SOUTH AFRICA: For many people who suffered abuse under apartheid, the 10th anniversary of the truth commission is not a celebration, writes Joe Humphreys in Pretoria, South Africa
Ten years ago Maria Ntuli went before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to face the men who tortured and murdered her son Jeremiah.
The 17-year-old was executed, along with eight friends, by policemen who then dowsed their bodies with petrol and set them alight to cover up the massacre.
"It was very painful to hear how they killed them," she recalled. "They could have put them in a cell and called us parents and said, 'These kids are very naughty' - because they were only kids. Why did they have to kill them?"
Revisiting the massacre, which took place in 1986 at Kwa Ndebele, near Pretoria, was indeed traumatic. But Maria said she believed it would bring her closer to answering the question which had persecuted her the most: where were Jeremiah's remains? The police - given amnesty for speaking to the commission - failed to answer and, as the hearings progressed, Maria's doubts about the forum grew.
"At first I thought it was very good but, after we heard the evidence, we were not satisfied they were telling the whole truth." Nor, she said, was there any remorse from the perpetrators - something which should have barred them from amnesty under the TRC's rules.
"I wrote many letters to the TRC complaining about the way our case was handled but they were ignored," she said.
Today Maria refuses to forget the harm done to her son - his is one of at least 2,000 unresolved disappearances from the apartheid era. Like many survivors, she feels the TRC has added insult to injury - by pardoning the only people who could give her peace of mind.
"What I am looking for is those remains so I can bury them. I don't want money."
Ironically, she finds herself battling the very people her son fought for: the African National Congress (ANC), now the party of government. And, along with 86 other plaintiffs drawn together by the survivors' support group Khulumani, she has taken a class action against corporate sponsors of apartheid to a court in New York. This is due to rule in July on whether or not it will proceed.
Khulumani director Marjorie Jobson said the campaign had been an uphill struggle as most of the 48,000 survivors on their books are "so disempowered they don't have phones, they don't have houses and they are very impoverished. It's hard for them to be taken seriously, and the government does not take them seriously."
Last year ANC ministers announced that a limited number of cases would be reopened - but only after preliminary closed-door meetings between the National Prosecuting Authority and certain perpetrators. For Khulumani, and several other non-governmental organisations, this smacked of a "back-door amnesty".
"The greatest need is for public acknowledgement of the harm by perpetrators in the presence of their victims - not behind closed doors," said Ms Jobson.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the charismatic chairman of the TRC, has played down such criticism, arguing that the point of the forum was to examine atrocities in a "representative, or symbolic, way" rather than a forensic one.
"Nobody ever thought we would be able to deal with every single person, and no one in their right mind would have believed that the TRC would be able to pour balm on every single wound," he said.
"But we would hope that representatively and symbolically . . . people would say, 'Well, okay, I am part of those people who have been dealt with in that kind of way'."
The Nobel Peace laureate has annoyed support groups further by calling for some notorious apartheid killers, including Eugene "Prime Evil" de Kock, to be pardoned by the state and released from jail.
Ms Jobson said Tutu was "sabotaging" Khulumani's plans for "popular tribunals" before which
de Kock had agreed to testify.
One thing Tutu and the survivors' group do agree on is the need to revisit the question of restitution, which was supposed to run hand-in-hand with the TRC's inquiries and amnesties.
It took several years before the government coughed up any money to victims - and then just 30,000 rand (€4,100) a case - far less than the TRC's recommended 100,000 rand.
The commission also said a wealth tax should be levied against corporations that had benefited from apartheid - but no action was taken.
Among those still waiting for restitution is Fritz Schoon, whose mother and sister were murdered in 1984 by a parcel bomb planted by security forces "superspy" Craig Williamson.
Mr Schoon, whose late father Marius moved to Ireland after the bombing to continue anti-apartheid activities, was horrified at the TRC's decision in 2000 to grant Williamson an amnesty. He appealed to the South African High Court and an out-of- court settlement was reached.
"We are, however, still waiting for Mr Williamson to comply with the terms of settlement," said Mr Schoon this week. "The blatantly erroneous nature of numerous amnesty decisions can lead one to only one conclusion: that the TRC was a political arrangement, with numerous - if not all of the - high-profile amnesty decisions decided before any cases were heard," Mr Schoon added.
Many believe that ignoring the TRC's failings will only undermine the gains it has made in terms of aiding political stability, and promoting a culture of law and order.
Thembi Simelane, whose sister Nokuthula, is another of the disappeared, warned that the TRC's unfinished business could foster "elements of hatred" in society.
"It's 10 years for the TRC," she said. "I don't know how many years it is for us. We are still in the same limbo."
Ms Jobson eerily cited parallels between post-TRC South Africa and newly independent Zimbabwe.
"In Zimbabwe after 1981 there was this silence. You could not speak about what was done to you. It was like a virus eating you inside.
"We are setting ourselves up for those kind of problems here. Reconciliation through amnesia will never work."
On Monday: Does Northern Ireland need a truth commission?