We Are Not Such Things (36 page)

“Yah, man, Easy’s cool,” Mzi said. “He’s got heart.”

It is Tuesday, July 8, 1997, a pleasantly cool and rainless day. Easy sits before a packed room of spectators, family members, friends of both the convicted men and Amy, PAC loyalists, ANC loyalists, lawyers, judges, TRC commissioners, and Linda and Peter Biehl. The space is steamy, each seat taken, an overflow leaning against the walls. Before Easy, a black microphone and a pitcher of water. On the front edge of the pale wooden table at which he sits is taped a paper sign bearing one large typed word:
APPLICANT
.

A banner, in lime green and white and black, spans the wall behind him:

TRUTH.

THE ROAD TO

RECONCILIATION.

Easy is twenty-seven years old, and has spent the past five years shuttling between maximum-security prisons around the region. In 1994, he was at Pollsmoor, until he was transferred to Helderstroom, an enormous facility at the edge of the bucolic town of Caledon. There, he caught tuberculosis.

“We call it
Hell
-derstroom,” he told me. “It was too much hell. The wind is cold, cold, cold, the shower is cold, the window is broken, the warders only speak Afrikaans. The mat I sleep on was wet, concrete is always wet, water came up through it. When I go to shower my body was so cold. I put soap on my cloth, open the cold water, I wait, I count, firstly I have to jog, jog, jog, let my blood warm. Then when I get there, is one-two-three and get out. With my TB, I was coughing, chest was so sore. But my father said, ‘Don’t be weak. Tell that mind you are not weak.’ ”

He only barely recovered from TB, refusing medicine he was convinced was state-sanctioned poison (“Now I think, Easy, you stupid, you torture yourself for six months”). The first day of the Truth Commission hearings, he is coming from Victor Verster Prison near Paarl.

Easy’s oversized prison-issue spectacles dwarf his small, pimpled face. He has grown a squiggle of a mustache, which has the unintended effect of making him look like a teenager. His printed yellow polo shirt is tucked into his high-waisted black trousers, cinched with a belt. On his feet, he sports a pair of colossal, sparkling white Adidas high-tops.

To Easy’s right, Ntobeko slumps, his skin dark and luminous, his eyes wide, his lips pressed together. He wears a printed buttercup-yellow polo shirt that pools around his neck, oversized blue jeans, and the exact same high-tops as Easy, just as spit-shined and glowing white. He, too, has managed to eke out the slightest of mustaches, and he, too, looks neither older nor manlier for it.

To Easy’s left sits Vusumzi Ntamo, his hair trimmed neatly, his knees spread. His mother and aunts have pooled their money to buy him an ill-fitting beige suit and a pair of shiny black shoes. Next to Vusumzi, Mongezi Manqina leans back and chews on his ever-present toothpick, his chin raised. He wears a fitted brown leather jacket, an ironed red and black checked-plaid shirt, and his own pair of enormous, spotless white high-tops, with bubble letters spelling out AIR covering the sides.

The men sit utterly still, only the pupils of their eyes darting back and forth, as the photographers take endless shots, their lenses clicking, their flashes flashing, the cameramen jostling to get the best angles. They are lying on the floor, kneeling on tables. Journalists furiously jot down notes.

Prison was dark, and so was the truck they were transported in, with little square openings covered in a crosshatch of bars. For years, they have been numbers in the system, indistinguishable from the masses, but now the room is fluorescent-lit, with large sunny windows, camera sparks flying, and hundreds of eyes boring into them.

In the corner, a man, legs crossed, casually reads a local paper with the headline:
ONUS ON BIEHL’S KILLERS TO PROVE POLITICAL MOTIVE.
A head shot of smiling Amy accompanies the article. In the front row of the audience, facing the men, are Peter and Linda Biehl, and Amy’s South African roommate, Melanie Jacobs. The Biehls are the only Americans to sit before the TRC. They run the Amy Biehl Foundation, which they founded in 1994, and have been rubbing shoulders with ANC elites for a few years now.

Melanie and the Biehls entered, moments earlier, to much media attention. The reporters stumbled around them, walking backward, making way. Linda, her hair at a sharp angle, wears a large gold heart locket containing Amy’s picture. She smiles widely, greeting audience members, and turns in her seat to chat with acquaintances. Peter is stiff in his gray suit and red tie, his face set, just barely, to neutral. Melanie wears her black hair pushed back with a cotton band, her nose pierced with a silver hoop, her hands covered in rings, strands of pearls tight around her neck. Her face is heavy and slack, and she often places her head on Peter’s shoulder. Two years later, Melanie, newly engaged, will pitch herself off a balcony and die as she hits the street below.

Wowo Nofemela, Easy’s father, sits quietly a few rows behind the Biehls, on the far side of the room. His head is shaved bare, his posture erect, his beard trimmed, his wire-rim glasses balanced on his nose, his hands placed in his lap just below his bowling-ball belly. He does not shift. A few rows away, Mongezi Manqina’s mother, her face bloated and her eyes hooded, absently nods her head, her lips pressed together and turned down.

Monks, Easy’s brother, is mobile on that day, twelve years before he will be thrown from a taxi. He shifts around. He slides down in his chair, shrouding his face with both his hands as a camera zooms in on him and lingers.

The Biehls stand as Vusumzi’s mother and aunt approach, two stout little ladies, one in her signature maroon beret. They lean in, offer their hands to the Americans. Linda beams, bright lipstick and perfect teeth. Peter does not.

“Hi, I’m Peter,” he says in his earnest Midwestern twang, stiffly engaging in an African handshake, towering over the ladies. “It’s very nice to meet you. We’re parents, too, so we’re in solidarity. Good luck today.”

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was South Africa’s attempt to deal with the crimes of apartheid, lest they “live with us like a festering sore,” according to Mandela. It was meant to stand in stark contrast to Germany’s Nuremberg trials of 1945 and 1946, during which nearly two dozen top Nazi leaders were tried for war crimes, with the majority sent to prison or sentenced to death. Mandela’s ANC government modeled the TRC on previous and lesser-known commissions across the world, in particular Chile’s Comisión Nacional de Verdad y Reconciliación. Chile’s commission documented the thousands of deaths and disappearances that occurred under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in the hopes of ushering in a transparent and democratic government. Though imperfect, the commission was considered a successful, cathartic alternative to solely punitive measures. Mandela’s ANC government hoped that a similar South African commission could approach the country’s apartheid past with an aim toward transformation rather than punishment.

The TRC’s mandate was threefold: to achieve a large-scale picture of the gross human rights abuses committed between March 1, 1960, and May 10, 1994 (the day Mandela was sworn in as president); to grant amnesty to any South African who could prove that the crimes he or she committed during that time were politically motivated; and to help victims and their families by revealing fates of those missing or killed. The greater purpose of the TRC was to promote national unity in a country that housed a population that had been systematically divided for centuries.

The TRC, for all its promise, was also a political compromise, reached as part of the overall deal leading to South Africa’s first all-inclusive elections in 1994. Its existence was the result of a negotiated settlement between the ANC and the National Party. The settlement, also referred to as the “Liberation Bargain,” was reached after years of meetings between Mandela, his top brass, and the National Party leadership. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the ANC lost ideological and logistical backing, but it had the hearts and minds of the masses. And while the National Party enjoyed the backing of a strong military and police force, they were vilified globally and had read the writing on the wall. Rather than face a protracted and destructive civil war, de Klerk and Mandela decided to talk. For years, the former enemies pushed on with negotiations until they managed to reach a settlement.

To further ease tension, and in the spirit of reconciliation, Mandela even made de Klerk his deputy president from 1994 to 1996, in a government of national unity. The TRC was an imperfect answer to the question of how to address the country’s past, a space in which victims could air grievances; perpetrators could admit to their actions (but they did not have to apologize or express remorse); and those imprisoned for political crimes could appeal for freedom. The TRC would, in the dreams of its inventors, clear the air.

“Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies,” Mandela said, in explaining his drive to free the nation of such a toxic sentiment.

Desmond Tutu, the archbishop of Xhosa and Tswana extraction, was appointed by Mandela to chair the commission. He was a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and the son of an abusive, alcoholic father and a washerwoman mother who made two shillings a day working for a white woman—two shillings, which she gave to Tutu so he could catch a train to school. “I look like her—short, with a large nose,” he said. Tutu was a social activist devoted to nonviolence, and an internationally beloved Anglican, particularly recognizable for his habit of draping himself in purple robes and for his youthful, infectious laugh. Alex Boraine, an ordained Methodist minister and ex-parliamentarian with pale white skin, bright white hair, and an impressive series of degrees, was Tutu’s deputy chair. The pair gave the proceedings a strong Christian flavor.

Some have argued that the TRC also adhered to the African philosophy of
ubuntu,
which holds that a person is a person only because of other people. Ubuntu is the idea of a shared humanity, an interconnectedness of man. “A person with ubuntu…is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed,” wrote Tutu. The TRC, then, aimed to restore that common humanity to the fractured people of South Africa.

Tutu and Boraine were, at least initially, optimistic about the TRC’s purpose and outcome. It was a radical approach to dealing with and healing from the past, one that played into global and national fantasies about a new multicultural South Africa that might emerge.

“Forgiving and being reconciled to our enemies or our loved ones are not about pretending that things are other than they are,” wrote Tutu. “True reconciliation exposes the awfulness, the abuse, the hurt, the truth. It could even sometimes make things worse. It is a risky undertaking but in the end it is worthwhile, because in the end only an honest confrontation with reality can bring real healing.”

The TRC began with a flourish and deep pockets: $18 million annually in funds, from taxpayers and international donors. Seventeen diverse commissioners were appointed by Mandela himself, most of them lawyers and judges who had, at some level, demonstrated against the apartheid system. Starting in 1995, victims filed statements, and some testified at hearings held across the country. Fresh off apartheid’s dismantling, South Africa was of worldwide interest. International journalists flew into town, filed emotional articles on the wires, rode up Table Mountain, enjoyed a couple of days on Clifton Beach, and flew out.

Globally, the commission was hailed as a success, even as it continued on, but nationally, many people were less impressed. The hearings often focused on personal tragedy, during which victims and perpetrators interacted and together relived torture, murder, and oppression. State TV played reel after reel of various sobbing South Africans, along with photos of bombed-out buildings and corpses. Cynics dubbed the TRC “the Kleenex Commission.”

Indeed, there was an element of political theater to the endeavor, but nobody could deny the searing moments, where the agony and futility of apartheid were revealed—not as abstract stories, but in human form. A former policeman, sweating in his suit, demonstrated his methods of torture before a room, pretending to suffocate a volunteer by wrapping a damp cloth bag around his head. His victims sat among the crowd.