reparations because they were now the custodians of the state that had committed crimes against humanity before. Worryingly, few lessons have been learnt through the TRC process about how South Africa should be governed. I visited the Marikana mines recently on the Invitation of the SocioEconomic Rights Institute and they are representing the rights of these forgotten victims. And when we look at that process, we have put up a Commission for the Marikana mine disaster where 34 people were killed. We learnt very few lessons from the TRC. The Commission is structured as a quasi-judicial Court, not an evidence based hearing. So the victims are not empowered to take part fully. They do not have legal representation. The state has put several millions aside but that is only for the police, whereas the victims have none. Reparations have been promised to these victims but none has been paid. The fact that the families have lost breadwinners due to police brutality does not matter at all. This is a year on and the police report has been given to the Commission. Obviously it conceals more than it reveals. There is talk of other reports circulating in the background that have not been given to the Commission. And on the day of the disaster it was clear that the police came with a military intent and the TRC should have taught us that the kind of violence we had in the 1980s was also the result of “illegal strikes” and things like that. But there is a certain pattern here. It seems to me that the way South Africa is governed has not been sufficiently informed by the lessons of the TRC and in fact those lessons have been systematically shunned and government has refused to acquit themselves against these benchmarks set by the TRC. The Institute of Justice and Reconciliation did a national survey in 2001. It was a sample representative of the whole population. About 3 500 respondents in six languages, stratified for race, rural areas, the whole thing. And interestingly, the majority of South Africans of all race groups said they were in favour of amnesty. They were positive towards the TRC and 73% of white respondents agreed that apartheid was a crime against humanity. Now that would not have been the case before the TRC. There were some nasty things said about Archbishop Desmond Tutu, you know, the ‘Arch Angel of Revenge’ cartoon. Still the conscience began to work and operate and after the Commission had finished it was clear that no South African would, with a straight face, make a case for apartheid anymore. Now in terms of “Never again” that’s an achievement. A popular consensus was built around victim narratives that this was not right. Truth Commissions: the Best Practices 65