Activist touts apartheid reparations

Many non-white South African citizens continue to endure social, economic and political oppression more than a decade after the end of the apartheid era, a visiting lecturer at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy says.

(Photo by Laura Lee)

Yazir Henri, director of the Direct Action Centre for Peace and Memory in Cape Town, South Africa, will give the Towsley Foundation Lecture "The Cost of Forgiveness: After South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission" at 4 p.m. April 4 in the Annenberg Auditorium, 1120 Weill Hall. The event is free and open to the public.

The legacies of colonialism and apartheid remain critical to understanding why the majority of South Africans, mainly blacks, remain impoverished, says Henri, the Harry A. and Margaret D. Towsley Foundation Policymaker in Residence.

"Many people, both in South Africa and around the world, believe that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission moved our country through the worst abuses of apartheid, but the TRC did not address the ongoing systemic impacts of policies such as forced removals, land dispossession, and restrictions on movement—policies that continue to directly benefit a very small minority of people," he says.

Henri wants those who benefited from apartheid to make reparations and accept more responsibility for rebuilding a society in which, he says, people now are able to articulate their stories, recover, and benefit from the current peace.

"The goal of peace is not served when only the oppressed are held responsible for sustaining it, when only the poor are expected to pay for it," he says.

Like many young people growing up in South Africa's townships, Henri openly resisted apartheid policies as a child. As a teenager, he became an officer in Umkhonto We Sizwe (spear of the nation), the military wing of the African National Congress. He was imprisoned by the apartheid government and testified before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1996.

Now a writer and a peace activist, Henri directs a nonprofit organization that works with and is led by former combatants and other survivors of apartheid violence. His writing focuses on memory, narrative and recovery.