South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Its Instruments, and The IR Approach Thus Far

Abstract

This paper drawn from the PhD. Thesis, ‘Speaking Truth to Power: South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Work of Albie Sachs’ completed in 2006. It provided an historical context to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and explored how its approach has impacted on the study and practice of International Relations. It identified the role of Justice Albie Sachs in the creation of the Commission and in the truth recovery process and how he sought to balance it with the need for amnesty. It drew out Albie Sach’s reconciliation with the central tension between the politics of compromise and the radical notion of justice expressed in different ways by different analysts of the process from authoritarian rule in Latin America and Eastern Europe to a democratic form of government and suggests it is a genuinely universal issue. It refers to Jelin who draws on Greek tragedy, and sees the tension as the of mourning/remembrance vs logic . It concludes with reference to political scientists, such as O'Donnel who state the dilemma somewhat more pragmatically for them it is the need for democratic or stable democratisation as against the notion of justice, equality and restitution and refers to the enduring implication of the Truth and Reconciliation process in International Relations.