“You can’t forget what you don’t know…` 

Sevgul Uludag 

caramel_cy@yahoo.com 

We fly to Istanbul to take part in the panel and forum of the Heinrich Böll Foundation called : `Coming to Terms with the Past: Different Fields, Different Experiences…` The speakers are myself and Andreas Paraschos from Cyprus and Antjie Krog from South Africa.

When I hear that she will be a speaker, I have to call all my friends and explain:

`You know what? Krog is coming to Istanbul! She had written a book called My Country of Skulls and then they made a movie called In My Country starring Juliette Binoche and Samuel Jackson… It`s a stunning film and won the Peace Prize at the Berlin Film Festival in 2004…`

Finally I meet her, a woman in her 50s with short, white hair… She too says she is excited about our work in Cyprus concerning the `missing` and `mass graves…`

She was a radio journalist when they set up the `Truth and Reconciliation Commission` in South Africa. In essence, they call on the public and say that there will be an amnesty to those who confess to the crimes they have committed - they would be pardoned if they come forward and confess in front of the `Truth and Reconciliation Commission`. But if they don’t confess the crimes they have committed and if there are witnesses to these crimes, then they would have to go to jail… This is the South African model of finding out what has happened in the past and dealing with it. Krog is a radio journalist and she would broadcast for two years (yes, TWO YEARS) live, what was going on in these commissions. In her presentation in Istanbul, she focuses on `Why, one should deal with the past…`

Here is a summary of what she says:

`It’s a controversial subject. Some people are saying we should forget… That is the whole idea of going forward psychologically… But others are saying, `You can only forget, what you know… If you don’t know, you cannot forget…`

In many ways, I didn’t know what happened in apartheid. It is crucial to deal with the past, if you want to make a future… If I think that apartheid had nothing to do with it, that no violence happened during apartheid, I would not be willing to make a contribution to the new South Africa because I would think, all those things that had happened, I didn’t do anything wrong so why should I now, make contributions? So it is important, if you want to build a future that you have to know what happened. It determines your future.

And with the stories you hear, you realize that racism and apartheid could only be withheld with violence. There were killings, violence and torture to keep the systems intact. And we need to know that…

My people, Afrikaaners had been colonized by the British and there was a war fought in 1900 against the British. And the British put my people in concentration camps. These were the first concentration camps in the world, it wasn’t done by the Germans but by the British. And a third of my population died in those camps. That was never dealt with when the war was over. They had said `Ok let’s forgive and forget and move forward…` What happened is that the grief and the anger of that war became privatized. No one talked about it except us. And because there was no truth established around it, it became mythology! All English were bad! Because no facts were put on the table, we could say, it’s only us who suffered.

Changing the truth is a very dangerous thing – I believe by privatizing our anger at the British, that made us do apartheid. My people thought that the English were against us and in fact, the whole world is against you! So we must make laws to protect ourselves, even if those laws kill other people, it doesn’t matter – we protect ourselves. So one injustice makes us `injustice doers` in a way…

There’s also another important thing for dealing with the past and that is to prevent making an `evil` out of others. And by not saying anything about ourselves, it means `we can do nothing wrong!` It’s not us, it’s them! That is so problematic because it will make something evil, it becomes `sexy`! They are the `evil` and we are the `saints` and people are fascinated with this!

How did we cover as journalists, the `Truth Commission` in South Africa? I was asked to head the team that covered these different stories. So one of the first lessons that we learnt was to realize that if you talk about the past, you have to expect that there are more than `one truth`. If you are not ready to deal with more than one truth, you shouldn’t deal with the past. Because for people,  the past has different versions. Maybe those versions are lies – but it’s a reality in their lives. So even if people are believing lies, you have to be aware that, that is the truth that shaped their lives. You have to accommodate all these different truths so that you create a legitimate reporting voice if you accommodate all these truths. You must question all these truths. You have experts where you discuss the different versions, you analyze why the different lies have made this.

I think it is important to report how you feel as a reporter while doing this so that other people and other countries, don’t take your story away. It’s like saying `Can I live with this? What is it in this that I cannot tolerate?` A country itself decides, what it can forgive and why it can’t forgive… Others shouldn’t tell you `This you can forgive, that you can’t forgive…` It’s the country itself that has to make that decision.

Final word: Are we truly prepared for this? It’s extremely important to prepare the ground for any truth telling and that means to explain international incidents, to explain the context, explain the jargon, `transitional justice` etc. We had a lot of groups coming from South America coming to explain and prepare the ground for `truth telling`… What is the difference between `forgiveness` and `reconciliation`? You have to prepare the ground, otherwise people wouldn’t participate in the process…`