AFRICANUS Vol 32 No 1 ISSN 0304-615X - University of South Africa

known as PTSD, including confusion, nightmares, exhaustion, loss of appetite
or sleeplessness (Hayner 2001:141).
In this vein, Michael Lapsley, a priest who was badly injured by a parcel bomb ±
and who has subsequently worked to assist the victims of human rights abuses
± has stated the following: ``If you have a physical wound, you take off the
bandage, clean the wound, and rebandage it. But people take their clothes off in
front of the truth commission and don't get an adequate opportunity to put their
clothes back on. It is naõÈ ve to think that it takes five minutes to heal. We'll spend
the next hundred years trying to heal from our history'' (Hayner 2001:141±143).
While there is a resistance to facing up to painful truths operating at an individual
level, there is some evidence to show that there may be a similar effect
at national levels as well. Thus certain countries, such as Mozambique and
Cambodia, that have suffered extensively from extremely violent internal conflict
have, while seeking reconciliation, deliberately avoided the route of a truth
commission, believing that to open the wounds of the past conflict, would be
counterproductive (Hayner 2001:185±200).
In 1978, in the Washington Star, an American-educated Palestinian scholar,
Fawaz Turki, offered an interpretation of his people's wounds and anger:
A people who are having their minimal demands for justice rejected will
predictably brood on themes of despair, or be motivated by new political
impulses of defiance and avowed struggle (cited in Davidson and Montville,
1982:152).
What this demonstrates is that there needs to be a sense of truth and confession
about the past before, or in order to, being able to continue with the
issues of the present; before planning a future committed to unity and justice.
4.5 The question of prosecution
There are many who believe that since the perpetrators of heinous crimes
against humanity have now been exposed, they should be punished. But in
South Africa, that will occur only in exceptional circumstances. The price to be
paid for truth in the South African case is amnesty for the perpetrators. Van der
Merwe makes a very strong argument for punishment and an associated criticism
of the commission, as follows:
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