Not for the faint-hearted.

TWO and-a-half years in the making and 3,500 pages, long, the report of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)is a weighty affair, like the conscience of the nation whose recent, bloody past it documents.

The weeks leading up to the release of the report last October were steeped in politicking which threatens to rob this nation-building tool of its potential.

In trying to use the report to minimize damage to their images, two major political players scored own goals. The African National Congress (ANC), which justified its use of violence as a necessary part of a righteous war to topple apartheid, took legal action--unsuccessfully--to block the report's release. In so doing it was seen by many to have betrayed the spirit of the report--transparency, honesty and making a break with the past.

It was an ignominious end to a process the ANC started well. The report excoriates the ANC for human rights abuses, particularly at its training camps. The head of the TRC, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, was enraged at the ANC's attempt to halt the report. `I have struggled against a tyranny,' he said. `I didn't do that in order to substitute another.'

Former state president FW de Klerk, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with his successor, Nelson Mandela, won an eleventh-hour court bid to have references to his activities deleted from the report. By this he may have achieved the notoriety he set out to avoid. Having been seen as a courageous man who did much to end apartheid, he may now also be remembered as one of those who thwarted attempts to get at the truth.

Journalists commented that if the report is criticized by all the political players then it's hit the right note.

Unequivocal finding

The report itself is not for the fainthearted. South Africans who followed the testimonies of the victims had to become accustomed to the grisly details of routine torture and sudden death. The report is as eloquent a testimony of man's inhumanity to man as any black-and-white image of stick-figure corpses at Dachau or of the first atomic bomb's breath curling up into the Japanese morning.

The report's unequivocal finding: the National Party, unblinking in its violation of the human rights of those it governed, used murder, torture, abduction, detention and cross-border raids to enforce apartheid.

Among those singled out was former State President PW Botha, who in the late Eighties was found to have been party to some of the worst state-sponsored violence. Botha is being taken to court for refusing to come before the TRC, which he dismissed as a witch-hunt against Afrikaners.

Among other high-profile figures named is Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, for her involvement in brutality during the 1980s. Current home affairs minister and leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, is also cited for his role in the violence which claimed 20,000 lives in the area then known as KwaZulu.

If South Africans shy away from the report and refuse to acknowledge it as part of their collective history, they run the risk of not learning from the past.

Part of the problem is that many of us don't yet regard ourselves first as South Africans. We have emerged from the blood-drenched, tear-slicked crucible of our polarized, politicized past a fractured people. While we regard ourselves first as members of the ANC, DP, NP, PAC, rave nation, surfer nation or alien conspiracy theorists, we cannot be one nation. We need to place nationhood--our South-Africanness--above tribal affiliations, be they of descent, politics or lifestyle.

The problem is also that the concept of patriotism has been so skewed and abused that we need to rediscover it. Patriotism has come to mean willingness to kill. The word does not mean that.

Frighteningly, the word is still being misused. Both Mandela and his designated successor, Deputy State President Thabo Mbeki, have labelled some black journalists as `unpatriotic' for pointing out the country's problems. We've seen this before, when the Nationalist government labelled as subversive or communist anything in the press that smacked of a call for justice.

The report does not cover all aspects of injustice under apartheid, ironically because most of the whites affected negatively--albeit far, far fewer than other races--failed to testify before the commission.

The operations of the then SA Defence Force in upholding apartheid were documented, but not the experiences of the white conscripts. As a result thousands of men traumatized in the country's brutal border war have missed the opportunity for catharsis. The increase in suicides and domestic violence among whites is testimony to the pain and anger that seethes in the psyche of the nation.

Some newspapers have howled that the TRC increased the gulf between black and white. Other papers have hailed its objectivity and its refusal to regard human rights abuses as justifiable at any time.

To those who see the dorsal fins of unspoken editorial policy cleaving through the swells of copy, both reactions appeared premeditated, as though newspapers had already drawn their conclusions before the report appeared.

Milestone

The TRC, like the elections and the onset of democracy, is not the destination, but may prove a milestone on the narrow road towards a secure future for all.

Tutu has provided the nation with a weapon and a tool. How the nation uses it remains to be seen.

If we can extend the almost miraculous spirit of 1994's peaceful elections to the next few years, the report, alongside a common love of country, could be a potent nation-building tool.

If not, the report's detractors could use it to bludgeon the new democracy to death. If this happens, South Africans will only have themselves and their politicians to blame.