‘I was one of the lucky few. Or not. It depends’
A TRC interpreter tells Shelley Seid how she coped with the trauma
NOMUSA Zulu, a social science graduate, was 24 when she applied for a job as an interpreter at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Like most South Africans, she had been following the commission process on TV. She had even attended one of the Durban hearings. It was more than a job application, she said. Her decision was informed by what she believed in, what she held dear, “what I trusted to be right and proper”.
The application process was speedy and efficient — a panel interview, an invitation to attend a four-week interpreters’ training course, a final selection. “I was one of the lucky few. Or not. It depends how you look at it now.”
Zulu’s first experience was interpreting at the hearing of a group of Inkatha Freedom Party men who were incarcerated in Durban’s Westville Prison for political killings. It was a long hearing. She moved from Durban to Hammarsdale, from Johannesburg to Ermelo.
In Johannesburg, at the Boipatong hearing, she listened to evidence by IFP hostel dwellers who had attacked and slaughtered residents of the township as they slept. In one house, a nine-month-old baby was hacked in the head. At the time of the hearing, she was eight years old and in a wheelchair.
Zulu recalled: “He [the perpetrator] was asked: ‘We understand you were attacking people who were your political foes, but why a baby? Why attack a baby?’ He replied: ‘A snake will give birth to another snake.’
“I had never felt so humiliated. The victims kept referring to these guys not as IFP but as ‘the Zulus’. They would say ‘The Zulus came’ and to hear someone say that and to know I am associated . . . I am a Zulu too, I am one of them — how can I be one of these people? That is one moment I will never forget.”
According to their code of conduct, interpreters were to maintain a balanced, neutral stance. “It was drilled into us that we were not part of the process, not part of the stories. Our role was to transfer the information so the stories could be heard. But it is very difficult to maintain that kind of detachment.
“Sometimes you would find a person working, interpreting the evidence as it was being said, and he would have tears streaming down his face. That’s how bad it was. But you kept on.”
Interpreters worked in pairs, sitting in small booths, hidden from public view. The days were long and the work often involved travelling.
Staff of the commission received psychological counselling throughout the process. The interpreters, who did not fall under the ambit of the commission, did not. Zulu called it a major weakness.
There were, of course, ways of coping. Zulu exercised to destress, going to the gym
Why attack a baby?’ He replied: ‘A snake will give birth to another snake
morning and evening. Others found different ways. “We had our moments. We would be in the booth listening to these ghastly stories and someone would press the mute button and crack a joke or just talk nonsense.
“A group of interpreters might sit around after dinner and someone would start talking and laughing and then, before you know it, they would be crying. It had to be that way. The alternative was what? Keep it boiling inside and explode? I don’t say I have regrets, but you can’t go through that kind of process and be immune to it. I am not sorry for the experience, but the memories, most of them, I’d rather forget.”
She now works as the communications officer for the Hibiscus Coast municipality.