March 11, 2007, Newlands House

Truth in Translation
The director of my academic program at UCT arranged for the students to see Truth in Translation, a play about the Truth and Reconciliation Council (TRC) as told through the perspectives of the translators.

To give you some background, the TRC was a court-like body assembled after the end of apartheid. Anyone who felt they had been a victim of violence could come forward and be heard. On the flip side, perpetrators of violence could also give testimony and ask for forgiveness, as well as amnesty from prosecution. Though it was flawed in particular ways, I think it is a particularly generous gesture towards reconciliation that speaks to the progressive way in which South Africa is striving to become a unified country.

While a few of us were waiting in the foyer of UCT’s Baxter Theatre to enter the play, we noticed a bunch of TV cameras following a group of people. As we got closer to see what was being filmed, we realized that at the center of the lights and cameras was Reverend Desmond Tutu. Reverend Tutu is a South African activist who is reknowned worldwide for the work he has done in opposition of apartheid. In 1984 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and has recently put his efforts towards stopping the global AIDS epidemic. Another major claim to fame is that he is generally credited with coining “Rainbow Nation” as a metaphor for what post-apartheid South Africa might become under ANC leadership.

AND he also headed the TRC. To sit in the audience watching this play, all the while knowing this man—the embodiment of hope in South Africa—was just rows ahead of us, was amazing and exhausting. The genius of retelling the TRC story through the perspectives of the translators was that you heard a whole country’s pains through the translators—speaking in first person and trying so desperately to stay objective, to merely translate the victim’s or perpetrator’s words… which was essentially an impossibility, it was asking them to be inhuman.

After the play therewas a Q&A where Reverend Tutu spoke with the cast, as well as lead a prayer. It was indeed an unexpected and blessed evening.