Apartheid

159
suffering from dementia. 305
The Argentinean final report became a bestseller and led to the indictment and
prosecution of many generals. Guatemala’s Historical Clarification Commission 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. 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. 306
The Rest of this Book
My nine apartheid categories 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 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 minority member equal coverage in space
(print media) or time (broadcast media) to the other ten or so killings, often more. It will also
display qualitative bias, generating sympathy in the typical media consumer for the victim
belonging to the oppressive minority and even anger and hatred towards the victims of
apartheid on his or her behalf. (See Section II.9, below.)
Nonetheless, despite the overlapping and the many contradictions, I believe that there
is a system of apartheid policies and practices within each apartheid society. Frequently this
system does not seem to be entirely conscious, neither among perpetrators nor victims nor
among outside observers. The fact of oppression itself, however, seems always, or nearly so,
to be obvious to the oppressed, but not to the oppressors, nor to the collaborators. To
disentangle the essential strands of apartheid and overcome some of the many intentionally
and unintentionally erected obstacles presented to its explication as a rather simple system are
some of the strongest reasons for me in carrying out the research behind this investigation.
305 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. 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) 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.
306 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, and Chapter III.5, below.)