By Dr. Marjorie Jobson,
Khulumani Support Group’s survivor-centred account of truth, accountability, reparation and transformation – a narrative for circulation to the Khulumani National Steering Committee, the Khulumani Board, lawyers, journalists, funders and the current TRC/Khampepe processes, based on a Khulumani 2014 historical presentation that preserves Khulumani’s principal claims, milestones and proposals.
The unfinished promise of 1994
Khulumani Support Group speaks from the experience of people who endured apartheid violence and from the knowledge that a democratic settlement, however historic, cannot by itself repair the lives that apartheid shattered. Our members are not merely witnesses to history. They are citizens whose lives, families, communities and futures were shaped by state violence, political repression, forced displacement, torture, detention, killings, disappearances and the many forms of harm through which apartheid was maintained.
The transition to democracy created an extraordinary opening. It promised that the truth about the past could be told, that the dignity of those harmed would be acknowledged, and that South Africa could build a different future. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) became one of the central public instruments of that promise. Yet the existence of a commission, the publication of a report and the holding of hearings cannot be mistaken for the completion of justice.
From the perspective of survivors, the transition remains unfinished when the truth is incomplete, when serious crimes are not properly investigated, when victims have little influence over decisions made in their name, and when repairs are too narrow to meet the consequences of decades of violence. Reconciliation cannot be secured by asking victims to live with the consequences while institutions move on.
Khulumani’s position is not that the TRC achieved nothing. It opened public space for testimony, recorded experiences that had long been denied, and helped establish an authoritative account of many apartheid-era violations. But its work was necessarily bounded by its mandate, its procedures and the political settlement from which it emerged. The question that matters now is whether the country has treated those boundaries as the beginning of further work—or as a reason to close the book.
The central question posed by Khulumani is ‘Did the TRC become, in effect, a “bail out” for political leaders and institutions, allowing the country to claim reconciliation before the obligations of truth, accountability and reparation had been fulfilled?’ This is a question for public examination, not a conclusion that can substitute for evidence. It asks whether the transition protected the dignity and rights of victims as fully as it protected the stability of the new political order.
The TRC: a necessary beginning, not the final word
The TRC was established under the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act of 1995. It worked through three principal committees: the Human Rights Violations Committee, the Amnesty Committee, and the Reparation and Rehabilitation Committee. Its mandate was to investigate gross violations of human rights associated with the conflicts of the past, consider applications for amnesty, and make recommendations intended to support reparation, rehabilitation and reconciliation.
The process created a national stage on which experiences that had been suppressed or dismissed could be heard. Public hearings brought victims’ stories into the record and challenged the culture of denial that had protected perpetrators and institutions. For many families, being heard publicly was an important act of recognition. Yet public testimony and official recognition are not the same as comprehensive justice.
Khulumani acknowledges that statements were taken from 21,290 people and that approximately 100 hearings were held. It draws attention to those who were excluded or struggled to participate: people facing language barriers; people whose status as victims or witnesses was unclear or contested; those who were displaced or whose severe trauma prevented them from engaging with TRC processes; people living amid continuing political violence; and people in isolated farms and villages who were difficult to reach. These are not minor administrative details. They go to the heart of whose experiences become part of a nation’s authorised history.
A process can be nationally prominent and still fail to reach many of the people most affected. Publicity events organised by government and non-governmental organisations may demonstrate institutional activity, but they do not by themselves prove that survivors have been reached, supported or included in decisions. A victim-centred process must ask who could not attend, who could not safely speak, whose language was not accommodated, whose testimony was never taken, and who was left without a practical route to recognition or reparation.
Khulumani therefore regards the TRC as an important but incomplete foundation. Its record must be protected, studied and made accessible. Its findings must not be used to imply that all relevant truth was disclosed or that all victims were identified. The work of a truth commission is not completed simply because the commission itself has ended. Its recommendations create responsibilities for government and public institutions, and its omissions create continuing obligations to listen, investigate and respond.
The measure of a truth process is not only how many statements it records or hearings it convenes. It is whether the people whose lives were damaged are recognised as rights-bearing citizens, whether their testimony has consequences, and whether institutions change in response to what they learn.
Recognition, exclusion and the politics of the closed list
One of the enduring injuries associated with the TRC process is the gap between the broad population harmed by apartheid and the narrower category of people formally recognised within the Commission’s procedures. Recognition matters because it can shape access to reparation, official acknowledgement and the public record. When eligibility is tied to a particular process, people who could not participate, whose experiences did not fit the required categories, or whose cases were not fully captured can find themselves excluded twice: first by the original violence, and then by the mechanisms intended to address it.
Khulumani’s wider organising experience has repeatedly brought forward the scale of the unmet need. The organisation has referred to a database containing just over 120,000 victim testimony statements. That figure should be understood as Khulumani’s organisational record of testimony and not as a claim that every person represented in the database has been formally determined by the TRC to meet its legal definition of a victim. The distinction matters. It does not diminish the testimonies; it clarifies what the records do and do not establish.
The concern is that a closed list can become a closed moral horizon. If formal recognition is treated as the only legitimate doorway to truth or reparation, the limitations of the original process are reproduced in the present. A list may be necessary for a specific payment scheme or legal proceeding, but it should not be used to deny the broader reality of harm, to foreclose further investigation, or to silence communities whose experiences remain inadequately documented.
Khulumani asks that the state and relevant processes distinguish between different questions. Who has already been formally recognised under the TRC framework? Who has given testimony to other credible bodies or community organisations? Who suffered related harms that were never properly documented? What legal and administrative routes exist to review omissions, correct errors, preserve evidence and assess claims fairly? These questions require careful procedures, not blanket exclusion.
The challenge is particularly important where victims’ families are engaging with legal processes, inquiries or state institutions. Representation must not displace agency. A lawyer or expert can offer indispensable skills, but survivors must remain informed participants in decisions about their own histories and claims. The people who experienced the harm should not become passive objects in a process controlled by professionals.
Khulumani’s principle is straightforward: a survivor-led movement must be able to speak in its own voice, define its priorities democratically and participate meaningfully in decisions that affect its members. The aim is not to bypass evidence or legal standards. It is to ensure that those standards are applied fairly and that the absence of earlier administrative recognition does not become a permanent denial of dignity.
Reparation: from recommendation to obligation
Reparation was never meant to be an optional gesture of generosity. The TRC’s Reparation and Rehabilitation Committee explained that reparation should acknowledge harm, help restore dignity and support healing.
Its proposals recognised that money alone could not reverse the effects of violence. The official policy framework envisaged several forms of response: urgent interim reparation; individual reparation grants; symbolic and legal or administrative measures; community rehabilitation programmes; and institutional reform. These categories are important because the effects of apartheid violence were not confined to individual incidents. They extended across households, communities, livelihoods, social relationships and the ability of people to participate fully in public life. Government had reportedly set aside about 100 million dollars (ZAR 1,654 billion) to provide for the 17,600 TRC-recognized victims.
Amongst those who called for quick action on reparations was Father Michael Lapsley, director of a non-governmental organization, the Working Group on Reparations. On the day of the handing over to President Mandela of the TRC Report, 20 March 2003, he called it ‘a significant moment.’ He reflected that ‘The truth commission process was quite an extraordinary way in which the people of South Africa confronted its past.’
He said that peoples’ main concern was ‘that the government should act very rapidly to implement the final reparations that were proposed by the TRC.’ He explained that ‘no price can be put on a person’s pain and suffering. Reparations are important and need to be both symbolic and tangible to ‘show that what happened to people had been wrong and that their suffering was being honoured, even if in ‘an incomplete way.’ He said that reparations were a prerequisite for healing and the beginning of ‘the long journey of reconciliation.’ He expressed his fear that if reparations did not happen timeously, ‘a bitter taste would be left in the mouths of many relatives of victims and survivors and that the jury was still out on the truth commission.’
The South African Parliament held its dedicated committee hearings and deliberations on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) final reparation proposals between April and June 2003. Khulumani welcomed the proposals that had been formulated by the chairperson of the TRC Truth, Reparation and Rehabilitation Committee and that were published in the Final Report of the TRC. The economist who advised the Committee, Dr Iraj Abedian had recommended a total estimated budget of R3 billion to compensate approximately 22,000 (this was based on the number of victim statements the TRC managed to capture in the limited time allocated by the TRC to that task. When these statements went through vetting by the TRC, the number reduced to 17,600.)
Many South Africans anticipated that the final report would clear the way for reparations to be paid to the victims. Instead of a single lump-sum payout, the TRC had explicitly proposed an annual individual grant structured as follows: an annual allocation of between R 17,000 and R23, 023 per year depending on the victim’s socio-economic circumstances, location (with higher amounts for rural areas) and number of dependents. This was to be paid bi-annually over a period of 6 years.
At this time, however, President Mbeki requested the Tanzanian law professor, Professor Medard Rwelamira, to review the TRC proposals for reparations. After the review conducted by Professor Rwelamira, the President announced that a final once-off individual reparation grant of R30,000 would be paid to each of the registered victims through the Department of Justice-held President’s Fund. A once-off payment cannot by itself answer the long-term consequences of severe violations, nor can a programme limited to formally identified and ‘registered’ victims resolve the reality of the arbitrary exclusion on the bureaucratic grounds of the unmet needs of thousands of victims of apartheid atrocities whom the TRC failed for many reasons to reach and include in their mandate.
Moreover, the proposals in the TRC Final Report had significantly included other categories of reparation including symbols and monuments, medical benefits and social assistance, and community rehabilitation. The existence of this scope of proposals still needs acknowledgment today because there have to date been no allocations made for these categories of reparation.
Many concerns were voiced about the adjusted proposal because it countered the professional work done by the TRC Reparation and Reconciliation Committee which had conducted extensive engagements with damaged communities. A major objection was that these revised proposals had been constructed without meaningful victim participation, thereby undermining a central question of democratic legitimacy. A reparation policy may be designed by officials and specialists, but it is meant to respond to the harm experienced by victims. If survivors are not meaningfully involved in shaping it, the policy risks reproducing the very powerlessness it is supposed to remedy.
The Rwelamira proposals made no reference to other categories of reparation including symbols and monuments, medical benefits and social assistance, and community rehabilitation. There was no recognition of the measures that had been proposed in the TRC Report. It was highlighted that a once-off payment cannot by itself answer the long-term consequences of severe violations, nor can a programme limited to formally identified victims resolve every exclusion or unmet need.
Professor Rewlamira called Khulumani Support Group after handing over his review with its amended recommendations to President Mbeki. Khulumani made a formal application to access the Rwelamira proposals. This was the first legal application using the new PAIA legislation. Our request was denied. The matter was taken to ODAC (Open Democracy Advice Centre) which challenged the denial of the application in court. The state justified its denial by explaining that the resolution of the ongoing violence in KwaZulu Natal had to take precedence over this matter. The court did not order the state to make the Rwelamira proposals available to Khulumani Support Group.
A team of resource persons with relevant expertise was hired by Khulumani Support Group. The policy proposals produced by these experts, extended beyond the narrow payment model. They included the provision of community-based psychosocial rehabilitation services to victims; access to capital for livelihood initiatives using Professor Danny Bradlow’s Reconciliation Grant model supplemented by the establishment of survivor savings clubs, based on the SaveAct methodology; and the application of the Khulumani Art and Narrative process for Healing and Heritage. Khulumani sought funding to contribute to the content of a Living Museum of the Liberation Struggle that would involve audiovisual interviews with victims on the Khulumani Reparation Database through engagement with them in the field. This became a submission by a consortium of heritage and museum experts including Khulumani Support Group, that was presented online several times to a team at the National Department of Art and Culture in response to a Call made by the Department.
A Living Museum could support public memory, intergenerational learning and the preservation of local histories. Community-based psychosocial services could make support accessible in places where survivors live, rather than expecting traumatised people to navigate distant institutions. Livelihood initiatives could strengthen the agency and material security of victims and their families, while recognising that many survivors have spent decades carrying the economic consequences of violence.
Reparation initiatives must be designed with survivors, not imposed on them. Community rehabilitation should not become a substitute for individual entitlements, and livelihood support should not be presented as a replacement for accountability. Nor should the language of healing be used to pressure people into forgiveness or silence. Reparation should restore choices and capacity; it should not dictate how victims must feel about what happened.
Khulumani calls for a transparent account of what has been promised, what has been paid, what has not been implemented, who has been excluded, and what further measures are required. The public record should distinguish between commitments, appropriations, actual expenditure and outcomes experienced by survivors. Reparation becomes meaningful when it is accessible, fair, adequately resourced and shaped by the people it is intended to serve.
The Adoption of Special Pension Legislation
In 1996, Special Pensions were introduced to ‘recognise in a practical and material way, the sacrifices made by people who helped establish a non-racial, democratic South Africa whose participation in the struggle had prevented them from providing for their own retirement.’ Special Pensions were intended to do more than provide financial assistance. They represented an acknowledgement by the democratic state that those who sacrificed their livelihoods, careers and opportunities in the struggle for freedom should not be left without retirement security because of the consequences of their service to the public interest. The legal foundation was Section 189 of the country’s Interim Constitution of 1993 which required legislation providing pensions for people who made sacrifices or served the public interest.
The implementation of the Special Pensions legislation was fraught by many difficulties. Whose sacrifices and suffering would be considered for recognition and material redress; whose claims were excluded, and what responsibilities remain towards people whose apartheid-related harms have never been adequately repaired?
Khulumani Support Group became quite heavily involved in working for the implementation of Special Pensions. Our Kwanobuhle Khulumani lead activist, Phindile Ngcingolo, (now deceased) produced a training manual with our assistance when the Special Pensions Office in the Eastern Cape requested a partnership with Khulumani Support Group. The office-bearers had found that they were greatly assisted when Khulumani provided training in Special Pension Applications to the sites which they planned to visit. This was a very effective partnership.
We invited senior staff of the Special Pensions Office housed in the facility of the GPAA (Government Pensions Administration Agency) in Pretoria to attend meetings of our National Steering Committee to ensure that accurate information would be shared with potential beneficiaries. We helped numbers of potential beneficiaries to make their applications to the GPAA which administered special pension-related functions. There are specific statutory requirements relating to qualifying political service for applicants for Special Pensions. It is not a general pension for persons who suffered under apartheid. A person might qualify for a Special Pension without being a formally recognised TRC victim. Some victims of gross human rights violations could qualify for TRC reparations without meeting the Special Pensions criteria. When a person’s Special Pension application was rejected, there was a review facility and Khulumani managed to help some whose Special Pension applications were rejected, to win on appeal.
Presently, the Special Pension legislation has been revisited, and the Special Pensions Amendment Bill (B8-2026) has been tabled in Parliament where it has been ‘Sent for Assent’. This Amendment seeks ‘to address implementation misalignments and expand protections for beneficiaries who made sacrifices during South Africa’s liberation struggle.’ Its key provisions include that:
- Benefits that were determined before the lapsing of specific statutory provisions (Parts 1 and 1AA) can be retained.
- Individuals who qualify for more than one benefit will automatically receive the greater/more advantageous benefit.
- Surviving spouses or beneficiaries who have died or been legally presumed dead, will have the right to a survivor’s lump sum benefit for surviving spouses or beneficiaries of persons who have died or
are legally presumed dead.
- The funeral benefit will be aligned with the Government Employees Pension Law, 1996.
- Applications and appeals submitted past the original closing dates can be appealed.
- There can be formal reconsideration of determinations made by the designated institution under specific conditions.
- All these benefits will be attended to by National Treasury.
Prosecutions, pardons and the right to truth
The unfinished business of the TRC also concerns criminal accountability. The amnesty process was conditional: applicants were required to meet the legal criteria, including disclosure of relevant facts and the political-objective requirements set by the legislation. Those who did not receive amnesty were not thereby entitled to impunity. The TRC’s work did not erase the state’s responsibility to investigate and prosecute crimes where the evidence and law warranted it.
Khulumani’s presentation identifies the introduction of amended prosecution regulations and policy in 2005 as a major development in the post-TRC period. The National Director of Public Prosecutions’ public statement in January 2006 described the amended prosecution policy that came into effect on 1 December 2005. Subsequently a Special Presidential Pardon regime was instituted in 2009 without meaningful victim involvement, a requirement for full disclosure and opportunities for victims to question applicants.
The prosecution policy, amnesty and presidential pardon operated under different legal frameworks. Each process needed to be examined for its impact on the rights to truth, participation, accountability and reparation. These decisions should not have been judged by administrative convenience, such as the tick-box checklist provided by the Department of Correctional Services or be determined through political settlement. The rights and interests of victims and their families must be taken into account.
Where perpetrators failed to disclose what happened, families struggle to locate the remains of loved ones. Delayed investigations result in the loss of evidence with witnesses dying. Delays inflict additional burdens on families harmed by the original crime.
Khulumani’s position is that reconciliation cannot be built on enforced amnesia. Truth is not merely a historical account produced by a commission. It may also require renewed investigation, disclosure of records, identification of perpetrators, locating the missing and explaining why decisions were made. Accountability is not revenge. It is a public commitment that serious crimes will not be rendered inconsequential by the passage of time or by the convenience of those who hold power.
A victim-centred system should provide understandable reasons for decisions, opportunities for appropriate participation, and clear avenues to raise concerns. It should protect fair-trial rights and the integrity of investigations while ensuring that victims are not treated as incidental spectators. Survivors’ voices should inform the design and evaluation of processes that directly affect them.
International litigation and the question of corporate responsibility
Khulumani’s International Lawsuit filed in New York and opposed by the South African government represents an effort to seek accountability for the corporate complicity with apartheid that benefited the transnational corporations that materially supported the apartheid system that structured economic opportunity, labour, land, movement and access to resources according to racial hierarchy. Its consequences continue into the present. Lives of victims and survivors continue to be shaped by deprivation, dispossession, and exclusion from opportunities.
The Khulumani lawsuit was a powerful generator of survivors’ agency especially given the commitment of Khulumani’s US attorney Michael Hausfeld to ensure that every legal action and its risks, costs and likely outcomes were explained with the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. When the case was closed due to the amendment of the enabling statute, the Alien Tort Claims Act by the US government, voluntary settlement of US$750,000.00 was granted by General Motors. This settlement was transferred to South Africa without disclosure to Khulumani Support Group through the intervention of the South African attorney in the case. The attorney has failed to account to the organization and its members.
Khulumani as a survivor-led social movement
Khulumani Support Group was founded in 1995 in the aftermath of the democratic transition. Its purpose has been to support victims and survivors of apartheid-era human rights violations and their families, to advocate for dignity, healing, redress and reparation, and to build a more just society. Khulumani is not simply a service provider or a collection of individual cases. It is a membership-based movement through which survivors organise, develop collective demands and participate in public life.
The movement’s strength comes from lived experience and collective organization of survivors who speak out. They have knowledge and lived experience. Participation is a crucial aspect of their advocacy. They value the assistance of people with expertise that strengthens the movement’s capacity.
The presentation’s emphasis on the distance between political leadership and ordinary people speaks to a recurring democratic problem exemplified by the toy telephone metaphor. The language of consultation may remain, while real decision-making moves elsewhere. Community voices need to be heard in their own right.
Survivor leadership is a substantive democratic principle that Khulumani tries to practice. The questions are always about who defines the problem, who controls the evidence, who sets priorities, who negotiates, who receives resources and who is answerable to the membership. Scarcity and complexity should not be used to weaken member participation.
Khulumani recognizes that healing and social change depends on relationships as site for the rebuilding of confidence through mutual support, shared analysis and action. The ability to speak, organise, remember and claim rights is part of restoring citizenship. But community resilience should never be an excuse for the state to withdraw its obligations. Survivors’ capacity to organise is a reason to engage them as partners, not a reason to leave them to carry the burden alone.
Khulumani’s call is for relationships of accountability between movements, institutions and professionals. Those who receive mandates from survivors must report back. Those who handle evidence must respect its custodians and the people whose experiences it records. Those who seek funding in the name of victims must be clear about governance, consent and the use of resources. And those who speak publicly about the past must not imply that they possess the authority to define what victims need.
From truth to transformation: the unfinished democratic project
The presentation that informs this narrative places the TRC and CODESA within a wider argument that the political transition did not resolve the social and economic conditions that shaped the country’s conflicts. The presentation attributes to Frank Meintjies the proposition that “The TRC & CODESA failed.” This stark formulation should be understood as a critical intervention into the limits of the settlement, not as a denial that the negotiations and the TRC changed South Africa’s political landscape. Its challenge is that political inclusion and public truth-telling did not automatically produce material justice, equal power or transformed institutions.
The presentation also invokes the Marikana Massacre as a painful reminder that grave violence can occur under a democratically elected government. It quotes Professor Peter Alexander’s description of the events as warfare rather than ordinary public-order policing and argues that the continuities from apartheid are profound. Marikana is not identical to the crimes examined by the TRC, and each event requires its own evidence and analysis. Yet the comparison raises an essential democratic question: what does liberation mean if poor and working people continue to experience institutions as coercive, unresponsive or indifferent to their dignity?
The future cannot be built by treating apartheid as a closed historical period whose consequences are merely private memories. Historical injustice persists through unequal access to land, security, livelihood, education, health, influence and the capacity to shape public decisions. Transformation requires attention to both the laws and policies that govern society and the everyday practices through which power is exercised.
Khulumani’s vision is captured in the organising objectives expressed as Recognition; Restoration; Transformation; and Organisation. Recognition means that victims’ experiences are acknowledged and preserved in the public record. Restoration means taking practical steps to repair harm and return dignity, agency and opportunity. Transformation means changing institutions and relationships so that the patterns that enabled abuse are not reproduced. Organisation means that survivors have the collective structures through which to pursue these aims and hold institutions to account.
This is not a call to replace one official narrative with another. It is a call to keep public institutions open to evidence, criticism and the voices of people whose lives are affected by their decisions. The work of democracy is not finished when leaders sign agreements or when commissions publish reports. It is tested in whether people can exercise rights, obtain reasons for decisions, access remedies and influence the institutions that govern them.
The current TRC/Khampepe process: an opportunity that must not be narrowed
The current judicial commission chaired by retired Constitutional Court Justice Sisi Khampepe was established to examine whether attempts were made to prevent or improperly influence the investigation and prosecution of apartheid-era crimes identified through the TRC process. The Presidency’s announcement of 29 May 2025 described the inquiry as covering the period from 2003 to the present and identified questions concerning influence over the police and National Prosecuting Authority, possible collusion by officials, further action by state organs and the appropriateness of constitutional damages.
This inquiry matters because allegations of interference, if substantiated, concern the rule of law and the state’s obligation to investigate serious crimes. It also matters to families who have waited decades for answers. Their experiences must not be reduced to procedural background. The inquiry should help establish what happened, who was responsible for relevant decisions or conduct, what evidence supports the findings, and what remedial steps are necessary.
Khulumani recognises the importance of careful evidence, fair procedures and the independence of the inquiry. It also urges that the process be understood in the wider context of the unfinished obligations of the transition. The question of prosecutions is central, but it does not exhaust the claims of victims and survivors. The long history of exclusion from reparations, the limits of formal recognition, the consequences of unresolved disappearances and the need for community rehabilitation remain part of the larger landscape.
A commission of inquiry cannot answer every question about reparations or the broader social consequences of apartheid. Nevertheless, its findings can help clarify institutional responsibility and identify necessary action. Recommendations should be specific enough to be implemented, accompanied by transparent timelines and followed by public reporting. Where the evidence indicates possible criminal conduct, appropriate authorities should consider the matter in accordance with law. Where administrative or policy failures are identified, institutions should explain how they will be corrected.
Khulumani asks that survivor participation be meaningful rather than symbolic. Families and organisations should have clear information about how to submit evidence, how their contributions will be handled, how findings will be communicated, and how concerns can be raised. The process should be aware of the risks and burdens of retelling traumatic experiences. It should also recognise that community organisations may hold valuable records and knowledge that can help illuminate patterns and omissions.
The inquiry must not be allowed to become a narrow technical exercise detached from the lives of those who have borne the cost of delay. Nor should its findings be treated as the final word on every aspect of transitional justice. It should contribute to a broader public commitment to truth, accountability, reparation and institutional integrity.
A programme of action: making the unfinished work visible
Khulumani calls for a practical programme that connects historical truth to present obligations. First, the state should publish a clear, accessible account of the implementation of TRC recommendations on reparations and rehabilitation. That account should distinguish commitments from completed actions, identify gaps, explain eligibility rules and describe what remedies are available to people who believe they were wrongly excluded.
Second, there should be a survivor-informed review of the consequences of the closed-list approach. This need not presume that every claim will automatically qualify for every benefit. It should create fair ways to assess omissions, preserve testimony, correct errors and understand the scale and types of harm that were not adequately captured. The process should include transparent criteria, reasoned decisions and accessible review mechanisms.
Third, government and relevant institutions should support community-based rehabilitation designed with survivors. Khulumani’s proposals for a Living Museum of the Struggle, psychosocial services and livelihood initiatives provide a starting point for discussion. Such programmes should be locally grounded, adequately resourced and evaluated against outcomes identified by the communities themselves. They should complement, not replace, individual reparation and legal accountability.
Fourth, the investigation and prosecution of apartheid-era crimes must be pursued independently and effectively where the evidence warrants it. Institutions should explain delays, preserve records and communicate with affected families. Decisions about prosecutions, pardons or other processes should be assessed for their legal basis and their implications for truth, participation and victims’ rights.
Fifth, survivor leadership must be built into the governance of any programme developed in response to these demands. Representation should be accountable to members, with clear mandates and regular reporting. Professionals and organisations working with survivors should disclose the scope of their roles, explain decisions and respect the independence of the movement. Funding should strengthen survivor capacity and should not require Khulumani to surrender control of its priorities.
Sixth, funders should recognise that survivor-led organising is part of the work of justice. Resources are needed not only for litigation or one-off public events, but for documentation, member consultation, psychosocial support, communications, community mobilisation and the institutional capacity required to sustain a national movement. Funding proposals should be grounded in a clear theory of change, transparent governance and measurable benefits to survivors.
Seventh, journalists and researchers should approach the unfinished transition as a living public question. They should distinguish verified facts from allegations, consult original records, listen to survivors in their own terms and avoid treating legal or political elites as the only authoritative interpreters of the past. The stories of victims are not merely illustrations of a policy debate; they are part of the evidence by which policy and institutions should be judged.
Finally, public institutions should recognise that the success of democracy cannot be measured only by electoral continuity or formal constitutional arrangements. It must also be measured by whether people who suffered state violence can access truth, remedy and reparation, and whether institutions are capable of learning from the harms they have caused or failed to prevent.
Conclusion: the struggle for truth continues
Khulumani’s historical presentation asks South Africa to confront a difficult possibility: that the transition’s celebrated achievements have coexisted with an unfinished obligation to the people who paid the highest price for freedom. This is not an argument against democracy. It is an argument that democracy must be made real in the lives of those whose suffering helped expose the injustice of the old order.
The TRC made important contributions, but it could not by itself complete the work of justice. The record of testimony is significant, but it is not exhaustive. Reparations were recommended, but the response has been limited. Prosecution policy evolved, but serious questions about delays and interference have persisted. Public recognition has been granted to some victims, while others remain outside formal categories. Communities continue to live with the material, psychological and social consequences of past violence.
Khulumani refuses the idea that the passage of time should extinguish these questions. The right to truth is not an indulgence. Reparation is not charity. Accountability is not vengeance. Survivor participation is not a courtesy. These are essential parts of a democratic society committed to human dignity and the rule of law.
The current TRC/Khampepe process offers an important opportunity to establish the truth about alleged interference in investigations and prosecutions. That opportunity must be taken seriously, with independence, fairness and care for affected families. Its work should be connected to a wider public commitment to implement reparation, address exclusion and strengthen the ability of survivors to shape the decisions that affect them.
Our future will be defined not only by what the country remembers, but by what it is prepared to do in response to what it remembers. Khulumani calls for a transition that listens again, repairs what can be repaired, investigates what remains unresolved, and changes the relationships and institutions that continue to reproduce exclusion.
The struggle is not simply to be included in someone else’s account of history. It is to ensure that victims and survivors are recognised as authors of the country’s unfinished democratic project. Their dignity, agency and leadership must remain at its centre.
Recognition. Restoration. Transformation. Organisation are not retrospective slogans. They are a programme for the work still to be done.
Editorial note: historical and legal verification
This narrative is derived from the historical themes and claims in presented in Khulumani’s PowerPoint,
Selected documentary reference points
Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act 34 of 1995 and the official TRC materials describing the Commission’s committees and mandate.
TRC Reparation and Rehabilitation Committee, Summary of Reparation and Rehabilitation Policy, including proposals to be considered by the President.
South African Government, statement by National Director of Public Prosecutions Vusi Pikoli on amended prosecution policy and directives, 24 January 2006.
South African Government, announcement establishing the Commission of Inquiry into delays in the investigation and prosecution of TRC cases, 29 May 2025.
Khulumani Support Group, historical PowerPoint supplied for conversion into a narrative; including its proposals for Living Museums, community-based psychosocial rehabilitation and livelihood initiatives.
Dr. Marjorie Jobson, is National Director, Khulumani Support Group
