TRC at 20 - what about the youth?

Dr June Bam-Hutchison, APC senior researcher and author of Peeping through the Reeds: A Story of Living in Apartheid South Africa (2010), participated in a public debate broadcast live on Cape Town TV on 1 June 2016, aimed at locating the current debate on reconciliation and the perspective of young people concerning the TRC, and offering perspectives on what will help reconciliation to move forward.

The month of June is commemorated as Youth Month in South Africa and 2016 marks the twentieth anniversary of the commencement of the TRC in South Africa. The objective of this series of dialogues and debates, facilitated by the body tasked with taking forward the work of the TRC in South Africa, the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IJR), is to locate the current debate on reconciliation and the perspective of young people concerning the TRC, and to offer perspectives on what is possible for reconciliation to move forward.

Bam-Hutchison joined fellow panellists Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Research Chair for Historical Trauma and Transformation, author of A Human Being Died That Night: A South African Story of Forgiveness (2003) and former TRC Commissioner, youth activist Ziyanda Stuurman and Project Leader of the Ashley Kriel Leadership Development Project at the IJR, Eleanor du Plooy.  The debate was moderated by Ayanda Nyoka, Project Leader for the IJR’s ‘Inclusive Economies’. Questions and discussion (through tweets and social media) centred on questions of how young people see the TRC and South Africa’s transition in 1994 and the related unresolved social and economic justice issues.

Bam-Hutchison argued that restorative justice requires that civic society (in its racial inclusivity) takes responsibility for the ‘everyday’ dismantling of the legacies of apartheid. Education and the telling of our stories (the apartheid archive) are key aspects for long term healing as the social and economic justice issues that require redress (enslavement, genocide, land dispossession, segregation, migrant labour) go much deeper than the ‘sanctioned boundary of memory’ of the TRC’s legal framework of 1960. The fact that South Africans are still largely living the spatial and situational inequalities of apartheid does not bode well for youth who make up the majority of the unemployed. 

To Bam-Hutchison, South Africa has entered the ‘anger’ phase in the grieving process of loss after the period of euphoria and denial that came with the political negotiation and peace process. The youth are the voices of this rage because of their ‘coal-face’ everyday lived experience of unemployment, violence, crime and so on. While racial structural inequalities exist, reconciliation remains a pipe dream.

Du Plooy noted that the youth (many of whom go to bed without a meal - including university students) are saying that they ‘can’t eat reconciliation’. Bam-Hutchison responded that it is fundamental in addressing poverty that there be acknowledgment in South Africa amongst the white population that they did benefit economically from apartheid. This has not yet happened. Reconciliation and social justice cannot be attained unless there is this collective public acknowledgment and commitment to address haunting economic inequalities in everyday ‘dinner’ conversation and actions.

Such new conversation would go a long way in resolving the deepening racial tensions in the country. Whilst no country can claim ‘successful reconciliation’ and addressing structural inequalities takes years, it may be useful to learn from countries like Rwanda where there is priority attention given to the development of a stable and growing economy (using for example the pre-colonial archive in promoting conservation, heritage, ecotourism etc.). Rwanda (with a predominantly youthful population of under 24 years old) is beginning to address history and genocide education in a cautious way as part of the reconciliation process by attempting to build on strong economic imperatives such as in information and communication technologies.

South Africa could recognise and explore the role of the archive in facilitating economic development and reconciliation. In this regard, Bam-Hutchison pointed out that South Africa did not have a TRC on Education (the legal focus was on gross human violations with regard to individual atrocities, perpetrators and victims), yet this was one of the most violent aspects of the apartheid system. She spoke of recognising the role of history teachers as ‘mediators of the archive’ in the classroom, into which they bring their own biography, values, political perspectives and memories; that teachers need more time to facilitate and encourage ‘hearing’ of community and intergenerational stories in the learning process in the classroom through which appropriate interventions for social and economic justice may be identified and appreciated.

The new curriculum was intended to address values, education and democracy but further classroom research would be required to find out what is actually happening in schools in terms of the curriculum and the support required for teachers who are charged with the difficult task of teaching the values of reconciliation and peace in a deeply unequal society.