The Politics Of Truth And Reconciliation In South Africa

The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was set up to deal with the human rights violations of apartheid. However, the TRC's restorative justice approach did not always serve the needs of communities at a local level. Based on extended anthropological fieldwork, this book illustrates the impact of the TRC in urban African communities in Johannesburg. It argues that the TRC had little effect on popular ideas of justice as retribution. This provocative study deepens our understanding of post-apartheid South Africa and the use of human rights discourse.

Graybill (mind and human interaction, U. of Virginia) provides students not only the facts about the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but also the broader context in which it operated. She asks whether it led to reconciliation and healing, what criteria were used to decide whether to pardon or punish, whether politics necessitated the compromise, and other questions. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Narrating Political Reconciliation offers a compelling approach to South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). It provides a critical theoretical account of how the TRC's reconciliation story came into being, and how it shaped and promoted the norms, practices and truisms central to the global 'reconciliation industry'. In particular, the book examines the material practices and rituals that underpinned the TRC. Claire Moon shows how the TRC narrated apartheid history as a sequence of gross violations of human rights perpetrated with a political objective, with the effect of transforming competing politico-moral claims into an 'objective' legal-technical discourse. She also shows how the TRC constructed victims and perpetrators as the key subjects of the new political order through ritual practices of confession, testimony, forgiveness and healing. Moon argues that, the TRC had multiple and divergent effects. Whilst it attempted to secure reconciliation, the TRC also generated new social conflicts around questions of justice, reparations and apartheid violence: it appeared to redeem those who profited from apartheid but did not directly perpetrate atrocities; it left unacknowledged the everyday suffering of thousands; it left undisturbed structures of material inequality within which political violence was made possible. Overall, Moon provides a unique approach to reconciliation and transitional justice in post-conflict and democratizing states, and this book serves as a challenging critical analysis of the field for students and scholars alike.

In the latter half of the 1990s, South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) offered the country the chance to build a better future by facing up to its past. Amid saturation media coverage, victims of human rights abuses told their harrowing stories and perpetrators confessed to horrendous acts. Meanwhile, the commissioners grappled with decisions that would not only apportion responsibility and grant or deny amnesty but also have a profound political and social impact. To this highly charged, controversial subject, Dorothy Shea brings a rare combination of objectivity, thoroughness, and a firm grasp of both the principles and the political interests at stake. She begins by investigating the origins of the TRC in South Africa's transition from apartheid to democracy, and she examines the extent to which it learned from the experiences of earlier, Latin American commissions. Then she focuses on how the politics of the TRC were played out in issues such as amnesty, reparations, and prosecutions. Her report on the TRC offers a generally positive assessment and explains not only how South Africa measured up but also why. Finally, Shea draws lessons from the TRC experience that may help to inform future efforts to shape and establish truth commissions in other transitional societies.

"Of the truth commissions to date, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has most effectively captured public attention throughout the world and provided the model for succeeding bodies. Although other truth commissions had preceded its establishment, the TRC had a far more expansive mandate: to go beyond truth-finding to promote national unity and reconciliation, to facilitate the granting of amnesty to those who made full factual disclosure, to restore the human and civil dignity of victims by providing them an opportunity to tell their own stories, and to make recommendations to the president on measures to prevent future human rights violations.

The Limits of Transition: The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission 20 Years on is an interdisciplinary collection that celebrates and critiques the work of the TRC after 20 years. The authors consider whether the TRC has continued relevance for South Africa. The book further explores the legacy of the ‘unfinished business’ of the TRC.

This series of articles by leading researchers, activists and government officials describes the response of government and other agencies to the unfinished business of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It also reflects on the role of the media, art and cultural exponents who grappled with South Africa's past.