Do you know Paul Simon’s line “These are the days of miracle and wonder”? It comes from the “The Boy in the Bubble” on the Graceland album. This was in 1986. Still, the line seemed to resonate 10 years later at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), as gruesome testimony started emerging.
Of course, the brutal behaviour of the security forces was known to many, especially its victims. But hearing it described – and sometimes acted out – was, firstly, traumatic corroboration for families of the tortured and dead. Secondly, for the victims, families, and many, many people of every ideological stripe, it was vindication. What they had believed, what they had been told, what had been suggested but never proven, was set out for all to hear.
Ordinary white South Africans who had long given the benefit of the doubt to their leaders, and over the years accepted the indignant and strident denials of wrongdoing, were brought face to face with the appalling truth about what had been done in their name. This was devastating to the moral authority of the National Party establishment not among its enemies, who believed the worst of it anyway, but among its supporters and sympathisers. They felt that particular humiliation that comes from trusting someone, defending them, and then finding you have been played for a fool.
If the apartheid regime had ever had a moral leg to stand on, which was doubtful, the NP was, following the TRC, legless.
Now we have before us the testimonies seeping out at a different sort of TRC, the Zondo Commission of Inquiry into State Capture. I’m referring particularly to the evidence of the last few weeks featuring Angelo Agrizzi, former chief operating officer at Bosasa, and several other former Bosasa employees – during which more than a few notables have been fingered.
These are, among others, former President Jacob Zuma; Minister of Environmental Affairs Nomvula Mokonyane; former Deputy National Director of Public Prosecutions Nomgcobo Jiba; former chair of South African Airways and chair of the Jacob G Zuma Foundation Dudu Myeni; axed South African Revenue Services boss Tom Moyane when he “served” as commissioner of correctional services; former chair of the parliamentary portfolio committee on correctional services Vincent Smith; Minister of Mineral Affairs and former ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe; Pretoria chief magistrate Desmond Nair; as well as (Richmond) Linda Mti, Patrick Gillingham and other senior employees at correctional services.