Dugs Papers

A collection of Douglas Racionzer's thinking on a variety of topics including assignments in ethics.

Monday, August 28, 2006

The South African Truth Commission- Moral Triumph?

Was the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission a moral triumph – or a failure – for the principle of reconciliation ?
The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (SA-TRC) was a state instituted, quasi-legal process which allowed perpetrators who told the truth about their apartheid crimes to receive an amnesty against prosecution from the state. It may be argued that this process was couched in the rhetoric of reconciliation but the legal procedure seems to have been something similar to a plea-bargain or what in juvenile justice circles is generally referred to as a “diversion” programme.

A first Complaint
The concept of a moral triumph (or failure) refers to the pervasive rhetoric in which the SA-TRC process was framed. Such rhetoric poses a number of difficulties, the first of which is the inability of the state, any state, to act morally or to be reconciled to anybody. The reification of the state in the question posed above, is in this case, more than a mere narrative convenience. I would suggest that state’s may correctly be regarded as legal persons but only natural (or supernatural ?) persons can act morally or be reconciled because only natural persons can love, feel hurt and forgive. A state is a legal mechanism for the marshalling of power and authority over its citizens and for the negotiation of relations with other states (through war and diplomacy). I would argue that a state cannot have feelings or thoughts but it may have interests and power.

Individuals and groups acting for the state and with its authority have identified reconciliation among South Africans as a common good. The notion of reconciliation is a socially constructed idea that requires constant and repeated actions from its adherents to account for its efficacy and relevance. The SA-TRC process at best could only act as an exemplar for the principle of reconciliation. The SA-TRC itself was made up of many situations of reconciliation and other events and then pulled together in an account of the process which sought to summarize and pass judgement upon past events. The meaning of those past events are contested by the various protagonists.

No truth and reconciliation commission can actually bring about a general reconciliation among the citizenry. Nor can it actually reclaim the common good of reconciliation. The SA-TRC can at best acclaim the importance of reconciliation and model the manner in which reconciliations can be constructed. It is up to South Africans to actually become reconciled with each other.

Having made an argument for putting the formal, state managed process of reconciliation and its role into its place, it may now be fruitful to examine what a moral triumph would be like and how such a circumstance may be achieved in social settings.

Succesfful Degradation CeremonyWhen considering the notion of a moral triumph and what might constitute such, I am drawn to the tentative proposal that a moral triumph may be the result of a social action in which the the triumphant have successfully achieved a moral degradation ceremony upon other/s. Moral triumphs would be situations where a conflict about what is morally superior in a given situation has been won by one of the parties over another. A particular version of events has been accepted and the morally triumphant is clearly “more moral” than another. Garfinkel set out conditions for successful degradation ceremonies in a short article in the American Journal of Sociology. (Garfinkel, 1956; pp420-4)

I propose here to examine the conditions of successful degradation ceremonies as described by Garfinkel and to explore how they may provide us with conditions for a moral triumph. These conditions will then be applied to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (SA-TRC).

Garfinkel defines a successful degradation ceremony as "any communicative work..whereby the public identity of an actor is transformed into something looked on as lower in the local scheme of social types" (ibid, p420)

The conditions required for degradation ceremonies to be successful are;
that the identities referred to must be total identities. Those involved must be shown to have ultimate grounds or reasons for their actions and not merely have acted out of caprice or happenstance.

1 The work of denouncing requires that the denouncer demonstrate to witnesses that the denouncer and the witnesses share values, fundamental values.
2 The denouncer then needs to demonstrate that the denounced does not share these values. This lack of value-sharing must be shown to be a matter of choice on the denounced part and not merely as a result of circumstance.
3 The denouncer must further show that s/he is an objective spokesperson for these values and is not merely trying to gain some form of retribution.

If, as suggested in this paper, the moral triumph of the SA-TRC is dependent upon the success in achieving the conditions for successful degradation ceremonies. It would seem that the first condition was clearly met by the SA-TRC in that basic human rights as values are generally shared, establsihed in our constitution and are recognized globally.

It is the second and third conditions for successful degradation ceremonies that highlight flaws in the SA-TRC process. While much work was done to show that the perpertrators did not share the values of human rights. Little was done to demonstrate that this was a matter of deliberate and free choice and indeed much press was given to the complaints from those denounced that they were part of a command structure and were in a war situation etc... The refrain from most perpetrators such Geoff Benzine was that their superiors who gave the orders now deny that any such orders were given. Words such as “neutralize” are now generally regarded as euphemisms for killing.

The third condition, that the denouncers were objective and impartial was not achieved as clearly they and many who were commissioners as well were presented as victims of these human rights abusers. Many are on record as expressing dissatisfaction with the SA-TRC process and are seeking retribution.

Thus if we accept the conditions for succesful degradation ceremonies as laid out by Garfinkel, (and it seems that he has made a strong case for their veracity), it would seem that the SA-TRC represented only a partial moral victory in so far as it achieved fully only one of the three conditions required.

If this were the only question raised in this assignment, then our task would be complete. However, the question asks if the SA-TRC was a moral triumph or failure for the principle of reconciliation. We must therefore return to the first complaint made in this paper and consider the aspects of what it means to be reconciled and to achieve reconciliation within a society.

VignettesTo this end, I have gathered a series of vignettes which serve to explicate the notion of reconciliation. These vignettes are taken from a variety of sources and represent a meander through the concepts rather than a rigid logical march upon the idea of reconciliation.

There is a global movement within juvenile justice that seeks to bring reconciliation between victims of crime and thier perpertrators. These processes are about two decades old now and fall under the general rubric of "restorative justice"; (Zehr, 1997)
The process of reconciliation seems to require community involvement and not simply a managed engagement between victim and perpetrator. (ibid)

Family Group ConferencesThe basic design of the Family Group Conference is disarmingly simple. A young person who has committed an offense against an identifiable victim is brought face to face with that victim. (There may be more than one offender or more than one victim; a single conference deals with the effects of the offense.) Both offender(s) and victim(s) are accompanied by family members, guardians, peers, or other people with a significant relationship to the offender or the victim. These people are collectively referred to as “supporters;” they may contribute to the search for restitution and to negotiations for reparation of the damage caused by the original offense. It is this insistence on collective, community involvement in the search for reparation that sets the Family Group Conference model apart from reparation schemes run in Britain and the United States since the 1970s.The Family Group Conference is convened by an official of the justice system. This will be a police officer, a welfare worker, a representative of the juvenile court, or a representative of the justice department, depending upon the jurisdiction in which the conference is being convened.



Greek myth provides us with powerful paradigm of transformation in the story of Arestes; (Hamilton, 1940: pp240-248)
The forgiveness of Orestes
The ancient Greek myth of Orestes tells a story of the end of intergenarational pain going down five generations within the House of Atreus.
Orestes was the brother of Iphegenia who was sacrificed to the gods at the beginning of the Trojan war by her father, Agamemnon to ensure the safe passage of the Greek ships to Troy.
Agamemnon's wife, Clytemnestra avenges herself upon her hsuband when he returns ten years later, victorious from the siege of Troy. Orestes flees but must avenge his own father's murder by killing his mother. This he does but then is pursued by the Erinyes or furies, the three three avenging spirits called Alecto, Tisiphone and Magaera who seek justice against all evil doers on earth. Eventually Orestes begs forgiveness for his crime from Athena who convinces the Furies to forgive Orestes.
The act of forgiveness transforms the Furies into benificent godesses who make their home in Colonus and provide care and comfort to all who visit them.


It would seem that forgiveness not justice lies at the heart of reconciliation and tells us that the forgiver can be transformedby this process. The strict pursuit of retributive justice will require an endless process of judgement and punishment. This process even tired the mythical furies and consequently they sought to forgive and be transformed. The story of Joan of Ark offers some insight into the process of reconciliation. (Warner, 1981)


Joan of Ark and the DauphinIt is said thatin the 100 years war, the English entered France through a hole in the head of John the bold. The Duke of Burgundy, John the Bold had murdered the Dauphin's uncle and some years later the Dauphin had ensured John the bold was killedin revenge. The result of this action led the Dauphin's father disinheriting the Dauphin from the throne of France in favour of Henry's son who was then to be both king of England and King of France.

The Dauphin took the case to the Law professors at the University of Bologna who ruled that no person may be deprived of their birthright beacuse of an evil deed they have done. This laid the basis for the claim of the Dauphin to be crowned King. Which his champion, Joan ensured some years later. It also laid the basis in law for our theory of human rights being inalienable rights.

The story of Joan of Ark as a 15th Century human rights campaigner can thus be appreciated. Joan's process of reinstatement from heretic to saint took three seperate hearings up to 50 years after her death and took 500 years for the Church to recognize her as a Saint. These processes were all profoundly political and strategic showing that reconciliation may not simply take one truth and reconciliation process.

Perhaps the message to glean from this vignette is that reconciliation may take many seperate hearings and may take many generations. Expecting reconciliation to be cheaply bought perhaps cheapens the value of the crimes and their forgiveness.

The process of reconciliation may also require concerted citizen action and may require local interventions rather than one monothlic process alone; (Kokopka, 1963)

The formation of social groupwork
During the 1920's, the self-help movement spurned a variety of groups and social movements from Boys Scouts to Catholic Workers. These groups attempted to deal with local issues using smallto large groups to organize themselves. The attempt was to instill through the self-help movement a "deep" democracy at local level.

These groups were most active among immigrants in the USA and among youth and minorities. The founders of these movements were painfully aware that the scourge of fascism neede to be countered. The use of groups allowed indiviual voices and concerned to be heard and gave power to small groups of activists sseking various changes to the lives.

It was out of this process that social work came to adopt groupwork as one of its primary methods of engaging the individual and society to achieve change.

Social groupwork as an approach for developing "deep democracy" and a shared set of values and human rights may be required on an ongoing basis before we can point to our people being reconciled. (ibid; pp3-10)

ConclusionGiven the conditions for succesful degradation ceremonies as laid out by Garfinkel (ibid), the SA-TRC does not represent an emphatic moral triumph to the extent that it failed to show convincingly that perpetrators acted out of free choice in their crimes and that the accusers were neutral and objective with nothing to gain from the degradation of the perpetrators.

The vignettes point to a variety of issues that may support this argument;
1. Successful family group conferences (Zehr, 1997)require significant levels of community support for them to succeed. Questions have been asked as to the levels of community support for the SA-TRC by De Gruchy (2002) and Du Toit (2003) and others.
2. As the vignette about the forgiveness of Arestes suggests,(Hamilton,1940; pp240-8) the forgiver can be transformed by the process of reconciliation. To what extent has this transformation occurred among survivors and victims is a question that requires further research.
3. Perhaps it is still too early to draw definitive conclusions about the process of reconciliation in South Africa. The case of the rehabilition of Joan of Ark shows us that it may take many generations to achiev reconciliation. (Warner, 1981)
4. There is still much practical work that needs to be done to instill “deep democracy” (Konopka,1963; pp3-10) into the social fabric of South Africa. The social groupwork process (ibid) requires ongoing action from Government, business and the citizen sectors.

I must now return to the initial argument I made against the reification of the state. In much of the literature I have read on reconciliation and the SA-TRC, there lies a deep confusion about the power of the state or “macro-actors” in society to reflect, influence or define the actual state of affairs at an interactive or “micro-actor” level in society. Callon and Latour (in Knorr-Cetina etal [Eds] Ch 10, 1981) provide an interesting perspective on the relationship between Macro and Micro actors using Hobbe’s Leviathan as their primary metaphor. In short Callon etal argue that “macro-actors are an interconnected set of mico-actors and more durable materials who’s interests and energies coincide in particular ways to wield power and influence over themselves and others. Those parties and lobbies that wield power do so because they have been able to build many alliances through symbolic practices and secure the support of many groupings and machines and durable materials within society. This process requires ideas to bind the various groups of people and to harness the use of machines and materials together.
Callon etal describe macro-actors as having control over numerous “black boxes”, each containing the power, meanings and interests of a group or an organization. The macro-actor can rely on these “black boxes” for support in their efforts and thus they become macro-actors in society. Those supporting a set of values or ideas must be able to ensure the support of as many “black-boxes” as possible.

This process requires simplification; “a macro-actor can only grow if it simplifies itself.... It is no more difficult to send tanks to Kabul than to dial 999. It is no more difficult to describe renault than the secretary who takes telephone calls at the Houston police station. If it were much more difficult the tanks would not move and Renault would not exist. There would be no Macro-actors. By cl;aiming that macro-actors are more complex than mico-actors...[we] ...prevent the secret of macro-actors’ growth from being revealed: making operations childishly simple.” (ibid p299)

The idea of reconciliation, if it is to be a moral and social triumph, still requires that work to be done. The work of making reconciliation simple. That work of building alliances, sourcing materials and machinery and securing the support of many groupings in our society. The SA-TRC represents a start in that work but others are needed to continue from where it left off.

Bilbiography
Callon, M & Latour, B Unscrewing the big Leviathan: how actors macro-structure reality and how sociologists help them do so in Knorr-Cetina, K & Cicourel, A.V. (Eds) Advances in Social Theory and Methodology: Towrads and Intergration of Micro-and Macro Sociologies: pp277-303; Routledge Kegan Paul London 1981
De Gruchy, J.W. Reconciliation: Restoring Justice SCM Press London 2002
Doubt, K Evil and the Ritual of Shame: A crime against humanity in Bosnia-Herzegovinia in James Head; Vol 7(2): pp 319-331 2002
du Toit, F. Ed) Learning To Live Together: Practices of Social Reconciliation Institute for Justice and Reconciliation Cape Town 2003
Edelstein, J Truth and Lies:Stories from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in outh Africa The New Press New York 2002
Garfinkel, H Conditions of Successful Degradation Ceremonies in American Journal of Sociology; Vol 61: pp420-24 1956
Gibson, J.L Overcoming Apartheid: Can truth reconcile a divided nation ? Russel Sage Foundation New York 2004
Hamilton, E Mythology Mentor/Penquin London 1940
Hayner, P.B Unspeakable Truths: Facing the Challenge of Truth Commissions Routledge New York 2001
Holstein, J.A Rethinking Victimization: an interactional approach to victimology in Symbolic Interaction; Vol. 13(1): pp103-122 1990
Konopka, G Social Groupwork: A helping process Prentice Hall Englewood Cliffs, NJ 1963
Moore, D.B Shame, Forgiveness and Juvenile Justice in Criminal Justice Ethics Vol. 12(1) 1993
Parrsih, G (Ed) Leading Social Entrepreneurs:Elections in 2002 and 2003 Ashoka Washington 2004
Schreiter, R.J The Ministry of Reconciliation Orbis Books New York 1998
Volf, M The Social Meaning of Reconciliation in Interpretation; Apr 2000, Vol 54 no.2:pp158-172
Warner, M Joan of Ark: The image of female heroism Penguin London 1981
Zehr, H & Mika, H Foundational Concepts of Restorative Justice Mennonite Central Committee Akron, Penn 1997

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