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Ethnicity & Health, 2000: 5(3/4):283-289 Abstract Keywords : perpetrators, violence, amnesty, counselling The psychology of perpetrators of "political" violence in South Africa
a personal experience 31 December 1993 - Death 3 January 1994 - The Funeral We had a suspicion that the Pan African Congress (PAC) were responsible for this act because of the similarity to earlier massacres, for instance at the St James church also in Cape Town. However, there were no names or faces attached to the killers, only a sense that God could forgive them. November 1994 -The Criminal Trial October 1997 - The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Hearing I want to tell you who Lyndi was. Her Xhosa friends knew her as Lindiwe. Lyndi was a true child of Africa. She was happiest hiking in the mountains, riding horseback with her dog out in the countryside. She was just finishing a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering and had spent a lot of time designing and thinking about how it would be possible to improve the infrastructure in places like Khayelitsha, so that running water and waterborne sewerage would be available to the homes of people who had suffered oppression and discrimination. She spent her vacations with one of the large engineering companies in the Western Cape. During lunch times the black men would tell her about their lives. She would come home in the evenings and tell me the tragic stories of hopelessness and despair which they felt as labourers, with no opportunity for improvement. She understood and wept to know that this was happening in her country. She helped me to understand how subtle my own prejudice and racial discrimination was, nothing blatant, but it was in the very fibre of my being. She was totally willing to treat everyone as an equal and she did that openly and freely. Her black friends were as close to her as her white friends. Lindiwe could have been your friend. You did your own cause immeasurable harm by killing her. She was totally opposed to violence. She was a gentle person who cared for not only the people, not only the little people, but the animals and the flowers, the ecology of our land and the world. As a medical person, I had to go straight back to the wards of Groote Schuur Hospital and treat your colleagues who had been shot. I needed to do that without showing any bitterness or resentment. God gave me that grace. I think that the reason for my being here this week and particularly today which is very important to me; is to tell you that on that day you ripped my heart out. Lyndi was one of the most precious people that this country could have produced (I confess that I am biased). I resent being called a victim, I have a choice in the matter - I am a survivor. Lyndi was a victim, she had no choice. Also I have just had major surgery which I trace partly to the result of the stress and trauma of her violent death. There is a strong correlation between colon cancer and major stress. So first you ripped my heart out, and now half of my gut. I am happy that you are well, I hope that emotionally and psychologically you can be well because you have been programmed killers, you repeatedly said that you were acting under orders from your High Command. You could not tell us how you felt whilst killing innocent people, which indicated to me that you may have been trained to 'not feel' and I recognise how important that would be in a killing machine - to be unable to feel, but just to carry out orders indiscriminately. I have no objection to the granting of amnesty for you, but there are enough indiscriminate killers on our streets and in our countryside. My fear is that we may have three more. I wish that the violence could end, and perhaps with time and counselling this can be so. I trust that counselling will be made available to you as it has been made to us as survivors. Lindiwe would have wanted to hear the stories of your lives. I am interested as a woman who has experienced the pain and frustration of oppression to hear about your experiences. We came here hoping to hear the truth about who the people in 'High Command' were who organised this whole atrocious and cowardly operation. I am not convinced that the truth has been revealed, and until such a time, I am not happy for you to disappear into the woodwork. I know that it must be terribly frightening to reveal who the 'High Command' is because your lives may be in jeopardy if you do get amnesty. But, I thank you for being able to look me in the eye and for hearing my story. January 1998 Final day of the TRC Hearing Gqomfa acted as spokesperson for the group, he had led the cadre in the attack on the Heidelberg. He said that they wanted to thank me for forgiveness, that they would take that message of peace and hope to their communities and to their graves, whether they got amnesty or not. Personally, he said that he has a child and if someone were to kill his child he didn't think he could forgive them. I was profoundly moved by their acceptance of my gift of forgiveness and in retrospect, I recognise another step in the healing process. I asked them to tell me why they hated white people enough to indiscriminately kill them. Madasi told that he has a sister named Lindiwe, and so he had connected with Lyndi's Xhosa name. His father had been killed by a white man, in the bathroom somewhere, I did not get the place. Mabala told that his family was killed by white Security Force Members in a riot near East London and he was lucky to escape. I reiterated to them the importance of counselling in order to deal with their hurt, hate and military socialisation. Gqomfa responded: "We would welcome counselling, and rather with the survivors so that true reconciliation can take place". The insightfulness of such a statement was staggering, I had not thought of having counselling together. The warders insisted that the meeting adjourn, a hug for each indicated the depth of community we had entered into in this short while. The Amnesty Applicants then shackled themselves, which at that moment symbolised to me the enormous responsibility which accompanies freedom of choice and the sad outcome of making poor choices... tears came to my eyes. Humphrey Gqomfa turned to the interpreter and said, "Please take Mrs Fourie home". Once more I was amazed by the sensitivity and leadership potential of this man.... The same man who was also a perpetrator of 'gross human rights violations', even against my own daughter. I had not realized how anxiety provoking this encounter would be, until I experienced a severe abdominal pain all afternoon. On reflection of my journey from tragedy towards healing the following stages of a process seem to emerge:
Provision of counselling for 'perpetrators' Jacques Ellul (1969), a French theologian and sociologist formulated five laws of violence, in which he proposes that "violence creates violence, begets and procreates violence. The violence of the colonialists creates the violence of the anticolonialists, which in turn exceeds that of the colonialists. Nor does victory bring any kind of freedom. Always, the victorious side splits up into clans which perpetuate violence". In Ellul's Law of Sameness, he suggests that it is impossible to distinguish between justified and unjustified violence, between the violence that liberates and the violence that enslaves. For instance the violence that liberated Eastern Europe from Nazism enslaved it to Communism. "All who draw the sword will die by the sword" (Matthew 26:52). There is no qualifier for the "all". Even those who draw the sword with good intent, expose themselves to the consequences of violence. This is not a decree of God it is a statement of fact. The person who carries a violent weapon thinks differently to the one who does not. This violent thinking results in actions which often cause more violence.
Gilbert (1995) states that South Africa is a particularly violent society. She suggests a link between the social context of urban violence and the mental health of that community. This is a likely clue to the occurrence of continuing violence where counselling is often unknown and/or unaffordable, added to which the racial and cultural tensions have never been dealt with in any significant way. Lisak et al (1996) report on the relationship between a history of abuse and perpetration of violence. In their study of 126 perpetrators, 70% were abused in childhood. Those both sexually and physically abused who perpetrated, manifested significantly more gender rigidity and emotional constriction than abused nonperpetrators. Furthermore De Ridder (1998) shared with me her findings at the Trauma Centre, where clients have been referred as victims of violence, but who have themselves been perpetrators and are more anxious to work through their distress as perpetrators than as victims. The cycle appears to be one of; experiencing abuse to becoming a perpetrator, then consequently being a victim of the law which sometimes even involves police brutality (an ongoing problem which needs serious attention). Searching the literature for clues as to how to proceed, I discovered that there have been encounters between "survivors" and "perpetrators" and their descendants in other countries in recent times. Most notable of these is the Holocaust in Germany. Bar-on (1995) writes of four encounters between descendants of survivors and descendants of perpetrators of the Holocaust. These encounters are seen as an attempt to build social bonds out of the silence and pain of the past. Kaslow (1997) describes the importance of these meetings where in some cases second, third and fourth generation descendants have sought out activities which would bring them together, to interact and move toward some rapprochement in the here and now and for the future. Kaslow sights two conferences, which have been held, one in Budapest, Hungary, in 1994 and a follow-up in Guadalajara, Mexico, in October 1995. "The interchanges about their memories and deeply entrenched feelings were heated, emotional and profound. All involved indicated they had experienced great anguish about coming, and in being present, and that during the session they felt some relief and gained some understanding of the "other". They urged continuation of this dialogue process" (Kaslow, 1997). South Africa has a history of racial and cultural tensions, which impact on every member of society. From the diary of my great, great maternal grandfather (fifth generation) who was an 1820 Settler and farmed on the Fish River comes a vivid description of the so called "Kaffir Wars" in the 1830's and how he mistrusted the Xhosa people after raids and killings by them. The biographer goes on to say, " While the underlying cause of conflict was possession of the land, the stock that grazed it were the sharp point of conflict. For the settler, cattle meant milk, meat, transport and wealth; for the tribesmen cattle were not only these but the basis of their culture; without cattle no man could even get a wife" (Collett, 1990). At the turn of the century the Anglo-Boer war brought further rifts between all of the language and race groupings in the country. Furthermore one cannot ignore the impact of the violence of the First and Second World Wars experienced by soldiers of all races from South Africa. Followed within a few years by the Freedom Struggle against Apartheid. Can we afford to wait any longer for an attempt at reconciliation? Politics is a system of organising control of power. Our political parties have inspired, instigated, provided the backing and infrastructure as well as the weapons for violence. We as a society must face this ongoing violence and deal with it today, as it has been presented in the TRC Hearings. The old issues remain 'land and cattle' (possession and redistribution of wealth) only now in more subtle, sophisticated and complex forms including the ballot box. I would like to suggest that all of the political parties be given this opportunity, following the TRC Hearings and granting of amnesty, to demonstrate their accountability by firstly; providing funding for debriefing of their members who have received amnesty and secondly; ensuring that all of their members who have been perpetrators are notified and encouraged to attend counselling. There are existing counselling centres in the Health and Non Government Organisations (NGO's), which could be extended to provide such services. However, they would need additional funding should such a commitment be forthcoming from our politicians. Once the debriefing groundwork has been done - perhaps our dream, Humphrey Gqomfa's and now my own, of having counselling together at nationwide conferences for survivors and perpetrators can come about. We cannot afford to wait for second third and fourth generation descendants, of this traumatic and ongoing violence. We must take the initiative in attempting to understand the "other" and so start the process of reconciliation and healing in our broken land. References Collett J. (1990) A time to plant, biography of James Lydford Collett - Settler. Creda Press Cape Town: 44. De Ridder T. (1998) Personal communication in Cape Town, South Africa on 30 July 1998. Ellul J. (1969) Violence: Reflections from a Christian perspective. Seabury Press. New York: 97. Gilbert L. (1996) Urban violence and health - South Africa 1995. Social Science & Medicine. 43 (5): 873-86. Kaslow F. (1997) A dialogue between descendants of Holocaust perpetrators and victims -- session two. Israel Journal of Psychiatry & Related Sciences. 34 (1): 44-45. Lisak D. Hopper J. and Song P. (1996) Factors in the cycle of violence: gender rigidity and emotional constriction, Journal of Traumatic Stress. 9 (4): 721-43 |
