of self-pardoning which everybody has been doing - where the TRC - I was looking at it as a medici and ...[indistinct] and blah, blah, blah and I didn't have the chance, it was mostly self-pardoning I think and self-pardoning in what we've being seeing throughout the TRC activities, of being the accuser and also of being the accused.  He ultimately becomes a god who forgives those who behaved unethically without being judged in order to be pardoned himself.
 What you want me to give as a comprehensive summary of all this, was that I was taking violence, looking at it and letting us know that it is not just organised violence that has to do with of the apartheid era alone but also there's another violence we are moving in that involves all of us, workers in mental health and  other workers involved with these concepts.  That we have to involve elements at - perceptions of this and improving the society and healing the victims by whatever mechanisms we will reach to.  
 I know that the Health Department had a conference on that and many good papers have come and I know that they have researched very seriously and I have brought that paper with me.  Then I went into the understanding of psychiatry in our institutions and the treatment thereof, which are quite conservative and very, very outdated and lacking understanding in the context of our society and we will deal with that when we come to the workshop.
 And then within that I was also looking at human rights violations and the understanding of the patient or the client or the person and our understanding of ourselves too as caregivers.  This has been a mirror of such gross - allow me to use that, ignorance or uncaring or negligence of these very important basic glasses that are looking at another person, that this has to be part and parcel of our teaching of medical students in psychiatry.  
 Especially now in South Africa, post-violence and this trauma and our victims that - not our victims, but the people that have been parading in front of the TRC that are going to need care.   We need to be able to understand what trauma does to peoples and communities, we need to understand that certain people survive, certain people do not and we need to understand what composes that - what makes people survive and what makes people not and then get into that so we can help.
 And the fora where these things are going to be discussed are necessarily - they have to be relevant, they have not to be the fora of psychiatrist, of psychologists but I think it's an expertise that will be necessary to be part and parcel of the whole dimension of society, like I talked about the multivariate factors involved in changing societies.  
 I'm talking of sociology, I'm talking of anthropology, I'm talking of politicians, I'm talking of social movement - social motions, I'm talking of the media - how are we going to get all this to sort of move into the 21st century.  Okay?  ...[inaudible]

CHAIRPERSON: It's a good question.  Can I just say, if there's a - there might be a feeling around the ...[inaudible] my comments around receiving a sort of critique at a later stage, might have been a toast defensive.  I just hope that you're satisfied with that and that we will do that tomorrow.

DR BAQWA: Well, I deal in psychotherapy and when people say certain things, sometimes I cannot help but look at things from an analytical point of view but I do understand, we will work with that.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you for your indulgence, I also want to - I'm split here too relating to your split that you mentioned at the beginning of your presentation in terms of time lines and just time keeping, I'd actually like to - but we can go into that tomorrow.  Is everybody okay with that, we're not going to have an article: "Panel Snubs out Criticism", okay?

CHAIRPERSON: Could we move on to Jeanette Mohapi, if you could - I think we're going to be running a quarter of an hour late as it stands but welcome, thank you for coming and could you perhaps talk about your experiences as a psychiatric nurse or share with us what you prepared.
 Can I just ask that you also summarise and not actually read ...[inaudible]