Apartheid

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Spanish judge Balthasar Garzon’s arrest warrant and the subsequent detention of General
Augusto Pinochet in Britain in 1998. The former military dictator and subsequent ‘Senator for
Life’, was eventually released from Britain and returned to Chile, and although he was never
charged, Pinochet then lost his grip on power in Chile. He was inconvenienced and publicly
defamed by the incident, abroad as well as at home. Indeed, it seems as if the only thing that
saved him from prosecution in Chile was his lawyers’ claim that Pinochet was suffering from
dementia. 352
The Argentinean final report became a bestseller and led to the indictment and
prosecution of many generals. Guatemala’s Historical Clarification Commission, with which
we dealt above, was also much acclaimed. Peru’s TRC came into operation in April 2002.
TRCs in Nigeria, Panama, East Timor and Sierra Leone have recently started their work and
Bosnia, Serbia, Mexico, Burundi and Kenya are considering setting up their own
commissions. There are also calls for a US Truth Commission, for its role in the genocides
and the subjugation of Native Americans, racist slavery against African Americans, the
infringement of the civil rights of African Americans and other minorities, and US atrocities
in Vietnam and other nations. Yet, no TRC so far has been more talked about than the South
African one. This is partly because it is the only one so far that has the power to grant
amnesties. Its hearings were also publicized more widely, especially through television and
radio. The victims and perpetrators and Commissioners included some of the household
names of the global media. 353
Moreover, as we saw in the previous section, the South African TRC had some
spectacular successes, including the uncovering of the apartheid army’s Biological and
Chemical Warfare unit, and some equally spectacular shortcomings, e.g. losing the mandate to
investigate 98 per cent of the killings perpetrated by the apartheid army, police, and
paramilitaries, or to determine the responsibilities of white racist business practices, South
African and western.
The Rest of this Book
My nine apartheid categories interact and overlap considerably. For instance, any kind
of forced segregation, whether of citizenship, land, or access, will involve at least potential
violence. For a member of the majority to tap into the (confiscated) water reserves of the
dominant minority will involve the risk of being arrested and prosecuted, or possibly even
attacked and killed – most likely with impunity – in a police or vigilante act. Another example
of overlapping would be the intertwining of violence and ideology: The killing of a member
of the privileged minority will spark a typical ‘response’ from an apartheid state, which will
kill ten or so members of the majority in retribution. Nowadays, the mass media controlled by
the minority and/or its allies will typically give the killing of the sole minority member equal
352 Cooper: Chile and the End of Pinochet, 2001. On the active US role, especially the active role of the US
Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, in the apparently Pinochet-led coup d’état against the government of the
democratically elected President Salvador Allende, and in the ensuing military terror regime in Chile under
Pinochet’s apparent leadership with continued US support, see Hitchens 2002 (2001): 55ff; Bachelet: New
Transcripts Point to U.S. Role in Chile Coup, 2004. On the closely coordinated US corporate pressures against
democracy and self-determination in Chile, see Klein 2008 (2007): 49ff. Regarding the dementia claim, see
N.N.: I Was a Democrat, Says Chile’s Pinochet, November 24, 2003, in which the former dictator (apparently
lucidly), three years before his death, explained in an interview that he had no regrets, that he had nothing for
which to apologize, that he had always been a democrat, and that he was now writing his autobiography.
353 Hayner: More Than Just the Truth, 2001: 38f. The author emphasizes the need for criminal trials aside from
the TRCs. Peru, East Timor and Kenya joined the group of countries cited after the publication of Hayner’s
article: Webber: Peru Seeks to Heal Wounds with Truth Commission, 2001; Yates: Truth Commission Set for
Traumatised East Timor, 2002; N.N.: Kenya Plans Truth and Reconciliation Commission, February 13, 2003.
(See further Collins: Timor-Reconciliation: East Timor Man who Torched Town Seeks Forgiveness, 2002; N.N.:
East Timor Says No Reconciliation Without Justice, June 17, 2002; Cespedes: Peruvians Tell Truth Board of
1991 Slaughter, 2002; Cox: Truth Commissions and Archives, 2008, and Section III.6 below.)