Country of my skull.
Abstract:
Country of My Skull, by Antije Krog, is reviewed.
Text:
A South African look at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
A leading Afrikaans language poet and journalist, Antije. Krog reported on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) for more than two years for the South African Broadcast Corporation. Through her radio broadcasts, many South Africans were able to follow the TRCs work and hear the voices of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, his fellow Commissioners,, and those of the witnesses-murderers, torturers, victims, and relatives of victims-who appeared before the Commission. Krog published Country of My Skull in South Africa before the Commission completed its work and before it released its own five volume, 2,738-page report to President Nelson Mandela in October 1998. Krog, a South African who loves her country and comprehends the significance of the Commission's work, writes with a passion and eloquence that makes her work essential reading.
Of the myriad "truth commissions" in various countries during the last two decades-principally in Africa and Latin America-the TRC was unique in its importance. Three factors are responsible for its significance. The first, and most important, was the provision mandating that amnesty be granted only on an individual basis to those confessing their crimes to the Commission. The second was the South African Parliament's decision that the Commission hearings be public. The final factor was the selection of Archbishop Tutu to chair the Commission.
The contemporary practice of granting amnesties to officials of repressive regimes began in Chile in 1978 when General Pinochet decreed that the crimes he and his armed forces had committed since they seized power five years previously could not be the subject of criminal or civil penalties. Ostensibly Pinochet's amnesty law also applied to opponents of his regime, though it did not really protect them, as they remained vulnerable to extrajudicial punishment at the hands of his secret police who made a practice of torturing those they detained. Pinochet's amnesty decree quickly became popular with other regimes in Latin America. Similar amnesties cropped up in countries such as Brazil, Guatemala, and El Salvador.
Such laws destroyed the historic purpose of amnesty. Traditionally, amnesty had been a prerogative of the sovereign to forgive those who took up arms against him. However, as England's Lord Chancellor Francis Bacon wrote nearly four centuries ago, not even the king may "make an offense dispunishable which is Malum in se." The Latin American amnesties were issued by those who exercised the power of the sovereign to forgive themselves for their own crimes that, by any measure, met the test of Malum in Se. Yet most Latin American amnesties have protected the officials who issued them. Until recently, the only exception was Argentina, where the armed forces decreed an amnesty in 1983 when they were losing power. Raul Alfonsin, one of the civilians campaigning for the presidency when democracy was restored later in the year, promised that, if elected, he would repudiate the amnesty. His pledge helped to secure his victory and, when he took office, in addition to establishing a truth commission, he ordered the prosecution of the line members of the first three military Juntas that had ruled the country after the armed forces seized power in 1976. (Five were convicted but subsequently pardoned by Alfonsin's successor, President Carlos Saul Menem). The more recent case that suggests that such amnesties do not offer absolute protection, and certainly not universal protection, is that of General Pinochet. His prosecution would be especially significant not only because of the crimes he committed but also because he launched the trend to make the authors of such crimes immune from accountability.
