ContentsEducation and Training Department Truth and Reconciliation Department Additional Projects and Programmes Presentations, Seminar Papers and Conference Contributions |
The Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) is an independently funded South African non-governmental organisation, affiliated to the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Since its inception in 1989, the CSVR has been dedicated to making a meaningful contribution to peaceful and fundamental transformation in South Africa and hence, in the Southern African region. The CSVR is committed to:
In pursuit of these broad objectives, the CSVR engages in:
The CSVR works with a wide range of organisations, constituencies and stake-holders in both the governmental and non-governmental sectors. These include (amongst others):
The CSVR is a multi-disciplinary unit, engaging the services of sociologists, psychologists, criminologists, social workers, lawyers, educationalists, historians, etc. - all under one roof. The Centre's spheres of expertise relate to a wide range of forms of violence and conflict, including criminal, political, domestic and gender violence, violence against children, violence emanating from the processes of development, violence in industry as well as within the educational sphere.
Through our programmes, it is the CSVR's mission not only to service the processes of transition and democratisation, but to help generate peace and reconciliation essential to the long term prospects of sustainable socio-economic development in South Africa and in the sub-continent.
Therefore, the primary goal of the CSVR is to utilise its expertise in building reconciliation, democracy and a human rights culture within Southern African governance and society. However, because the CSVR's work is rooted in an analysis of the shifting forms of conflict and violence within societies enduring a transition to democracy, much of the Centre's work is drawn upon in the wider international context as well.
For the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR), as well for South Africa as a whole, 1996 presented most of the anticipated challenges of a society in transition from the autocracy of Apartheid, to constitutional democracy. For those concerned to drive and consolidate this transition and transformation, although there is still some magic left in the South African experience, there is considerably less romance associated with any notions of "miraculous" change. Many of the problems which presented themselves in the course of the past year, were anticipated and analyzed in the corresponding section of the CSVR's 1995 Annual Report. That report pointed to the changing nature of conflict in post-electoral South Africa - resisting any euphoric assumptions of a "post-conflict" utopia. 1996, like the preceding year, did not provide the intense political or racial conflict characteristic of the "backlash" which many commentators expected was inevitable at some point in the South African transition. Yet the year certainly did witness the consolidation of new forms of social conflict in the form of burgeoning violent crime.
In seeking to come to terms with the enduring and changing nature of violence and conflict in South African society nearly three years after the 1994 election, we must once again appeal for recognition of the fact that neither the formal constitutionalisation of South African politics, nor the process of economic development alone, will automatically achieve the "human development" necessary to re-building the social fabric and to entrenching a human rights culture. This is most evident in the harsh reality of increasing violent crime in post-apartheid South Africa.
In many respects, this sustained violence highlighted the ongoing impact of some of the less publicised features of South Africa's negotiated transition. Central amongst these was the inheritance of state institutions and bureaucracies from the former regime, along with a legacy of public mistrust - particularly with regard to the criminal justice system.
In this, as well as in other respects, 1996 was a year which drove home some harsh realities about government's capacity to deliver on the expectations of a large number of wishful South Africans - particularly in the human and hard developmental fields which are so crucial to the historical redress of past inequities, to sustaining peace, to breaking the cycle of criminality and to developing an embryonic human rights culture. However, the virtual demise of the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), the limping performance of the Masakhane Campaign and the overloaded expectations of delivery placed upon new and vulnerable local government institutions (to mention just a few examples), rather than being attributable to any lack of commitment on government's part, are all in fact symptomatic of a more fundamental - yet subtle - tension in the process of transformation of inherited state institutions.
For analysts such as Dr. Steven Friedman of the Centre for Policy Studies, this fundamental problem has been identified as "the limited reach of government". It ultimately amounts to an inability on government's part to match the demands of visionary new policy formation with the technical and financial capacity to implement these policies.
There are two essential components to this fundamental problem. On one hand, since its incumbency, the ANC government - in large part drawing on its traditional intellectual power-base within the NGOs, the trade unions and the universities - has recruited into the ranks of government, a uniquely powerful intellectual capacity for creative and innovative policy making. Government has thus developed a remarkable ability to generate visionary policy pertaining to virtually every dimension of its operations and political concerns. However, on the other hand, government's capacity to implement these policy visions has been entirely dependent on either inexperienced new recruits into government departments - who have frequently proved to have little capacity to drive and operate state bureaucracies - or inherited bureaucrats from the old order, who themselves have often been either passively or actively resistant to implementation of the policies of a new political leadership - or simply incapable of doing so.
Added to this are the sustained budgetary constraints which demand an uncomfortable process of prioritisation (both at the policy-making level, as well as in implementation strategies) if the massive task of redressing historical inequities at the social, political and economic level are to be undertaken, bit by bit, in manageable chunks.
There have been important implications of this fundamental tension. Firstly, the substantial dis-juncture between government's capacity to generate sophisticated policy visions and its capacity to implement such policy, may in fact contribute significantly to frustrated popular expectations associated with the perception that government has failed to deliver on its promises. Secondly, this gap between the vision and expectations which government policy-making has generated, and its technical capacity to deliver, may also reflect a fundamental problem with government's approach to policy-making itself. Such policy development, although visionary, may have failed to adequately prioritise short term, deliverable objectives which resonate closely enough with grass-roots needs and which are realistically operable within tight budgetary constraints and cycles. Thirdly, in some instances these tensions also arguably reflect a growing gulf between voters and their public representatives and an inability to influence or effect the recall of elected representatives or government bureaucrats who do not perform. The danger inherent in this latter perspective is that it limits the role of the organs of civil society to a rather indirect lobbying and advocacy function, which in turn accommodates the spectre, at worst, of growing unchecked corruption and mismanagement within government administration, or at best, of decreasing accountability and increased failure to perform.
In varying ways, this gap between government's policy-making capacity and its technical ability to implement has impacted either directly or indirectly on most areas of the CSVR's work in the past year.
Nowhere has this been more evident than in the CSVR's crime prevention work - and particularly our direct role in policy formation as consultants to the national Ministry of Safety and Security in the drafting of the National Crime Prevention Strategy (NCPS). The NCPS, which was passed by Cabinet in May of 1996, presents several fundamental challenges to government. It seeks to develop a victim-centred approach to crime prevention, it demands that violent crimes against women and children are given priority, it highlights the central role of firearms in violent crime, it places the youth constituency at the heart of any crime prevention initiatives, and much more. The NCPS argues for a long-term developmental approach to crime prevention, which is essentially resistant to short-term crime combatting interventions (or "quick-fix" solutions) restricted to the realm of the criminal justice departments alone. Perhaps most importantly, the NCPS therefore also advocates an integrated, cross-cutting approach from the various departments of government.
Yet in all these respects, it is arguable that precisely because it is far-sighted, the NCPS ultimately represents the kind of ambitious policy making which a government in transition is probably incapable of implementing effectively. Firstly, in demanding the establishment of programmes and policies which cut across various government departments (and which therefore demand a degree of horizontal accountability between these departments), this approach ignores the extent to which a new political leadership is actually struggling to assert vertical lines of accountability within individual departments and bureaucracies which were inherited from the former government. Furthermore, budgetary constraints also foster intense competition between various departments over finances and budgetary allocations - and this often motivates against such cross-departmental cooperation. Secondly, in framing long-term developmental solutions to the crime problem, the NCPS developed a vision which consciously anticipated media and popular political pressure for immediate solutions from government. Nonetheless, however sound this vision may be, its authors could not anticipate the extent to which an embattled and defensive government - in responding to this popular political pressure - would ultimately retreat from the principles which underpin the NCPS as a strategy document. Despite explicit warnings within the NCPS document itself, it fell victim to the extent to which violent crime became a political football during 1996.
A further related problem, was the extent to which any crime prevention strategy was ultimately dependent on the key processes of internal transformation of government's criminal justice institutions - a concern recognised by the NCPS in its emphasis on the need to re-engineer the criminal justice system. This has also been a central concern of the CSVR's Criminal Justice Policy Unit during the past five years. Yet this objective presented government with competing needs which were difficult to prioritize, because effective crime prevention was dependent on institutional transformation, but at the same time, popular confidence in the processes of transformation were equally dependent on successful crime fighting.
Finally, the commitment within the NCPS to partnership between government and civil society in seeking to develop effective crime prevention, was also inadequately sensitive to the disproportionate influence which could be brought to by specific, well-resourced and interest-based lobby groups. As a result, it is arguable that by the end of 1996, the implementation of this partnership-based approach had not realised any significant expansion in capacity-building partnerships between government and the NGO sector, resulting in many of the noble constituency-based objectives of the NCPS - amongst women, children, the youth and victims - being substantially neglected or under-utilised.
This may appear to be a rather cynical and premature judgement of government's inability to match implementation plans to the deep and insightful policy analysis which underpins the NCPS. However, it is in fact a view which is considerably more self-critical of the role of policy makers and lobbyists (including ourselves) in generating vision-based policy approaches, rather than more conservatively engaging in defining resource-driven policy priorities. It is ultimately these human, financial and technical resources which often define and probably pre-determine the limits and possibilities of governmental strategy innovation.
Whilst an example has been made here of the NCPS, variations on the themes outlined above have played themselves out in relation to most areas of work in which the CSVR has been involved during 1996. Certainly the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has confronted similar problems in seeking to fulfil its elaborate mandate. In part, the TRC's problems resulted from financial and technical constraints, but in part they were also the consequence of over-ambitious policy objectives, which were contained in legislation, rooted in political and constitutional compromise and which at a practical level, remained substantially detached from the needs and expectations which had been generated at a grass-roots level as a result of the TRC process.
By the same token, it is arguable that because of practical and financial constraints, some of government's most symbolic institutional and constitutional gestures may flatter only to deceive. The Human Rights Commission and the proposed Gender and Youth Commissions may well all suffer from an irreconcilable gap between their elaborate policy mandates and the resources with which they are expected to fulfil these mandates. Yet at the same time, they all run the risk that unless they quickly establish objectives which in practical terms contribute to redress and to delivery on the needs and expectations expressed by ordinary South Africans, these very South Africans may begin to question whether the limited investment could not have been better spent.
Similar problems dominate the arena of social services where the chasm between policy and delivery continues to plague both the educational arena and the social welfare services. This is most striking in relation to the services provided to victims and survivors of violence - whether criminal, domestic or political. These victims, especially but not exclusively women and children, are the primary focus of the CSVR's Youth Department and Trauma Clinic. They are also ostensibly at the heart of the objectives of both the NCPS and the Truth Commission. Yet it is still primarily through the isolated, under-resourced and often uneven activities of NGOs that these target constituencies find their voice and are best serviced. Whatever its commitment in principle to supporting and sustaining the NGO sector, the welfare service sphere is perfectly illustrative of government's sustained failure to translate policy into practice - through simply putting its money where its mouth is!
Implicit in much of what has been said here is a recognition of the fact that - at least in part - the challenges and constraints debated, revolve around access to resources. This is even more true for NGOs such as the CSVR, than it is for government. Yet in the context of shrinking foreign donor contributions, like government, South Africa's corporate community - with some striking exceptions - has still failed to seriously invest in this sector. To some extent this is attributable to the absence of a tax-based enabling environment which is supportive of domestic corporate contributions to non-governmental agencies. However, it is ultimately more the consequence of a real failure to recognise the vital social returns achieved through such investment. Thus, whilst business has become a particularly vocal and powerful lobby group in relation to the problems of crime the business community has nonetheless demonstrated a quite remarkable reluctance to invest any resources in victim aid and empowerment. As a result, with the withdrawal of Danish support for the CSVR's Trauma Clinic at the end of 1996, the Clinic faces closure if at some point soon South African corporates don't realise the folly of their ways. This is merely symptomatic of a dangerous potential trend: as foreign support for these NGO services dries up and government and local corporates continue to resist substantial investment in the sector, the gap between policy and delivery may well grow wider as a result of the demise of these vital NGO services!
In the final analysis, much of the critical evaluation of 1996 which is presented above - and many of the challenges implicit in it - has served to reinforce and consolidate the commitment and approach of the CSVR. In our unique ability to marry grass-roots intervention strategies with a sophisticated policy research function, we offer great potential in assisting to fill the gap between policy and delivery which currently appears to plague government. It is precisely in generating policy on the back of hard lessons learned in direct grass-roots interventions, that we recognise our greatest strength. It is through this vehicle that the CSVR can best assist in rendering audible the voices of marginalised women, children and all victims within our policy proposals and advocacy approach. It is also as a consequence of this perspective, that we can once again reassert the vital role of South Africa's NGOs with pride and integrity.
The management and staff of the CSVR once again wish to express our gratitude to the full range of embassies, institutions and foundations which have made such generous contributions in support of the various activities, projects and programmes of the CSVR during 1996.
In particular, we remain indebted to those long-term donors who have provided the organisational and occupational stability which has allowed the Centre to flourish over the past eight years. It is the sustained commitment of our core funding partners which has enabled the CSVR to consolidate and expand our organisational roles and to achieve the reputation which is our best insurance for the future at a time when the NGO sector is under considerable pressure.
The full list of the Centre's financial supporters during 1996 - either through donations or through substantial commissioned work - is provided in alphabetical order below:
Action for People's in Conflict (United Kingdom)
Anglo Vaal Group (SA)
Archipel 33 (France)
BAOBAB (Germany)
Belgian Embassy (Belgium)
Bread for the World (Germany)
Charity Projects (via Save the Children Fund (UK))
European Union (via SACBC)
The Ford Foundation (USA)
FOS - Fonds voor Ontwikkelingssamenwerking (Belgium)
Interfund
ICCO (The Netherlands)
Embassy of Ireland (Republic of Eire)
Institute for Victims of Violence (USA)
Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust (UK)
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium)
Charles Stewart Mott Foundation (USA)
NORAD (via Interfund - Norway)
One World Action (UK)
OXFAM (UK)
Royal Danish Embassy (Denmark)
Royal Netherlands Embassy (The Netherlands)
SIDA (Sweden - via Justice in Transition)
South African Druggists (SA)
St. George's United Church (SA)
The CSVR continued to operate with a conservative financial policy during 1996 and in no department did we overspend on projected budgets.
However, the spectre of decreasing donor contributions in some sectors does place the organisation under pressure in planning for the period 1997-1999. In particular, the withdrawal of funding by the Royal Danish Embassy (due to internal decisions relating to shrinking transitional funding for South Africa) has very serious implications, particularly for the CSVR Trauma Clinic. At the time of writing, the Swiss Agency for Development Co-operation has generously undertaken to step in and will cover approximately 30% of the Clinic budget for the next three years - but this still leaves the Clinic in a very vulnerable position. Of particular concern here has been the reluctance of over 175 domestic corporations whom we have approached to step in to assist the Trauma Clinic.
Further financial pressure will also result from the CSVR's commitment to attempting to close the gap between NGO and state/private sector salaries, which is essential to retaining key staff as a strategy for the future. This will undoubtedly result in an increased salary bill in 1997, but the organisation is committed to avoiding any job losses as a result of these policy decisions.
The CSVR Criminal Justice Policy Unit will also be seeking additional support in the coming year, and the Youth Department will be in the funding market to supplement its budgets for 1998 onwards.
Due to the most generous commitment from SIDA (via Diakonia - Sweden), the CSVR's Education and Training Department is largely financially secure until at least the end of 1998.
Although the CSVR's Core reserves appear high at the end of 1996, this is somewhat misleading. Core funding is particularly difficult to acquire and much of the Core surplus has been deployed in the first six months of 1997 for the purposes of sustaining the CSVR Trauma Clinic until additional donor support can be obtained.
The CSVR's Administration Department faced many difficult challenges during 1996. Most of the Centre's Departments continued to expand their staff as a result of growth in the projects undertaken by them, and this in turn taxed the administrative and personnel support sought from the Administration Department. In addition, high staff turnover continued due to the recruitment of staff by the higher paying governmental sector and this placed further strain on the CSVR's recruitment and personnel management capacity. The time of the Department Co-ordinators and the CSVR Director became increasingly consumed with managing this situation (and with fund-raising) and this challenged their human resources management capacity. Most of the CSVR managers are under-trained and have historically been employed on the basis of their ability to engage substantively with the social and research issues with which the organisation is primarily concerned, rather than for any human resources or administrative management capacity they may have.
To some extent the resultant dilemmas relate directly to donor policies and to the nature of NGO expansion under these circumstances. Understandably, emphasis, experience and funding within the organisation, are directed at project planning, performance management and implementation - leaving the secretarial support, and administrative and financial management to a few dedicated individuals - who frequently operate within structures which have developed ad hoc systems to cope with the ever increasing demands of the rest of the organisation. This is usually undertaken within the context of extreme financial constraints, as the majority of donors do not recognise and are often unwilling to fund the important funding administration infrastructure which they themselves demand. Donors, equally understandably, prefer to direct money to the projects themselves.
The CSVR has expanded from a staff of two at its inception in 1989, to a staff of forty at the end of 1996 - in addition to a large number of short-term contract workers, volunteers and interns, whose numbers vary from month to month. This increase in staff has been sustained on the basis of a broadening of the organisation's donor base, accompanied by more complex and often divergent donor requirements and relationships, as well as a substantial increase in the Centre's yearly budget. This incredible growth bears testimony to the excellent work done by the staff at the Centre, but these very achievements have placed a great additional burden on the Centre's under-resourced administration staff and structures. Coping with the increase in staff, the growing number of projects and the increase in the donor base, has meant that these staff are continually struggling to keep up with the rapid changes in the organisation.
Although the CSVR has remained linked to The University of the Witwatersrand (despite the range of problems inherent in this relationship which have been noted and described at length in previous Annual Reports), the Centre nonetheless administers all of its own financial, administration and personnel management systems. This effectively results in us nearly doubling our administrative costs through having to maintain all the necessary systems within the CSVR, while still paying Wits a 6% levy on all of our expenditure costs. Recently, the University indicated its intention to increase these costs to between 15% and 25% of the organisation's personnel costs - without any regard being given to the poor quality of the services being provided. These factors have made it necessary for us to re-examine the benefits of being linked to the University as an institution. At a strategic planning session in the course of the year, the CSVR set up a task team to investigate the implications of severing our ties with the University. By the end of the year, and after a series of protracted negotiations with the University authorities, it became clear that the Centre would in all likelihood become independent of the University in the course of 1997. This would require the development of a new legal status, as well as further development of our financial management and administrative infrastructure. Barring a substantial shift in the intractable position adopted by the University Administration, this move will be finalised in the first half of 1997.
In seeking to support the growing demands of the different departments in the Centre, the Administration Department employed additional staff to assist with some of the tasks: Amber Mashiane replaced Marie Alberts in August 1996 as a full-time bookkeeper, Mosima Selemele joined the Centre in April 1996 in the position of a part-time cleaning assistant, who also ably assists with the many meetings and workshops hosted by the Centre. Rosey Seseng joined the Centre in June 1996 in the position of secretary. She has been working most of the time as an assistant in the Resource Centre, ensuring that distribution of our research materials and publications to the public and to other organisations is most efficiently handled. The Administration Department now includes the above new staff members in addition to Bella Moloi (full-time receptionist), Sharon Moen (half-time information systems support), Pule Rampa (half-time messenger and administration assistant) and Najwa Davids (full-time administration secretary). Jacqui Cullis was employed as personal assistant to the Director and fulfilled the function of key liaison person within the Centre as a whole. Laureen Bertin is the Co-ordinator of the Administration Department and is also responsible for funding administration.
The weaknesses of the Administration Department in the course of 1996 did not lie in the lack of hard work and dedication of the staff, but rather in the relative failure of the Centre to structure a system which could efficiently fulfil a range of increasingly evident needs.
These include the following:
In previous years Co-ordinators and departmental staff were required to execute their own administration and secretarial duties. With the expansion of the departments - both in staff numbers and in volume of work - this became increasingly difficult, and Co-ordinators and staff began to rely more heavily on the staff of the Administration Department.
The Centre had not previously sought to employ a dedicated human resources manager to take care of all of the personnel and staffing issues within the organisation. However, with the expansion in staff, the lack of formal management training and expertise among the Co-ordinators, and in the absence of a Deputy Director for a long period of time, it has become apparent that such a position is crucial within the organisation. During 1996 these functions were generally shared between the Director and the Administration Department, placing a great burden on both.
While the accounting systems at the Centre are impeccable, the difficulties associated with duplicating the functions supposedly performed by the University administration has proved extremely time consuming and has over-burdened the Centre's administrative staff and systems. In addition, with the growing reliance on contributions from a wider range of donors and partners - coupled with the thrust towards some degree of self-financing - it has become apparent that a dedicated financial manager is probably a necessity in the coming years. This will also be essential if the CSVR does eventually sever its ties with the University.
At the end of the year, in order to carefully strategically plan these organisational changes, the CSVR management team undertook to bring in an expert to evaluate the CSVR's administration systems and to develop a plan for restructuring the organisation's financial, human resources and administrative systems. In any event, this was considered an imperative precursor to any final decision to leave the University. Lisa Lazarus of Lazarus and Law will be undertaking this consultancy in the first half of 1997. Their brief will be to evaluate these functions within the Centre and to advise on the best structure - suited not only to providing a professional service, but which would also suit the non-corporate culture of an NGO such as the CSVR.
1996 has been another year of consolidation and growth for the CSVR's Education and Training (E&T) Department. Seven priority areas for action were outlined at the end of 1995 and formed the strategic basis for the Department's activities during 1996. These seven priority areas were:
A need to build the capacity and professionalism of the CSVR's education and training interventions across all the Centre's departments.
The expanded development and production of educational materials and the design of educational curricula related to various aspects of violence and reconciliation.
Ensuring that issues of violence, crime, reconciliation conflict management and human rights become part of the more formal educational curricula in South Africa's schools and education and training institutions.
The need to engage with community development issues and their complex relationship to conflict and violence at a local level.
The need to build the skills and capacity of the CSVR's Education and Training Department in order to fully meet these growing internal and external demands.
The full incorporation of the CSVR's resource Centre into the functioning and strategic vision of the Education and Training Department.
The maintenance and development of the CSVR's highly successful eight year old Monthly Seminar Series.
These seven priority areas will form the basis of this activity report.
At the end of 1995 it became increasingly clear that one of the fastest growing demands on the CSVR was the need for professional, detailed and specialised educational and training interventions. These requests were made to all Departments within the Centre. The CSVR's E&T Department, in an attempt to professionalise and streamline the Centre's educational initiatives, began to assist all of the Departments with curriculum design, training and educational materials development. A number of consultative meetings were held to consolidate the work of the different departments. By the end of 1996 a number of collaborative projects had been completed which went a long way towards developing a multi-disciplinary and integrated education and training service.
Inter-Departmental Training Programmes
Inter-departmental training programmes provided some of the most successful collaborative interventions during 1997. These included:
A three day training course at Johannesburg Hospital Nursing College for student nurses on issues of transformation, racism and the changing culture of the health care sector - a collaborative enterprise between the CSVR's Trauma Clinic and the E&T Department.
A series of four week-end strategic planning workshops for the Vaal Women's Network (a programme coordinated by Anita Dries out of the CSVR offices), with a particular focus on women's development projects in Orange Farm - a collaborative venture involving the Vaal Women's Network and the CSVR E&T Department.
Training throughout the year (2 days per month) for the South African Police Service (SAPS) on gender sensitivity - once again based on a collaboration between the E&T Department and the CSVR Trauma Clinic.
Training for employees and line managers of Eskom in developing an in-house trauma management system within the company. The Trauma Clinic and the E&T Department collaborated in this training venture.
By the end of 1996, the E&T Department had established the CSVR's first Inter-Departmental Training Forum with the aim of ensuring that all trainers within the Centre develop and sophisticate their skills, expertise and professionalism in the delivery of educational and training interventions.
In the course of the year under review, it has become apparent that one of the greatest assets of the CSVR is its multi-disciplinary and multi-faceted approach to the issues of violence, conflict, human rights and reconciliation. The inter-departmental training methodology which has been substantially developed in the course of 1996, has proved to be a critical mechanism for harnessing and marketing this unique organisational asset. In the year ahead it is planned to further develop such inter-departmental training, in particular building more substantial partnerships between the E&T Department and the CSVR's Youth Department and Criminal Justice Policy Unit.
Strategic Planning for the CSVR
In addition to the above training, the E&T Department took responsibility for coordinating and facilitating the CSVR's strategic planning sessions during 1996. It is our evaluation that the vital role of skilled internal facilitation of these processes ought not to be under-estimated. The self-critical evaluative and planning techniques which are now being applied within the CSVR on a bi-annual basis, are considered to be indispensable to the organisation's leading role within its sector.
Departmental Training Interventions
Although the E&T Department is primarily concerned with the development of educational materials and curricula alongside the development of sustainable training capacity within the various departments of the CSVR, members of the E&T Department did also deliver a number of training programmes themselves in the course of 1996. Amongst others these included the following:
Training courses for WITS University Residences on Conflict Resolution.
Conflict resolution training courses for Vista Benoni Campus.
Eighty hours of training for the Kathorus Community Support Educators on: "Community worker's roles in building reconciliation and human rights within the community".
Thirty hours of training workshops for the Alexandra Plenary Group for Survivors of Violence.
As can be seen from the type and duration of these training interventions, there has been a shift from ad hoc educational workshops to more sustained training courses which are more formal and which may even be certificated courses. This type of training has also improved collaborative relationships between the CSVR and other NGOs in the training sector - there is a far greater emphasis on different NGOs contributing to these longer, more substantial and more formal courses. This renders most of these training initiatives more sustainable in the long run.
As with the direct education and training interventions, the CSVR's enterprises of curricula design, educational materials development and consultancy around the content of education and training programmes have also shifted focus somewhat. In 1996, the CSVR E&T department's emphasis increasingly fell on input into a range of initiatives which are part of the more formal training and publishing institutions. To the extent that this has been achieved and can be expanded, it undoubtedly enhances the sustainability of the CSVR's education and training interventions.
Consultants to Centre for Democratic Communications (CDC)
The E&T Department acted as consultants in the development of an educational radio programme on the 1976 June Uprisings. Together with CDC, the CSVR's E&T Department developed the programmes which were broadcast through 11 community radio stations during May and June 1996. This contract involved intensive and long term work on the scripts, materials and concepts behind the programmes.
Consultants to Soul City
The Department acted as consultants on series' two and three of the Soul City multi-media educational programme. This educational television drama series - with back-up print materials - is aired during a prime time slot on SABC 2 and focuses on aids, violence, child abuse, violence against women, developmental and housing issues and good parenting. As with the CDC radio programme consultancy, this contract involved intensive and long term work on the scripts, materials and concepts behind the programmes.
WITS Centre for Continuing Education (CCE) Community Workers Education Programme
CCE contracted the CSVR E&T Department to develop a curriculum, educational materials and to conduct training for 35 adult community workers in the Kathorus area. The CSVR's contribution to the course dealt with violence, reconciliation and the building of a human rights culture at a community level. The Department conducted 80 hours of pilot training, developed a 10 module participant's manual and a tutor's guide and contributed assisted in developing an evaluation policy for the project, as well as participating on the CCE's Project steering committee. The modules, together with the manual and tutor's guide, now qualify as a certificated course under the authority of the Wits University Senate.
VIVA Books
Viva Books is a publishing house which develops materials for adult learners. Viva contracted the CSVR's E&T Department coordinator - Tracy Vienings - to write the second half a booklet which focused on the topic of: "Dealing with Grief". The booklet was published in April 1996 and was co-written by Njubele Ndebele.
Macmillan Publishers
Macmillan Publishers, which specialises in the publication of school text books, contracted the Department to write a number of chapters for standard eight and standard ten high school text books. The subject matter focused on diverse issues within the CSVR's areas of expertise including: crime, safety, mental health and human rights. The chapters were submitted at the end of 1996 and should be published in school text book form by July 1997.
CSVR Materials and Training Manuals
In the course of preparing various direct training interventions, the Department also generated some generic education and training materials which have proved to be of immense ongoing value. In this respect, in the course of developing our trauma management training modules, we designed and wrote a Trauma Management Training Manual. The Education and Training Department also developed a National Referral Directory for victims of violence and trauma which is the first of its kind in South Africa. This services directory will also be invaluable to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a unique national compilation of available psychological, medical and social service providers who can assist victims of violence, crime and human rights abuse.
Overall it is our evaluation that - especially considering the small staff of the E&T Department - the productivity levels achieved and the quality of the materials produced are truly impressive. We believe that this is attributable to three specific factors: the high level of skill and expertise of the staff in the Department; the environment facilitated by socio-political developments among our target constituencies; and the availability of funding (whether through donor assistance or contract work) to sustain our programmes. Due to these factors we were largely able to achieve our goals for 1996 in respect of the development of educational materials and curricula design.
The E&T Dept was not particularly successful in lobbying the formal Education Ministry until the end of 1996. By this time the CSVR's E&T Department has developed an improved and credible profile as an educational materials developer and designer of educational curricula - largely through the successful completion of some of the consultancy and contract work outlined above. As a result, Tracy Vienings, the Department Coordinator, was finally co-opted onto the Civic Education Project Management Team of the Gauteng Ministry of Education. In the course of 1997, this will require our input in the development of the formal curricula - both at schools and at the adult learning level. Our specific sphere of involvement will be in respect of issues of citizenship and human rights.
The Alexandra Project for Survivors of Violence
The Alexandra Reconciliation Project was initiated in 1995 (and was briefly outlined in the CSVR Annual Report for that year) in order to facilitate a reconciliation process between the various factions in Alexandra Township who had effectively been at war with each other during the early 1990s. The object of the exercise was to create the environment in which a process of reconstruction could take place in the area devastated by this conflict. The Project does not encompass the whole of Alexandra, but is limited to a particularly devastated section of the township immediately surrounding the single sex migrant hostels and previously known as the "Beirut Area". The CSVR was contracted by the National Peace Accord Trust in March 1995 to facilitate a "reconciliation process" and the Project ran until September 1996.
This project falls into the category of what is often referred to as the "soft" side of development. This type of human development refers to the process of rebuilding the social fabric of society so that development and reconstruction process - which is often likely to generate further conflict in divided and impoverished communities - does not become violent and irrevocably divisive. It is our experience that economic development initiatives often have the potential to generate intensified conflict in communities which have often been divided over access to scarce resources. In order for these development projects to be succeed, therefore, this conflict-ridden nature of development must be acknowledged and, more importantly, must be facilitated or managed in order for the reconstruction to provide sustainable material change in people's lives. Economic reconstruction without reconciliation often means that the struggle over who benefits first from the reconstruction project or who is given preference in terms of land and housing claims, becomes a new source of conflict and violence within communities, often playing itself out along similar lines that were previously apparent in the historical conflict between community groups.
The Alexandra project ought therefore to be seen as a process of investing in the "social capital" of the area, in an attempt to set up a structure and a process which aims to manage, predict and control the conflict which might emerge - both at the planning stage, as well as during the implementation phase of the reconstruction process.
It is our evaluation that the planning and reconciliation phase in which we have played a key role, has not successfully captured and resolved all the divergent interests in the Alexandra Development project. Nonetheless, our work in this project clearly demonstrates the importance of beginning such a development process with a thorough understanding of the community profile. The importance of defining all levels of vested interests and interest groups at an early stage, is crucial to creating the opportunities to engage with various groupings who often are "invisible stake-holders" in the development process, but who nonetheless may have the capacity to destroy this process. In the Alexandra case these groups would include illegal immigrants and squatters. It is our evaluation that at the end of the funding period under review here, the Alexandra project had not sufficiently engaged with or incorporated some of these divergent "hidden" interest groups - particularly within the hostels - and these may pose a dire threat once the housing development process gets under way.
Often the complex process of determining the specific interests of each of these groups only becomes apparent once the development implementation phase is about to begin and people are forced make certain decisions. At that point it can only be hoped that violent conflict can be avoided by relying on the plenary structure which - under the guidance and facilitation of the CSVR - has been working with the reconciliation process all along and the kind of confidence and experience and mutual trust which it might have built up during the preceding 18 months. Hopefully this will create a negotiating forum which can facilitate the meeting of a range of different interests as they are expressed.
On the basis of the Alexandra experience, it is our evaluation that it is crucial that in any negotiated development project - no matter how flawed the process might be as a result of constraints, community peculiarities or difficulties in relationships with government authorities - there is a separate budget allocated to facilitating the process and providing the necessary information around which stake-holder consensus can be built. This needs to be carefully balanced against the danger of such a process becoming endless - either because of the complex nature of the interests which are being negotiated, or simply because of the way such a process can be manipulated by marginalised groups who seek to exercise more power.
At the end of 1996, funding for the Alexandra project was withdrawn and the Alexandra Plenary Group with whom we had been working was about to join the broader Alex Development Forum. It is hoped that funding will be raised for 1997 so that the Centre can play an ongoing facilitative role in this broader development forum in order to ensure that development and reconstruction of the area does not generate more violence and conflict.
The Evaluation of The Kathorus Community Support Initiative
In the course of 1996, The National Peace Accord Trust (NPAT) contacted the CSVR's E&T Department requesting that we conduct an evaluation of their Kathorus Community Support Initiative. This was an ambitious Project which attempted to build support services in the Kathorus area by training community workers in counselling and other community-based social service skills, and then placing them with NGOs in the area who were to work in collaboration with state social service providers. The planning of the evaluation Report and 50% of the interviews for the evaluation took place in 1996 and the report is due to be completed in March 1997. This project has pushed the E&T Department into more of a research support role for projects which are community based and which deal with improving community capacity to rebuild the social fabric of society. As this project is still a work in progress, it will be evaluated in more detail in the CSVR's 1997 Annual Report.
In July 1996 the E&T Department employed a new trainer - Spiwe Takura - and this has increased the Department's capacity to offer training and to coordinate the training interventions of the Centre as a whole. Before the capacity of the Department can increase any further it will be necessary to raise more funds, both for staff and for projects. To this end a detailed and comprehensive funding proposal has been completed for 1997-1999 and we are hopeful that through fund-raising success we will be able to substantially enhance our capacity in the coming year. It is our evaluation that the creative work opportunities available to this Department are limited only by these problems of capacity.
In spite of our limited staffing numbers during 1996, through creative endeavour and facilitative ingenuity, the E&T Department has been able to enhance its output and it production capacity. In particular, the Department has been involved in facilitating and running two particularly innovative international conferences which have been especially fruitful.
International Conference on Education for Mutual Understanding
The E&T Dept, together with the International Right to Hope Trust, hosted an international conference which aimed to develop collaborative partnerships and projects between educationalists, public broadcasters, artists and cultural workers who are developing education programmes seeking to build "education for mutual understanding" in divided societies. The conference participants were primarily drawn from three such historically divided countries: South Africa, Israel/Palestine and Northern Ireland. The three day conference held at the NUM Training Centre in Johannesburg was innovative and exciting and was unique in the exposure which it offered to media and cultural workers in South Africa who had not only enjoyed little exposure to these international experiences, but who had also seldom engaged with each other around the issues of violence and conflict.
The conference also produced a concrete outcome through the embryonic development of an international network among peace educators which aims to encourage the development and exchange of curricula and materials focused on education for mutual understanding.
Southern African Regional Conference on Reconstruction, Reconciliation and Transition
The E&T Department, together with the CSVR Director, assisted in the planning and facilitation of a Southern African Conference on: "Building Bridges in Southern Africa: Conflict, Reconstruction and Reconciliation in Times of Change". This conference was co-hosted by the CSVR and OXFAM (UK&I) and involved NGO representatives from Mozambique, Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Malawi, as well as OXFAM participants from Latin America.
The conference generated extensive comparative discussions and has also resulted in the establishment of a loose network of NGO actors concerned with shared issues in the Southern African sub-continent.
In the course of 1997, the conference speeches and proceedings will be published in a dedicated volume of the OXFAM Journal: Development in Practice.
The past year has seen the CSVR's introduction to the "information super-highway" and this has proved to be both miraculous and frustrating. Miraculous, as whole new worlds have opened up in relation to networking and research possibilities, and frustrating because of the limited access to resources by CSVR staff necessary to maximise these benefits at this time. For this reason we have realised that we can no longer continue to see our Resource Centre as an extended administrative function, but rather as a key component of our research and educational initiatives. To this end, we have begun fund-raising in earnest to upgrade our Resource Centre as a base for our research technology and expand the capacity of the Resource Centre in terms of staffing.
In December our website, which we trust makes our resources more easily available to others in the field, went online. After much debate about whether to contract out the design of our site or learn to do it ourselves, we decided to do it internally, as this empowers us to do updates and make changes to the site in our own time. It assists us to develop a sense of how the web works and to decide how we want our profile to be projected in this medium, not to mention the significant financial saving. Though time consuming, this has also meant considerable skills development and capacity building for Andie Miller - our Resource Centre Manager. Now that the site is established, one of our priorities in 1997 will be to create appropriate links to the sites of partner organisations involved in work relevant to that of the CSVR.
In the course of the year under review, we have found participation in discussion groups on the Internet to be invaluable, most notably in the areas of trauma and human rights. However, with the continuing expansion of our staff, it has become clear that it is impractical to aim to have a computer on every staff member's desk. For this reason we have established a "work-station" or mini computer centre within the organisation and are fund-raising to upgrade this so that all the CSVR staff can have direct e-mail and Internet access and can engage in dialogue with members of their particular fields/communities. It is impossible and counter productive to have this function managed by a few administrative staff. A priority in 1997 is to ensure that all of our staff - particularly researchers - have access to, become familiar with, and are empowered to use these research and networking tools. Though the initial costs will be substantial, we know that future costs will diminish substantially. The time that will be saved in the long term, as well as the capacity development of staff can also not be underestimated.
The past year has also seen the consolidation of the Centre's "institutional memory" - a comprehensive set of standardised resources, research papers and publications, media interviews, reports, etc. - and this means that anything written by past and present CSVR staff members over the past eight years can now be accessed quickly and easily.
The Centre's resource collection, a significant library of research articles, books and policy documents on various aspects of violence, reconciliation and human rights, and which services both CSVR staff and the public, has grown noticeably over the last year, largely due to the kindness of our former director Lloyd Vogelman, who donated a considerable amount of material to the Centre on his departure in early 1995.
The Resource Centre continued to meet ever-increasing requests for information and research packages from a range of local and international sources, including academics, the media, researchers, students, government and NGOs, etc. The "walk-in clientele" of the CSVR Resource Centre also continued to expand and the time-consuming task of compiling packages of information and documentation on the Centre, its work and related issues, severely taxed the limited resources of the Resource Centre and Administration Department staff. Nonetheless, this service continues to be regarded by the CSVR as a public education priority.
At the end of the international conference on "education for mutual understanding" organised by the CSVR, it was decided that The Right to Hope Network, which evolved from the conference, would be located at - and maintained by - the CSVR. The Resource Centre has played a part in the initial establishment of this network and in 1997 - subject to available funding - we will employ a dedicated person to manage the network and the multi-media resources produced by its members. In the interim we plan to set up a list server (interactive e-mailing list) on the Internet, in which members can engage in discussion. Of course, as many members of the network do not have access to these resources, the big challenge for us in the long term will be to expand the network as broadly as possible by utilising the range of resources currently available, while at the same time effectively reaching members at the grassroots level.
During the course of the year, the CSVR became a member of another network - Planet Society - an initiative of UNESCO. This network facilitates international exchanges between organisations involved in various forms of cultural and ecological enterprises. We look forward to participating in this network and potentially learning some lessons about the management of a network across a diverse economic/cultural spectrum.
In the medium term (by 1998), as part of our commitment to the "democratisation of information", our vision is to be able to start a multi-media Resource Centre in which academics and members of disadvantaged communities can work side by side. This will be a place where researchers can access policy documents, while those who have previously been denied access to education/information, can develop skills and utilise multi-media educational tools, whilst both are learning from each other. We believe that this is a crucial part of the transformation process, and that we can also play a part in creating a model from which universities and other mainstream educational institutions can learn.
Through the hard work of both the CSVR Administration and E&T Departments, the Centre's well established monthly seminar programme was further developed in the course of 1996. The seminar series remains hugely successful as a public debate and educational forum. The success of the programme is reflected by the programme for the past year which is attached below. The programme for the year reflects an ideal mix of high profile and prestigious presenters such as Justice Richard Goldstone and Gauteng MEC for Education, Mary Metcalfe, alongside presentations by CSVR researchers such as Brandon Hamber, Dorothy Mdhluli, Amanda Dissel, Marilyn Donaldson, Mary Robertson, Palesa Makhale-Mahlangu and Tracy Vienings. In this manner the monthly seminar series continues to expose the CSVR's research and practice to scrutiny by our peers in the field and to exposure to many of the country's power-brokers and stake-holders.
| Date | Title | Presenters |
| No. 1 20/02/1996 |
Restorative Justice: Survivor Offender Mediation and the TRC. | Howard Zehr, Carl Stauffer & Brandon Hamber |
| No. 2 03/04/1996 |
The New Education Crisis: Integration of Schools … Whose Choice? Whose Responsibility? | Mary Metcalfe & Brendan Barry |
| No. 3 24/04/1996 |
Youth at Risk | Marilyn Donaldson, Dorothy Mdhluli & Amanda Dissel |
| No. 4 29/05/1996 |
A Critical Evaluation of the Factors Contributing to the Increase in Family Murder in South Africa | Mary Robertson, Lisa Vetten & Bets Fourie |
| No. 5 26/06/1996 |
Violence and Development | Tracy Vienings |
| No. 6 31/07/1996 |
Reflections on Trauma Counselling Methods | Palesa Makhale-Mahlangu & Lionel Msibisi |
| No. 7 30/09/1996 |
Violence and Vigilantism | Enver Daniels & Wilfried Schärf |
| No. 8 09/10/1996 |
The Public, The Police & Australian Gun Policy | Rick Sarre |
| No. 9 11/11/1996 |
Genocide and Justice: The Role of War Crimes Tribunals | Richard Goldstone |
In the broad field of education and training, NGOs are increasingly being challenged to link their education and training initiatives to the National Qualifications Framework (NQF). Although the Framework is not yet fully functional, training courses which are offered on an ad hoc basis are increasingly being regarded as inadequate. Trainees and course participants want their skills training to be recognised through some type of certification and linked to further training qualifications. Although this is not always easily accessible to many NGOs, the CSVR nonetheless supports this broad approach as being positive and developmental. Linking NGO training courses to the NQF however, implies the standardisation of the different areas of education and training and this will provide the biggest challenge for NGOs in the next few years.
A related development in the light of this shift has been the creation of new avenues for educational NGOs - a widening opportunity to participate in the development of educational materials and the design of curricula which are already part of the current formal qualifications framework. In other words, many of the requests to the CSVR's E&T Department in the course of 1996 centred around formal contributions to curricula and the development of materials which could be used to enhance existing training courses offered in other institutions.
The types of requests fielded by the E&T Department during the past year were also indicative of prevailing trends in the field of violence and reconciliation. During 1996 requests predominantly centred around criminal violence and support for victims, conflict resolution of racial issues in the workplace or within organisations, and the management of changes taking place in the organisational culture of institutions and organisations. Only a limited number of requests were related to the building of a culture of human rights, citizenship and good governance issues (although much of this sort of training has been undertaken by the CSVR's TRC Department and our Criminal Justice Unit) - once again indicating that formal educational interventions are often crisis-driven rather than long term developmental interventions aimed at transformation.
As regards the future orientation of the CSVR's E&T Department, the key motivation behind planned programmes for 1997, is that they are designed to harness the work being done in all the departments within the CSVR - the E&T Department must become more functional as the vehicle in the CSVR which consolidates, professionalises and disseminates the work of all the other departments in the form of education and training programmes, materials and curricula. The Department will thus form a new base from which the Centre can effectively expand its intervention programmes and policy work.
In an integrated manner, the E&T Department aims to deliver the following:
Development of all CSVR workshops into a library of "ready to use" education and training modules.
Development and delivery of workshops and training courses based on the different modules.
Ensure that CSVR training courses become linked to the National Qualifications Framework.
Lobbying and advocacy work with the Education Ministry.
Development of in-service teacher training models.
Collecting resources and educational programmes which deal with education for mutual understanding.
Maintaining a national and international network of educationalists, cultural workers and artists who work in developing programmes in education for mutual understanding.
Putting potential partners in the field of reconciliation and conflict resolution in touch with one another in order to develop joint programmes.
Organisation of workshops and open days for teachers and educationalists to encourage skills development and dialogue in the field of education for mutual understanding.
Assisting teachers and educationalists to design and run workshops and lesson plans which challenge prejudice and encourage mutual understanding.
Development of a six part educational television and print series aimed at teachers and focusing on education for mutual understanding.
Facilitating the process of reconciliation-building during development and reconstruction projects.
Documenting CSVR's intervention programmes and analysing them in terms of educational processes.
Developing an expertise in accessing those in communities who are not reached through formal institutions by using multi-media educational interventions.
Researching the needs and feasibility of a Southern African Training Institute which provides skills for Practitioners from African countries in the process of transition.
Offering a consultancy service in educational programmes and materials development.
Maintaining and developing CSVR's website.
Training CSVR staff to use the Internet for research purposes.
Maintaining the CSVR research archives and institutional memory.
At present the Education and Training Department consists of Tracy Vienings who is the Coordinator and skilled in programme design and materials development. Spiwe Takura is the trainer based in the Department and Andie Miller, the Resource Centre Manager who ensures that the research completed by the Centre is documented and made accessible to the public and other educationalists and researchers. This limited person-power capacity cannot adequately achieve all the objectives set out above, with the result that capacity building - based on successful fund-raising - will remain an essential priority for 1997.
The projects which are planned in the Education and Training Department are creative and innovative, in that they anticipate new methods of skills training and public education: instead of relying purely on print material, the projects attempt to use multi-media educational tools. The motivation behind this shift comes from working in the field with constituencies who do not experience print materials as the most effective method of learning. Most South Africans have been denied access to institutions of learning and education resulting in a poor tradition of reading and research. According to a survey on national literacy levels by Harvard University and the University of Cape Town published in May 1995, 80% of African and 40% of white South Africans could not read or compute at standard five level (which is the level of basic literacy). For this reason most communities respond well to interventions which use the arts, television, radio and the practice of story telling. The CSVR's E&T Department will continue to attempt to respond to these needs by developing such multi-media educational programmes.
In the course of 1996, the CSVR's Trauma Clinic continued to play a key role in meeting the needs of the numerous victims of violence within our society. However, over the past years there has been a distinct shift in the nature of the referrals received by the Clinic - from victims of political violence, to a predominance of victims of criminal violence, particularly violence perpetrated against women and children. This trend continued during 1996. Nonetheless, in addition to the growing magnitude of criminal violence, we are still helping many people traumatised by the enduring effects of their past experiences of political repression and violent conflict.
Violence-related trauma remains pervasive in South African society and affects many people of all ages and from across the racial and socio-economic spectrum. The classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress respect no boundaries of race, class or political persuasion and this has become especially clear in the course of the past year as a result of the substantial spread of criminal violence. Sensational media coverage and the high political profile of the violent crime issue, have also contributed to creating popular hysteria about victimisation. Despite this - and despite the high level of governmental and corporate commitment to the fight against crime - little of this energy has thus-far been invested in the effective delivery of victim support services. As a result, there are still very few victim aid services provided by the State welfare system, and especially few credible services for impoverished sectors of the South African population. It is in this context that the CSVR Trauma Clinic provides a free counselling service for all victims of violence and therefore plays a crucial role in beginning to meet some of the needs of those who have been marginalised and traumatised. The provision of such a service is also consistent with the principles under-pinning the National Crime Prevention Strategy (NCPS) - which prioritises the needs of women and children who have been victims of violent crime, and which in general endorses a victim-centred approach to crime prevention.
The counselling service, the education and training and the policy research that was offered and undertaken by the CSVR Trauma Clinic in the course of 1996, was evaluated by us as playing an indispensable role in the healing and reconciliation of our traumatised nation.
For these reasons, it is extremely disturbing that the funding base of the CSVR Trauma Clinic has become increasingly insecure in the course of 1996. Towards the end of the year, the Royal Danish Embassy (which has generously supported the Clinic since its inception in 1991) indicated that they would no longer be funding the Clinic in 1997. (It is important to note that we have been reassured that this was due to internal shifts in funding policy on the part of the Danish Government, rather than being related to any doubt about the importance or quality of the CSVR Trauma Clinic's work.) Despite the high profile involvement of domestic business in campaigns against crime - and in spite of the corporate sector's objective interest in this - we remain sceptical that this concern will extend to providing financial support to sustain victim aid services. Similarly, although we are hopeful of receiving some form of state support for this vital social welfare function, there is ultimately little guarantee of any domestic commitment to sustaining the vital services which the CSVR Trauma Clinic provides.
The CSVR Trauma Clinic therefore enters 1997 with some trepidation, but with considerable resolve. The CSVR will continue to fund the work of the Trauma Clinic through its limited reserve funds. However, should no additional support be forthcoming in the course of the next six months, we may have to contemplate closing down the Trauma Clinic. As remote a prospect as we believe this to be, were it to happen, it would perhaps be one of the greatest indictments on post-Apartheid South Africa.
Due to the increasing client referrals and training demands, the Trauma Clinic once again expanded its staff complement during the course of 1996. Despite this, financial constraints inhibited the optimal growth of the Clinic and we still believe that we are under-staffed relative to the demands that we receive for services and training.
The Clinic now has a full time staff of eight people. In mid-1996, Palesa Makhale-Mahlangu was promoted to the position of Principle Project Officer within the CSVR and Mary Robertson took over from her as Coordinator of the Trauma Clinic - a post which she had effectively filled for the preceding five months when she was Acting Coordinator. The Clinic now has a staff complement consisting of four psychologists, a social worker, a clinical nurse specialist, a translator and a receptionist. The expansion of the Clinic team to include a range of other disciplines has allowed us to offer a more holistic and comprehensive intervention to our clients.
With the increase in staff capacity, the Clinic had to find additional space to accommodate the new staff and to deal with the consequent increase in client load. The CSVR boardroom was sacrificed for this purpose and was subdivided in order to create offices which are functional for play therapy and counselling.
A new and particularly enthusiastic group of volunteer counsellors was once again trained during the year - and this also contributed to substantially increasing the counselling capacity of the Clinic. This expansion of victim support work through volunteer training, albeit still on a limited scale, is in keeping with established international trends in this field.
During 1996, referrals continued to flow into the Trauma Clinic and a total of 1 185 new referrals were received. This is an average of approximately 100 new referrals each month and represents a 40% increase on the total number of new referrals seen in 1995.
The increase in the number of referrals to the Clinic is clearly linked to the growing magnitude of the problem of criminal violence in South Africa (and particularly in Gauteng Province) at this time. However, there are additional factors which ought to be borne in mind as well. Growing media coverage and the increased profile of rare clinical services such as those offered by the CSVR, has undoubtedly contributed to the increased rate of referrals. Furthermore, client satisfaction with the quality of services offered has also resulted in an expansion in demand. Lastly, the growing profile and popular credibility of trauma interventions has served to overcome victim and survivor inhibitions and has thus also contributed to the high client throughflow at the CSVR Clinic. The counselling needs of survivors of past human rights abuse have also increased in the course of 1996 due to the profile and operational activities of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in the course of the year.
The bulk of adult referrals are clients who have been victims of violent crime and sexual assault. As noted above, 1996 also witnessed a number of referrals through the TRC.
The counselling service offered by the CSVR Trauma Clinic is still essentially a short-term intervention of 4 - 6 sessions, using an integrative, therapeutic approach. The majority of our clients respond well to this model of counselling, especially when they have experienced a one-off trauma and are not in a situation of ongoing violence. However, clients who have suffered multiple traumas and who live in situations of continuous traumatic stress, clearly require longer term counselling interventions and - where necessary - these are undertaken by the Clinic staff. By the same token, through experience and our evaluative processes, it has also become clear that longer term interventions are often required when dealing with child victims in the Children's Clinic (see below). As a result, the Clinic is increasingly offering limited medium and longer term interventions in addition to our predominantly short-term counselling approach.
A large number of group de-briefings were also conducted during the year under review. The majority of these have been conducted with employees from various companies in the industrial and retail sector that have been through armed robberies. The Clinic has also done a number of debriefings in schools when groups of youths have been through traumatic incidents.
In addition to the individual counselling and de-briefing, the Clinic staff have continued run a number of ongoing therapy groups. These include a group for family members of homicide victims, a teenage rape survivor's group and a children's group of victims of violence. A number of family therapy groups have also been conducted, when appropriate.
The Trauma Clinic's clinical psychiatric nurse specialist - Mercy Hlungwani - has received special training in conducting medical examinations of sexual abuse victims, and this has further expanded our skills base and extended the service that is available to our clients. In addition to attending to the psychological and emotional needs of our clients, we are now able to see to some of their immediate medical needs as well.
It has already been mentioned that the role of volunteers has proved critical in providing sustainable victim support and empowerment programmes - at least in the international context. Over the past three or four years the CSVR Trauma Clinic's Volunteer Counselling Programme has gone some way to establishing such a tradition in South Africa. However, much still needs to be done to harness this potential, and the work of the Clinic staff in training volunteer counsellors during 1996 has contributed a great deal in this regard.
During 1996, the volunteer capacity of the Trauma Clinic was substantially increased. A large number of volunteers applied to participate in the volunteer training programme, from which a group of thirty candidates were selected to undergo the training. This entire group completed a ten week training programme and commenced work as volunteer trauma counsellors in the Clinic. Since then only two of these volunteers have been unable to continue working in the Clinic - in both cases, due to other job commitments.
At the end of the year under review, the Clinic therefore boasted a core group of 28 active volunteer counsellors. These counsellors receive ongoing in-service training, supervision and support from the Clinic staff. Our volunteer counsellors are an extremely dedicated and committed group of people who add tremendous value to the Centre and the community. There is continued and extensive interest by various members of the public, seeking to be trained as volunteer counsellors. Whilst this is a refreshing reminder of the commitment that many South Africans have to the process of healing and reconciliation, it simply remains impossible for the Trauma Clinic - with its current capacity constraints - to accommodate all these individual's requests for training.
The Clinic is also being forced to become more selective in which recruits are to be trained. Apart from the general rigour of screening out unsuitable candidates, it is also vital that the Clinic recruits as many African language speaking counsellors as possible - so as to enable us to meet more fully our objective of providing clients with counselling in their language of preference.
In addition to the volunteer trauma counsellors, a movement therapist offered her services to the Clinic during much of 1996 on a voluntary basis.
The number of training requests received by the Trauma Clinic continued to increase in 1996 and formed an integral part of our work. The training that was offered ranged from short talks and theoretical inputs, to extensive three to five day workshop programmes and training modules. It is our evaluation that, in many respects, such in-depth training programmes offer the potential to build substantial trauma management and counselling capacity, within the private sector, the NGO community, as well as within state departments such as Health, Social Welfare, Education and even Safety and Security. As such, a visionary training approach offers perhaps one of the most viable means of sustaining such trauma service delivery in the years ahead.
The training that has been offered during the year under review, has operated on both a preventative and curative level. Much of the training aimed at increasing public awareness and facilitating civic education about trauma and victimisation and it's impact on society. Extensive training was also provided on how to manage trauma and referral procedures.
The Clinic has developed and customised some basic training modules on various aspects of trauma which can be used with various groups. In addition to these basic workshops, training programmes were developed to meet the specific needs of the various groups that approached us in the course of the year. For example, the Johannesburg College of Education relied on the Clinic to develop and offer a module on trauma management to trainee teachers. This is now being sought on an annual basis and has now been offered for two consecutive years. From 1997, student teachers will also do brief practical internships in the Clinic.
In the course of the year, workshops and training programmes were provided to various sectors, including tertiary educational institutions, NGOs, state departments such as the South African Police Service (SAPS), nurses in the Department of Health and state social workers, as well as to church organisations, schools, women's groups, industrial and retail sectors of the business community, youth groups and community-based organisations.
During 1996, the Trauma Clinic also sustained an ongoing involvement in an inter-NGO "Gender Sensitivity Training Programme for Police" in the Gauteng region. This programme is ongoing and is aimed at training police in the sensitive management of rape and domestic violence. This project has been a successful example of inter-NGO and SAPS collaboration.
The Trauma Clinic has continued to extend it's contacts with related organisations working in the field of trauma and violence. This networking is essential considering the enormous need that exists for trauma services and to work towards maximising the efficacy of service provision. In this respect, 1996 witnessed some important advances towards the ultimate goal of developing a national and regional network of victim aid service providers. Although this objective remains a rather distant ideal, it is vital not only to the rationalised delivery of effective services, but also to the eventual standardisation of these services. As trauma counselling services expand - along with increased public recognition of the need and credibility of such services - so the danger exists of poor quality or inadequately trained service providers creeping into the picture. Networking is a vital long term means of preventing this and hopefully of eventually establishing a clear and widely accepted set of minimum criteria for the provision of such services.
During 1996, networking efforts primarily aimed at building relationships within the government and NGO sectors. In addition to cooperative work with various NGOs, during 1996 Clinic staff have participated on various forums including the Gauteng Regional Network for Violence Against Women, the forum for Victim-Offender Mediation and the Gauteng Social Welfare Forum. The Clinic has also established a working relationship with the Gauteng Department of Safety and Security and the Child Protection Unit, in order to attempt to address problems experienced by trauma clients within the criminal justice system.
In addition to links with local organisations, the Trauma Clinic has also begun to establish an international network, particularly with trauma workers in the rest of Africa. Towards the end of 1996, an African Traumatic Stress Society was initiated to address the issues of trauma in Africa more broadly. The Trauma Clinic is integrally involved in this initiative, which will allow for the exchange of ideas and expertise in order to develop an African approach to trauma management. Palesa Makhale-Mahlangu has also continued to play an important role on the Danish-based International Rehabilitation Council on Torture (IRCT). In 1996 she commenced a three year appointment as the African representative on the IRCT Bureau as well as being a full member of the IRCT Council. The relationship with the IRCT is an important one in that it provides the Clinic staff with training opportunities as well as networking links with the various international organisations that are supported by the IRCT.
Through the various networking links described here, the CSVR Trauma Clinic began to develop a new and vital lobbying and advocacy capacity during 1996. In particular this has tended to focus on the critical need for changes within the criminal justice system - and we have begun to play an innovative role in advocating the needs and rights of trauma victims, who are often re-victimised within the policing and justice institutions of the criminal justice system. Furthermore, through our growing media profile in the course of 1996, it is our evaluation that the Clinic has played a crucial role in rendering publicly audible the voices of key component elements within the community of victims. We believe that we have made an important contribution to the growing public and governmental attention being given to the particular problems of violence against women and children, as well as highlighting the sustained plight of long term trauma suffers who have been victims of gross violations of human rights. In the course of the year we have also become active and vocal advocates within our own service sector - and have begun to highlight the problems of non-delivery of basic victim aid services as the denial of a basic human right. In particular, we have sought to draw attention to the vital role and responsibility of state social welfare services in the provision of such services. In this regard, 1996 saw the Clinic beginning to develop a role as an advocate for transformation of this department of state.
Throughout 1996, the Trauma Clinic staff participated in numerous electronic and print media interviews in an attempt to raise public awareness around trauma-related issues such as child abuse, violence against women, the impact of trauma and the relative dearth of available support. The public profile of the CSVR Trauma Clinic thus increased dramatically during the year and our role as one of the organisations filling this vital service delivery gap became even more widely accredited. One of the results of this public relations success, has been the greater demand placed on the Clinic staff for both services and training.
The CSVR Clinic continued with various outreach projects in 1996, in areas such as Orange Farm, Dawn Park, Soweto, Westbury and Witkoppen. Much of this work involved a slight shift from direct victim aid service provision, to community-based skills-training workshops in skills such as the identification of various forms of trauma and referral procedures for victims and survivors. During 1996, the Clinic also assisted these communities to establish links with other organisations in their areas in order to help in developing a locally-based service provider infrastructure. This approach within impoverished and marginalised communities, evolved as a result of previous experience by the CSVR Trauma Clinic in attempts to develop sustainable service provision for victims of violence in these communities. From these earlier experiences, it had become clear that providing direct trauma services within such communities is not sustainable or feasible in the absence of any available social and physical infrastructure and such interventions may therefore result in the development of unrealistic expectations that cannot be met. The Clinic now plays more of a facilitative role in many of these communities, equipping them with basic skills and assisting with the development of local networks.
Although this policy approach has been adopted in principle during 1996, it remains impossible to simply turn our backs in the face of almost limitless demand for direct service provision. As a result, outreach work in the form of day clinics (such as the children's day clinic at the Zola Clinic in Soweto) did continue during the year, but often resulted in less than ideal treatment capacity being met with enormous demand. The result has also been a very high level of stress and pressure on Clinic staff undertaking these arduous tasks.
Throughout 1996, the Clinic continued to collect information from clients which has been entered into our database. This provides a rich vein of unique qualitative information about the nature and extent of trauma as is presented by clients attending the Clinic. This valuable information also provides some perspective on the demographics and predominant types of violence within the Gauteng region, as well as reflecting with great insight upon the failures and deficits within the criminal justice system in its treatment of victims of violent crime.
In order to properly harness this information to which we have unique access, the Clinic will need to further upgrade its database to allow for the collection of more comprehensive and broader client-based information on violence. Needless to say, such information gathering must always - and has continued to - operate within the strict bounds of client confidentiality and a professional code of ethics. However, should our vision be realised in this regard (and should the necessary funding become available), then in the course of 1997 such a comprehensive database may be up and running and able to provide ongoing qualitative information about victims' experiences. In this manner, the Clinic now has the potential to offer a kind of "short track victimisation survey" which is illustrative of key trends through rendering the voices of victims themselves audible - and which simultaneously provides an invaluable mechanism for monitoring the policing and justice institutions in their handling of victims of violence.
In 1996 the CSVR Trauma Clinic expanded the work being undertaken within the business sector and in the workplace environment. Through this it was confirmed that the workplace offers a critical point of intervention in respect of violence-related trauma, particularly because of the experiences of violence and trauma which are shared by employers and employees alike. However, despite the overwhelming concern over violent crime in the business and trade union communities, it is our evaluation that in-house capacity to deal with it remains severely underdeveloped. In the course of 1996, the CSVR Trauma Clinic has undertaken several new initiatives to remedy this situation. Apart from treatment of company employees and group de-briefings in industry, Clinic staff and members of the CSVR Education and Training Department also undertook training programmes targeted at company-based employee assistance practitioners (EAPs), line managers, and specialist target groups such as corporate security members, etc. In all these enterprises, the Clinic built on developed CSVR interventions and analysis of the business sector.
In the course of 1996, we ran a successful pilot programme with Eskom which we believe can be further developed in that company and which is also utilisable in other companies. It is our hope that this vital pro-active work will take off in business in the years ahead, but it will definitely require more aggressive marketing. In fact, it is our belief that companies could subsidize the services of the Trauma Clinic most effectively by simply contracting out many of these trauma interventions to our experienced clinicians and trainers.
Over 400 children who have been victims of violence were seen in the Trauma Clinic in the course of 1996. This excludes a large number of children who are seen on a weekly basis through the CSVR Trauma Clinic's outreach programme at the Zamokhule Child Abuse Clinic in Soweto. The nature of the violence being encountered includes child rape, molestation, children who have been witnesses to armed robbery, murder of their parents and family members or others, hijacking, rape of a parent, abandonment, other forms of family violence, etc.
These children were seen for both short and long term interventions, depending on the nature and complexity of their trauma. Techniques of non-directive and directive-creative therapies have been used, as well as the "Witness to Violence Interview". On occasion, when time has permitted, some children have been given full mental status examinations at the request of social workers and/or representatives of organisations such as the Child Abuse Alliance. The Clinic staff have also assisted in preparing children who need to go to court as a result of their trauma, as well as de-briefing them after their court appearance.
As noted above, during 1996, the CSVR Trauma Clinic continued to participate in the Zamokhule Child Abuse Clinic. Clinic staff attended the Clinic once a week and children as well as their mothers or primary "care-givers" were seen for therapy. In the course of the year there were also ongoing negotiations with primary health care workers and community organisations in Orange Farm in which difficulties such as unrealistic expectations on the part of some members of the local communities could be addressed.
Numerous invitations to run workshops on childhood trauma and child abuse were received in the course of the year. The aim of these workshops is to educate communities about these issues and to skill them in establishing community networks and dynamic working relationships between the CSVR Trauma Clinic and potential satellite clinics or groups of concerned community members. Training is also provided on simple interviewing techniques, to skill community members in the sensitive handling of children, as well as knowledge of when and how to refer on for professional assistance.
Networking continues to be an essential aspect of the work within the CSVR's child therapy unit. Extensive networks with government and non-governmental organisations have been established. These include:
The Gauteng Community Psychiatric Service's initiative in raising awareness of child mental health issues;
The Legal Resources Centre initiative regarding a multi-disciplinary approach to child abuse;
The Network Against Child Labour;
The Working group of Gauteng Social Welfare Department's provincial plan of action for children at risk in greater Johannesburg;
The Child Abuse alliance;
SASPACAN;
The TRC's Working Committee to discuss the issue of child hearings;
The Johannesburg Juvenile Justice Committee;
The National Victim Support Programme Working Committee;
The Teachers Aid centre in Soweto; and
The Gauteng Education Department.
In the course of the year the CSVR's specialised skills in this sphere were translated into public awareness and civic education through numerous contributions which were made to radio and television programmes, as well as through press articles which were written about issues related to child abuse and childhood trauma. The role of this media work is important in heightening public awareness and sensitivity to these important issues.
As from February 1997, the Clinic will be employing a clinical psychologist who will be focused on conducting research in the clinic in order to maximise the utilisation of the wealth of rich primary data to which the Trauma Clinic has access. This research will be based on information taken from the clinic data-base as well as questionnaires and interviews with trauma clients and clinic staff. An initial research project will focus on a victims' needs assessment. The information obtained from this survey will feed into policy recommendations, particularly as regards the transformation of the criminal justice system to a more victim-centred enterprise. It is also planned to develop the CSVR's research on children and violence in the course of the year, with a view to publishing a book on the subject in early 1998.
The CSVR Trauma Clinic is concerned about the lack of effective services available for juvenile perpetrators. This sector is also a primary focal point of the CSVR's Criminal Justice Policy Unit, because rehabilitation of such offenders is critical to any crime prevention programme. The sector is also central to the restorative justice models being utilized and developed within the CSVR. On the part of the Trauma Clinic, it is planned to embark upon a programme, together with the CSVR's Criminal Justice Policy Unit, in an attempt to redress this shortcoming. The Clinic aims to run groups for juvenile perpetrators and through these, to assist in the development of policy and recommendations on diversion programmes and alternative sentencing.
In early 1998, the Trauma Clinic is hoping to host an international conference on trauma, with a strong focus on trauma within Africa. During the course of 1997, the planning for such a conference will begin and we shall attempt to raise the necessary funding for a full time organiser to convene the conference. This will be an exciting venture and will contribute enormously to establishing links with trauma workers within South Africa and more broadly within Africa. The conference could well be the launch pad of an effective African Traumatic Stress Association.
For a variety of reasons - not least amongst them being financial constraints - plans for the expansion of satellite trauma clinics did not fully come to fruition in the course of 1996. However, it is intended to continue with this objective and the first satellite clinic will be run in Witkoppen, west of Johannesburg, commencing early in 1997. These clinics will be targeting communities in which there are few existing resources at present. A number of other communities have been identified where such units could operate. These units will be serviced by full time staff as well as volunteer trauma counsellors.
Although the Trauma Clinic performed well in this respect during 1996, we are determined to continue to expand our media profile as a vehicle for raising public awareness of the work we do, the issues we confront daily, and the plight of the constituencies we serve. Therefore, another of our objectives for 1997, is to embark on a proactive media campaign and to generate regular press statements and articles in order to raise public awareness of issues pertaining to various forms of victimisation.
The past year has once again been one in which numerous demands have been placed on the CSVR Trauma Clinic. There has been a marked increase in referrals for counselling and an equally marked increase in the number of training requests that were received and responded to. In addition to the direct clinical load, there have also been various internal staff changes and dynamics within the clinic in relation to staff positions and the recruitment of new staff. All of these factors have contributed to a high stress environment, in which the Clinic staff have shown incredible commitment, dedication and a unique capacity for self-sacrifice. However, no single factor has impacted more negatively than the anxiety produced by the withdrawal of Danish Embassy funding in November of 1996. For staff who - out of commitment to the constituencies they serve - make such fundamental sacrifices in personal earning capacity and stress levels, the anticipated reluctance of South African government and corporate donors to foot the bill in filling the gap in these already deficient social services, spurns an insecurity which is very difficult to countenance.
Despite the stress and change that clinic staff have had to deal with, we successfully continued to provide a professional service to the community and adequately dealt with and responded to the numerous requests for training and consultancy input that were received.
As noted, the target of establishing several satellite clinics, was not entirely met during the course of 1996. This was partially due to staff capacity being overstretched coupled with financial constraints imposing limitations our ability to expand. A further substantial factor has been the process of negotiating with the communities and the existing staff at the proposed satellite clinics, for the development of such services. This has proved to be more time consuming than anticipated. However, it is our belief that thorough consultation with all concerned parties is essential to ensure the success of these satellite clinics. This initial work has been completed in the Witkoppen area and this work will be extended into the formation of a fully-fledged satellite clinic in early 1997, when counselling facilities will become available. This satellite clinic will service an enormous area comprising a number of informal settlements.
It is recognised within the CSVR Trauma Clinic that self-care for care-givers is an integral component of providing a trauma service. In the absence of adequate structures to provide sufficient support, time off and a balanced work environment, the risk of staff burn-out is very high. Although the Clinic views self-care as a priority, it still tends to be neglected as a dimension of our organisational programme. Due to the enormous lack of resources available within the community and the extent of trauma within South Africa, clinical staff frequently sacrifice time for their own self-care in order to meet the needs of our client population. This has been partially ameliorated as a result of our increased volunteer capacity. However, it is still an aspect of trauma work which requires all staff members to be more disciplined and rigorous in its implementation.
During 1996, a very large number of training workshops and educational talks were conducted in various sectors. The Clinic evaluates this expansive programme as being exceptionally successful. An enormous number of people are accessed through these workshops which also serve an important preventative function in raising awareness and providing skills in managing trauma within communities. It is firmly believed that in the longer term, this clearly contributes towards violence prevention. This is a critical additive to the primarily curative focus of the direct counselling services which we continue to provide.
The massive demands placed on the services offered by the CSVR's Trauma Clinic have once again highlighted the enormous need for trauma services, as well as the need to develop creative responses that can reach the many people in our country who have been victimised. It is also clear that any interventions have to involve joint participation with government stake-holders, other NGOs and communities. The Clinic will still need to expand it's services in order to meet these demands, and funding from both government and the corporate sector is ultimately indispensable if we are to address the needs of our nation.
South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) began its operations in 1996, ushering in new hope for the development of a human rights culture in South Africa and the redress of past gross abuses of human rights. For the CSVR's Truth and Reconciliation Department, this heralded the start of many new projects which were to forge a particular type of relationship to the TRC. As noted in the CSVR's Annual Reports for 1994 and 1995, the Department had been planning and establishing structures to support the work of the TRC for well over eighteen months, with the result that at the TRC's inception, the Department was perfectly positioned to strategically develop its critical partnership with the TRC. The vision for the year was to work with and support the TRC in solidarity, yet at the same time challenge it to meet its broad mandate of redressing the effects of extensive human rights violations in South Africa.
The Human Rights Documentation Project (HRDP)
In the first six months of 1996, the Truth and Reconciliation Department co-ordinated the completion of the successful inter-NGO Human Rights Documentation Project (HRDP) which aimed to collate as many cases of human rights violations as possible - primarily from NGO sources. The first months of 1996 were spent collating these records into one database. The database supplied information on 4 200 human rights violations, 5 900 victims and the names of 1 300 alleged perpetrators - a total of 11 400 files. On 27 March 1996 the database was officially handed over to the TRC offices in Cape Town. The CSVR read a statement on behalf of the HRDP's NGO partners, which was also released to the press.
Following the hand-over of the database, more than ten HRDP workers from various NGOs were seconded to the TRC as consultants - either in permanent or temporary positions. Amongst these was a member of the CSVR's Truth and Reconciliation Department, Polly Dewhirst, who was seconded to the TRC as a consultant in the development of the TRC's own database.
The HRDP database became a leading conceptual model in the formation of the TRC's database. In addition, the HRDP database was used by the TRC to prepare for its first hearings in April 1996. Regional reports were compiled which not only listed the human rights abuses that took place in each region, but also provided the TRC with such details as the names and addresses of victims - some of whom were amongst the first witnesses to testify before the TRC.
In the last months of 1996, the HRDP database was adapted so that it could be fully integrated into the TRC's own database. The CSVR's Truth and Reconciliation Department worked closely with the TRC database manager in making the many technical changes necessary to make this merger possible. The CSVR retains a copy of the HRDP database for use by NGOs as a tool in monitoring the progress of the TRC.
International Defence and Aid Fund Records (IDAF)
A further aspect of the Department's human rights documentation work was the processing of the International Defence and Aid Fund (IDAF) records. Along with Justice in Transition (a Cape Town-based NGO), the CSVR had jointly negotiated to have these invaluable historical records returned to South Africa from London. The intention was to process the relevant archival material for the TRC and then to relocate the entire archive to the Mayibuye Centre at the University of the Western Cape. A considerable number of IDAF records were already housed at the Mayibuye Centre, and this exercise would also have the effect of uniting the IDAF archive.
In early 1996 the CSVR's Truth and Reconciliation Department contracted the South African Historical Archive (SAHA) to conduct a preliminary assessment of the IDAF archive. Out of the 7.5 tons of material, SAHA was able to isolate 200 boxes of files that would be most directly relevant to the work of the TRC. These included extensive court and trial records, as well as many of IDAF's publications. In June 1996 the remaining part of the archive was sent to its permanent home at the Mayibuye Centre.
The selected files were made available to the TRC to aid it in the corroboration of the thousands of cases already put before the Commission. In addition, a number of researchers were recruited by the CSVR and have begun the process of extracting information from these files and preparing reports for the TRC Research Department, to aid them in the drafting of the TRC's Final Report. This research will continue until at least mid-1997, at which point all the outstanding IDAF files will be included with the rest of the archive at the Mayibuye Centre.
As the TRC began to operate, an enormous need for assistance in establishing its various structures and functions became apparent. As the CSVR's Department had done considerable preparatory work in several relevant spheres, the TRC turned to the Department to assist in meeting a range of their needs.
Information Management System of the TRC
In the early phases of the TRC's operation, the CSVR's Department members - based on their previous documentation experience with the HRDP - were consulted on the establishment of an information management system within the TRC. As has been mentioned, Polly Dewhirst was seconded to the TRC for a three month period to assist in devising some of the coding systems of the TRC database and to assist in integrating the HRDP database into the TRC system. Brandon Hamber was consulted extensively and was part of the initial TRC workshops which focused on the development of an information management system. This culminated in the first pilot "Statement-Taking Form" - or Protocol - which the TRC was to use to record the testimony of victims. Brandon Hamber, along with other consultants, then assisted in developing and training the TRC Statement-Takers from across the country.
Communications Strategy of the TRC
As the first months of the TRC passed, it became apparent that the organisation's communications strategy was particularly under-developed. Many victims, as well as the public at large, complained that they had little knowledge of the workings of the TRC. As a result, several of the Truth Commissioners requested that the CSVR make suggestions on how a TRC communications strategy could be operationalised. The CSVR's Lauren Segal - an educational and materials development expert - developed and presented a fully fledged proposal for civic education to the TRC.
The proposal was for a joint project involving a partnership between Vuleka Community Radio, The Centre for Democratic Communications, The Open Window Network, The Storyteller Group and the CSVR. The project proposal received the full backing of a range of legal, religious and human rights NGOs, including: Justice and Peace (SACBC), Lawyers for Human Rights, the Anglican and Methodist Churches and the South African Council of Churches. These groupings were all concerned to ensure that community education about the TRC - potentially on a scale similar to Voter Education - occurred on a national level. Despite the extensive work invested in developing such a strategy - and despite the fact that a range of multi-media educational materials had already been produced by the CSVR (including workshop manuals, flip-charts, an educational comic, and a video) - the TRC put out a tender and eventually contracted an advertising agency to boost the public profile of the TRC.
The CSVR's Truth and Reconciliation Department continued to independently develop and run the extensive education workshops which had already been initiated in 1995 (see below). Nonetheless, it is our evaluation that the TRC's attempt to substitute media profile for grass-roots civic education, proved to be one of its most significant strategic blunders in 1996. This approach sacrificed considerable popular support and understanding of the TRC's work, its objectives and its limitations. In particular, the TRC made a significant mistake in not utilising NGOs to develop a civic education strategy for the Commission, which would have significantly enhanced its impact. It is hoped that this can still be remedied in the final year of the TRC's existence.
Reparation and Rehabilitation Policy
Throughout the year, the CSVR Department participated in Reparation Workshops hosted by the TRC. In September the CSVR's Department co-ordinator, Brandon Hamber, was invited to Cape Town by the TRC's Reparation and Rehabilitation Committee (R&R) to assist in drafting recommendations for an urgent interim reparations policy for victims. With a team of people, mainly from the R&R Committee of the TRC, a draft policy framework was completed. The TRC then aimed to feed the policy framework back to the entire Commission for discussion before the final version was to be sent to Parliament. Even though the TRC had already been running for over a year, the urgent reparations policy was only planned to begin in 1997.
Community Education
Under the direction of Tlhoki Mofokeng, the Department's Community Services Co-ordinator, and Elias Traggy Maepa, the Department's Trainer, 73 education and training workshops were run by CSVR on the TRC during 1996. These workshops have largely been geared towards survivors or families of victims of human rights abuses. Some of the workshops have serviced organisations whom the CSVR identified as being able to play a supportive role in the development of survivor support groups in their areas. In terms of geographical distribution, 51 workshops were held in Gauteng, 12 in Mpumalanga, 4 in the Northern Province, 3 in the Eastern Cape, 2 in North West Province and 1 in the Northern Cape. An additional workshop was held with the Trauma Centre for Victims of Violence and Torture in the Western Cape, in order to explore the possibility of initiating a similar process in that region.
The workshops utilised the materials developed by the CSVR to educate individuals about the TRC (i.e. training video, CSVR TRC training manual, educative comic, etc.) as well as other materials developed by the TRC itself. The CSVR strategy in running these workshops has been both to educate people about the TRC, as well as to use the process to begin localised support groups using the Khulumani format (see below). This is based on the belief that victims need support through the process of the TRC and that formal mental health care services are unable to provide this service. To effect this aim, social support organisations, faith communities, services groupings (e.g. counselling groups), legal and paralegal support structures and groupings who could provide support for the victim support groups, have become an integral component of the CSVR's strategy for educational workshops. To this end CSVR has hosted a range of coalition meetings between various such support organisations. By utilising these organisations, it is intended to build sustainability into the process so that victim-support can continue beyond the life of the TRC. The organisational coalitions which have been established operate with varying degrees of success. Support from different organisations and faith communities is varied depending on their accessibility, the availability of resources and the willingness to participate.
The CSVR has also utilised and formed partnerships with Lawyers for Human Rights and the Justice and Peace Commission of the South African Catholic Bishops' Conference (SACBC), both of whom provide educational workshops about the TRC utilising the CSVR's training materials. More recently, assistance from other local support structures such as the South African Council of Churches (SACC) has also been drawn upon in some areas. The CSVR has trained field-workers from several different organisations to run these education workshops. One of the greatest difficulties in expanding the process has been the lack of training materials. Many of the church workers and NGOs trained by the CSVR could now continue and expand the running of education workshops, but for the lack of hard copy resources which has rendered this impossible.
Public and Constituency-based Education
A range of specific constituencies have been provided with information and trained about the TRC. These have included church groupings (eg inter-denominational groups, some 120 Methodist priests, etc.) and the various NGOs mentioned above.
The CSVR took a significant initiative in providing a three day workshop on the TRC for support workers of the South African Police Services (SAPS). This was a national workshop with full participation by members of the SAPS Social Services, Psychological Services, Chaplains, Legal Services and Communications Departments of each province. These service sector personnel were trained to facilitate support for police members and for the TRC process. The workshop was also aimed at enhancing the objectives of the TRC through ensuring that it did not meet with institutional resistance within the SAPS at this level. This workshop was evaluated as a particularly significant breakthrough in a critical sector which had thus-far proved itself to be hostile to the TRC and its objectives. It is unfortunately our evaluation that, during the period under review, neither TRC nor the Secretariat of Safety and Security did enough to adequately capitalise on this approach by the CSVR. Neither party did very much to consolidate the institutional support for the TRC which was so actively encouraged by the workshop process.
Several other constituencies were also targeted though these educational workshops. Some of these were aimed at industry - most notably with a range of Nedcor staff, as well as a number of Employee Assistance Personnel (EAP) in other companies. CSVR's Truth Commission Department members also participated in and co-hosted a workshop with journalists on reporting on the TRC. A follow-up workshop with journalists covering the TRC is envisaged for 1997, in which the CSVR will collaborate with the Cape Town-based Media Peace Centre as organisers.
Public education about the TRC has been stressed as an ongoing priority of the CSVR's Truth and Reconciliation Department during the period under review. Several educational materials were developed by staff in the Department to best facilitate this process.
Educational Comic on the TRC
This comic, targeted at a youthful and/or semi-literate audience was jointly developed by CSVR's Truth and Reconciliation Department and the Khulumani Support Groups. The comic has proven to be very useful as an educational tool in the workshop context. Approximately 10 000 comics were distributed by the CSVR in 1996. Due to the positive response to the comic - and after the TRC's Communication Department approved of the content of the comic - the CSVR printed another 50 000 copies of this publication at the end of 1996. The comic was printed in three languages and will continue being distributed through educational workshops, as well as being made available to the various TRC offices.
Film: Remembering and Forgetting
In July 1996, based on the highly successful Khulumani Video produced by CSVR and screened by the public broadcaster, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) contracted the CSVR to produce a 30 minute documentary for screening on national television. This film was based on a cultural event in Cape Town organised by the Fault Lines Project. This Project aimed to focus on a cultural perspective on dealing with the past and the developments of the TRC, by bringing together an international group of writers, artists and poets to reflect on these issues. The filmed documentation of this process was directed by Steven Silver (contracted worker) and was produced by Lauren Segal from the CSVR. The Associate Producer was Brandon Hamber, also from the CSVR. Through its screening on national television, the film reached a diverse audience and brought a new angle to bear on the TRC. Importantly for the CSVR's Truth and Reconciliation Department, this afforded the Department an opportunity to work under contract to a major broadcaster - and contributed to equipping the CSVR with skills to produce further civic educational products of this nature in the future.
TRC Audio Cassette
In conjunction with Vuleka Radio Productions in Durban, the Department also produced an educational audio cassette on the TRC. The script for the 20 minute programme was written by Brandon Hamber and Lauren Segal from CSVR. It is planned that the tape will be extensively distributed to community radio stations in 1997. This will serve to stimulate debate on the TRC and it is intended that the tape will also be used to publicise the Khulumani Support Group.
The provision of psychological support, particularly for those testifying before the TRC, remained a priority area of concern for the CSVR's Truth and Reconciliation Department during 1996.
Self-help Support Structures
A major strategy for ensuring the provision of such psychological support has been through the establishment of the Khulumani Support Groups. This extensive process of building extended self-help groups of victims and survivors of past human rights abuse, has facilitated a range of informal support mechanisms between the members of these groups. Through the network, active psychological support for victims and survivors has undoubtedly been generated. For example, members readily accompany one another to hearings and court-proceedings and jointly organise vigils and commemorative services for one another. Furthermore, the constant encouragement of fellow group members to speak out about past abuses committed against them and their families, has definitely served a critical restorative psychological function in a wide number of cases. A large number of members of these support structures have actively expressed how useful it is to be in the Khulumani groups, because it feels like they are trying to change their situations through solidarity actions - whether through lobbying or other actions aimed at providing joint support. The establishment of a Khulumani Office has also meant that a range of support structures have been established using telephonic support to provide immediate advice, as well as to put people in direct contact with the TRC.
Importantly, the entire process has been built on the philosophy of victims giving support to victims. How