Back to basics: towards community rehabilitation programs for those whose lives were damaged by apartheid violations

towards community rehabilitation programs for those whose lives were damaged by apartheid violations

Back to Basics

Community Rehabilitation

This submission by Khulumani Support Group aims to taking forward South Africa’s stalled processes of reparation, rehabilitation, and reconstruction; towards establishing appropriate community rehabilitation measures; and building victim-centered processes.

Basic principles

From TRC’s Reparation and Rehabilitation Committee:

“Reparation and rehabilitation” are words to describe what can be done to help victims overcome the damage they suffered, to give them back their dignity and to make sure that these abuses do not happen again. Although this could include money, a financial payment is not the only form of reparation and rehabilitation that the Committee recommends. The Committee looks at individuals, communities and the nation as a whole when making recommendations to achieve reparation and rehabilitation.”

Key elements in reparation and rehabilitation:

Aim: to help victims overcome damage, give back dignity, make sure it will not happen again.

Reparation is not only financial payment.

Reparations policy is based upon input and engagement with individuals, communities, and the nation as a whole

What is a “community-based rehabilitation” program?The TRC’s Committee on Reparation and Rehabilitation (CRR)describes community rehabilitation programs as:

“proposals for setting up community-based services and activities which can promote the healing and recovery of individuals and communities affected by human rights violations.”

“It is important that communities which have been affected by gross human rights abuses also benefit from reparation and rehabilitation measures. It is not enough to provide individual victims with resources and services, because this does not deal with the effects of gross human rights violations on the community as a whole.”

Community-based rehabilitation programs:

Benefit communities which have been affected by abuses

Address the damage to communities as a whole

“not enough to provide” for individual victims with resources and services: this implies that community efforts complement, but do not substitute for, providing for individual victims

community rehabilitation programs function at both community and national levels

How does this work in practice?

An example of the interaction between individual benefits and community-based services:

A paraplegic requires a wheel-chair – this is an individual benefit. A community-based service will ensure that: wheel-chairs are provided to the large numbers of

people disabled from torture and bullet wounds; wheel-chair access is part of all public buildings; programs to transport people who require wheel-

chairs to public events, shops, schools, and other places.

Without these community services, people who need wheel-chairs cannot participate in community life.

Using the TRC as the Legal Basis for Developing Community Rehabilitation Proposals:

Community rehabilitation programs should be “based on the needs expressed by those people who made statements to the TRC”. Community rehabilitation programs must restore the lives that have been harmed through apartheid. Programs should include:

On-going medical care Psycho-social trauma counselling Skills and training programs Education and support for children and grandchildren whose

parents were victimized by apartheid Investment in sustainable, income-generating projects Commemmoration and memorialisation projects

These community-based interventions:

engage victims and survivors as defined groups within their own communities

provide access to skills and opportunities for groups of victims and survivors who have been and continue to be are unable to take up opportunities available in our democracy. CRR looks at these examples of kinds of groups: disabled, people with physical medical problems; conflict survivors with post-traumatic stress; conflict survivors who lost economic capacity, homes and families

work towards building collective response to issues stemming from violations that damaged communities

“Nothing about us without us”

This principle of all rehabilitation work states that no policy should be decided by any body or official without the full and direct participation of the members of the group or groups most affected by that policy

This principle has been adopted by disability rights movements, gender activists, Black Consciousness, liberation and the US Civil Rights movements

This principle should be applied to all policies and programs to restore the lives and dignity of those who suffered apartheid human rights abuses.

In practice: Victim-centered & victim-driven programs

Programs that address the restoration and rehabilitation of victims and survivors must be founded upon the full and direct participation of victims and survivors.

These people themselves must play crucial roles in all steps taken to repair and restore their lives, from broad conception, to management, to daily implementation of the program.

WHAT HAS GONE WRONG?TRC’s Unfinished Business

It is now 20 years since the end of apartheid. Our democratic government has put money into the President’s Fund to provide rehabilitation and reparation. The money has been supplemented by several foreign governments and individuals. This fund now stands at R1,19 billion.

But today, people who whose lives and human rights were damaged by apartheid still have no repair and restoration. Many are still suffering from the effects of loss, wounds, trauma, and physical destruction.

Closing the door on restoring damaged lives: Perpetuating and transferring apartheid damage to the next generations

When the TRC began we believed it would open the doors to repair damaged lives and communities. Instead, we have found the doors closed in our faces.

Over ten years after the TRC closed, government has made it impossible for most affected people to claim reparation, or to access resources needed to restore their own lives.

Who makes decisions about restoration?Who controls access to resources?

The law gives the Presidency final say overgovernment funds and resources for reparation and rehabilitation. The Presidency delegated this power to the Department of Justice’s TRC Unit. The final decisions rest with the Minister of Finance.The DOJ took as its mandate that it could only give funds for: Individuals identified by the TRC as qualifying for “victim status”; no

person who is not on that list will be given funds. Programs established by government departments - education,

health, housing, and cultural activities related to memorialization – to help victims; but to date these other departments have not set up programs for this

The result is that the money allocated for reparation and rehabilitation remains unspent, while people are still in pain.

Closing access to individuals

Government has restricted the numbers of people who can access individual reparation grants to a small percentage of those who need them.

After the TRC closed Government said it would only grant individual reparation to those named in the TRC list of victims.

The TRC heard around 22 000 cases, referring to 44 000 individuals. But only 16 800 people were given “victim status”.

Why so few “identified victims”?There were many reasons people did not receive “victim status” from the TRC. Some of these reasons are:

The person’s statement was lost by the TRC when taken statements were put on the computer

Where a statement included many names about events that happened to a group or a community, only the person who presented at the TRC hearing was given “victim status”

People who lived in rural areas could not afford to travel to give their statements to TRC statement-takers

Women who were raped – first because many women do not want to report rape publically; second, because the TRC did not consider rape a political crime unless the woman would prove that it was primarily for political reasons

Many people who were active combatants at the time when they experienced gross human rights violations were not included as victims

Victims of banishment were not included in the reach of the TRC.

How many people should qualify for reparation and rehabilitation?

The TRC gave “victim status” to only 16 800 people in all South Africa.

Compare this with the Khulumani database, which contains over 90 000 people whose stories indicate they qualify as suffering damage from apartheid human rights abuses for which the TRC afforded official recognition.

Khulumani is aware this is not close to a complete or exhaustive list.

Cutting down on access tocommunity rehabilitation funds

The TRC final report listed 128 communities across the country amongst those that suffered massive damage from apartheid. This is not an exhaustive list. It ALSO relates only to those who managed to engage the TRC.

In 16 years since the TRC closed, government has spent NO money on community rehabilitation programs.

Last year, the DOJ proposed regulations to limit “community rehabilitation” funds to only 18 communities – two per province.

The DOJ argues that it does not have resources to provide for more than these 18 communities; but that it will try to raise money in future to accommodate other communities.

And now – closing the list for community rehabilitation

The DOJ has decided that 18 communities out of the 128 identified by the TRC should receive rehabilitation funds. The department says they graded communities according to how serious and widespread human rights violations were; then chose two from each province that they considered the worst affected to make up this list of 18. (This does not take into account the vast areas where the TRC failed to document the systematic violations that had taken place)

We doubt that this process, even if rigorously carried out for all 128 communities, would provide sufficient and rational grounds to exclude benefits to 85% of communities identified by the TRC as severely harmed by apartheid human rights abuse (omitting those that did not even manage to secure the attention of the TRC)

DOJ appoints an agency to runcommunity rehabilitation programs

The DOJ says it does not have capacity to establish or administer community rehabilitation programs. It proposes to hand over the resources remaining in the President’s Fund to the IDT to run programs in those 18 communities costing R30 million per project.

The IDT is a parastatal that manages “community development” projects, mostly infrastructural development, for government departments. It has no experience of consulting, conceiving, or implementing processes that could rehabilitate lives crushed by human rights abuses.

Its recent track record is one of the cancellation of major contracts awarded to it by National Treasury for failure to deliver. (See IDT reports to Parliament over the past 3 years)

DOJ - IDT pilot programs (2014)

Over the last year and a half, the IDT and the DOJ TRC Unit have established steering committees in six of the 18 communities earmarked for government community rehabilitation funds that have adopted proposals for infrastructure projects.

This has gone forward despite the fact that the regulations to allow this have not been finalized or gazette. They were only published for comment nine months ago (Nov 2013). They have not been finalized or approved. The DOJ claims all preparatory work has been funded from its own budget.

IDT pilot projects: stakeholders and consultation

DOJ regulations propose that the IDT should hold “stakeholder consultations” in the 18 named communities to identify what projects they will put into place. These “stakeholder consultation” meetings elect local steering committees to guide the IDT project in their area.

In pilot consultations so far, stakeholders have been municipal officials, provincial government political office-bearers, some church representation, and other community-based structures (including some political organisations). “Victims and survivors” of apartheid violations do not have reserved places at these stakeholder meetings or on the steering committees.

Programs that work for us

Victims and survivors have built programs that lead to improving lives and communities

These projects at grassroots levels have rarely or never received resources from government.

These projects provide working models for community-based rehabilitation, that have proven their effectiveness in healing the trauma in communities and families.

DOJ’s solution does not workfor us as victims and survivors

The DOJ’s proposed legislation will:

leave NO RESOURCES to provide reparations to the majority of individuals who have not received any reparations grants from government.

EXCLUDE on communities that need access to resources for rehabilitation (only 15% of those identified by the TRC are being accommodated).

Create programs that do not target victim’s needs, and that exclude processed to support the re-empowerment and development of victims and survivors.

Government has allocated funds for reparation and rehabilitation

Government has not ring-fenced funds already dedicated to victim reparation and rehabilitation.

The President’s Fund must be used for the purposes to which they were originally committed – to provide resources and support for victim-based programs within communities.

We CAN build community-basedrehabilitation programs

Many civil society organisations have created success stories in communities across the country.

Some examples from Khulumani’s work: The Khulumani Art and Narrative for Healing and Heritage

community-based process The Khulumani Victim Empowerment Program Khulumani Youth Forums dealing with issues of the next generation Gogos Going Green alternative energy projects Khulumani craft collaboratives The training community facilitators to deal with stigma in

vulnerable communities Khulumani groups working in small-scale organic agriculture The Khulumani Apartheid Archive, recording the proud histories of

ordinary citizens who took forward the struggle against apartheid.

Towards integrated restoration, reparation and reconciliation

We need to structure a framework for rehabilitation and restoration that builds upon basic principles, and uses models that we know work for us.

The TRC’s Committee for Reparation and Rehabilitation spelled out not a series of separate and isolated steps, but an integrated program of individual reparation, symbolic reparation, and community rehabilitation.

Towards integrated redress Individual reparation gives financial grants, but also educational,

medical and housing/welfare services… Individual benefits work towards community rehabilitation. Traumatised people need individual support to regain their capacity to participate in communities and to build better lives.

Symbolic reparation includes developing people’s histories through community narratives, drawing on history, art and culture. This lays the framework for building community solutions, towards supporting the economic development of victims’ in heritage and other activities within their communities.

Community rehabilitation programs work to create collective frameworks that allow these needs to be met – where the community advances as people bring to it their newly restored dignity and strength.

Building a new funding structure

Government needs to make funds for reparation and rehabilitation available for victim-centered and victim-driven community-based projects, throughout the country.

All people and communities that meet the agreed criteria (established by the TRC frameworks) -- those whose lives have been damaged by apartheid human right violations -- must be able to access these funds.

This trust fund should support:

Projects set up by victims themselves within damaged communities; where victims identify, instigate, manage and implement their own projects that address their own needs (rather than having projects done in their name without them)

Reproducible models of community rehabilitation projects that have been tested on the ground. Funding support must enable these to build capacity to reach the many areas where lives were severely harmed by apartheid.

The setting up of a national funding structure that has the capacity to identify, verify, and resources projects to redress the lives of victims and survivors. Some proposals: a Reparations & Rehabilitation Trust Fund or a Victims’ Bank or Credit Union; or cash transfers to registered victims (following a re-opened ongoing registration process)

A Trust Fund must be structured with representation from victim organisations at community and national level.

A first step must be a national needs assessment and consultative process that engages victims and survivors throughout the country – both those identified by the TRC, and those left out.

The Trust Fund should develop criteria and principles for support for reparation and rehabilitation programs, addressing individuals and communities.; these should be confirmed at a national consultative conference.

An Apartheid Victims’ Trust Fund

What could this look like?Some thoughts include -- Provision of funds for victim-centered projects that build on existing

models that have been running in victim communities. If each of the 128 communities identified by the TRC accesses R2 million for such projects, this would total R256 million– and the impact would be transformative.

Approved projects must meet clearly defined reparation and rehabilitation criteria (determined through national consultation)

Provide resources to national organisations to develop and help implement programs, to ensure on-going project support. A possible budget for this aspect could be R50 million per year.

Review the failed policies to provide individual reparations, and develop mechanisms which make possible access for those who have been unable to access these.

Include programs to provide housing, health-care and educational support from relevant government departments but also from civil society organisations with experience in these areas

Thank you. Amandla!