Africa's Truth Research Articles

Can the subaltern be heard? Response and Responsibility in South Africa's Human Spirit

This article examines the possibility of responding to the postcolonial other by theorizing how such a response is constructed in a recent textual representation of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings: an audio anthology entitled South Africa's Human Spirit . Representations of the TRC hearings are particularly compelling in how they bring together issues of post-traumatic witnessing with postcolonial questions addressing whether it is possible to adequately comprehend the other. The intersection of these potentially competing methodologies is made structurally manifest in the design of South Africa's Human Spirit , as the compact discs through which one audits the testimony of the predominately black South Africans are housed inside a padlocked metal cage. My "reading' of the audio-text, initially impelled by my ambivalent reaction to the anthology's design, is intended to determine how the figure and function of the cage mediates the response of the individual listening to these compact discs. Drawing on the theories of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Roland Barthes, Shoshana Felman and Dominick LaCapra, and most particularly Emmanuel Levinas, as well as exploring the South African philosophy of ubuntu , the study examines how the caged testimony of South Africa's Human Spirit might offer a more complex understanding of the response, and, indeed, responsibility, to the face of the wounded other.

Loss: The Politics of Mourning

Illustrations Preface Introduction: Mourning Remains David L. Eng and David Kazanjian I. Bodily Remains Returning the Body without Haunting: Mourning Nai Phi and the End of Revolution in Thailand Rosalind C. Morris Black Mo'nin' Fred Moten Ambiguities of Mourning: Law, Custom, and Testimony of Women before South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission Mark Sanders Catastrophic Mourning Marc Nichanian Between Genocide and Catastrophe David Kazanjian and Marc Nichanian Passing Shadows: Melancholic Nationality and Black Critical Publicity in Pauline E. Hopkins's Of One Blood Dana Luciano Melancholia and Moralism Douglas Crimp II. Spatial Remains The Memory of Hunger David Lloyd Remains to Be Seen: Reading the Works of Dean Sameshima and Khanh Vo Susette Min Mourning Becomes Kitsch: The Aesthetics of Loss in Severo Sarduy's Cobra Vilashini Cooppan Theorizing the Loss of Land: Griqua Land Claims in Southern Africa, 1874--1998 David Johnson Left Melancholy Charity Scribner III. Ideal Remains All Things Shining Kaja Silverman A Dialogue on Racial Melancholia David L. Eng and Shinhee Han Passing Away: The Unspeakable (Losses) of Postapartheid South Africa Yvette Christianse Ways of Not Seeing: (En)gendered Optics in Benjamin, Baudelaire, and Freud Alys Eve Weinbaum Legacies of Trauma, Legacies of Activism: ACT UP's Lesbians Ann Cvetkovich Resisting Left Melancholia Wendy Brown Afterword: After Loss, What Then? Judith Butler Contributors Index

What price truth? South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in critical perspective

What price truth? South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in critical perspective

Review: A Country Unmasked: Inside South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Review: A Country Unmasked: Inside South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Assessing South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Assessing South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Unsung Heroines: Media Reflections of the Social Conflict in South Africa

ABSTRACT This essay examines both media reports on South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), and the TRC's final report, to determine the reasons why women are portrayed in the media — when they are portrayed at all — almost exclusively as victims. This author examines media reports which deal with the testimony of women who lived through the period of social conflict (1960 to 1994) covered by the TRC. Building on theories that argue that media can create as well as reflect reality, the authors shows that women were not adequately represented in the media reports on the TRC, and thus in the public mind, in spite of efforts to include them in the TRC process. Thus, although the TRC process may have been helpful to individual women, it can be argued that it has had little impact on how people view women's role in South Africa, and more generally in armed conflict and social unrest world-wide.

Contemporary Catholic and Protestant Irish America: Social Identities, Forgiveness, and Attitudes Toward The Troubles

The intractability of ethnic conflicts is due in part to their selective focus on the past. Images of the past are used to legitimate the present social order, but such order presupposes shared memories, and as memories diverge, a society's members share neither experiences nor assumptions. (1) In addition, many of those memories are of past violence and humiliations, which have not been acknowledged or atoned for by the aggressors or their descendants, resulting in continuing pain, fear, and hatred in the victimized people. (2) It is not surprising that interventions seeking lasting peace in ethnic conflicts often involve a revisiting of the history of each side and an acceptance of responsibility for past actions of one's own community. Today this recovering of politically violent pasts can be observed in South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (3) and in Guatemala's Recovery of the Historic Memory Project. (4) In addition to accountability for past actions, some also are calling for corporate forgiveness of political violence as an ultimate step in reconciliation; (5) and such interventions are being at least tentatively explored for Northern Ireland. (6) Political violence in Ireland/Northern Ireland has a history centuries old, and selective remembering of that history perpetuates current sectarian attitudes and conflict. (7) Northern Irish Catholics and Protestants as distinct ethnic groups selectively remember, construct, interpret, and commemorate their shared history, resulting in distinct ethnic or social memories. (8) In Lyons's Social Identity Process Theory, these social memories serve to demonstrate each community's continuity, collective self-esteem, distinctiveness, efficacy, and cohesion. (9) Northern Ireland's political violence certainly is not on the scale of the horrific aggression observed in settings such as South Africa or Guatemala. On the other hand, Northern Ireland is inhabited by only about 1.7 million people, distributed among close-knit urban neighborhoods and rural communities. (10) Consequently, the thirty years of current conflict have touched the entire country. (11) Currently, Northern Ireland is experiencing a formal cessation of armed conflict between the major paramilitary organizations and security forces, although violence between the two communities still erupts, and tension provides a constant backdrop. However, it does not necessarily follow that a cessation in armed conflict results in a cessation of sectarian attitudes. (12) More than any other European nation, Ireland (North and South) has been characterized by emigration during the past three centuries. (13) Today in the United States alone, more than 40 million Americans claim some Irish descent. (14) The vast size of this immigrant population alone provides an impetus for a contemporary examination of its relationship with and attitudes toward Northern Ireland's political violence. Historically, Irish-American influence in Northern Ireland has been dominated by those with nationalist political agendas and a primary focus on constitutional politics. Lobbyists working at grass-roots level and political leaders in Washington, D.C., maintained pressure on Britain's policy in Ireland even before the enactment of partition in 1920. Utilizing a different strategy focused on economic injustice, Irish Americans established the McBride Principles in 1984 to counter Catholic economic disadvantage in Northern Ireland, with particular focus on discrimination in employment. (15) More militant Irish Americans, who support republican agendas, have raised millions of dollars for Irish republican causes, supplied the Irish Republican Army with weaponry, and aided its men on the run or those incarcerated. (16) The 1990s saw a presidential administration involved in the Northern Ireland conflict on an unprecedented scale. (17) Though there is substantial historical literature on Irish America, surprisingly few social and behavioral studies have been carried out. …

Desiring Good(s) in the Face of Marginalized Subjects: South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in a Global Context

Research Article| July 01 2001 Desiring Good(s) in the Face of Marginalized Subjects: South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in a Global Context Rosemary Jane Jolly Rosemary Jane Jolly Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google South Atlantic Quarterly (2001) 100 (3): 693–715. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-100-3-693 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Rosemary Jane Jolly; Desiring Good(s) in the Face of Marginalized Subjects: South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in a Global Context. South Atlantic Quarterly 1 July 2001; 100 (3): 693–715. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-100-3-693 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsSouth Atlantic Quarterly Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. 2002 by Duke University Press2002 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Articles You do not currently have access to this content.

They Can't Take Our Souls: Teachers' League of South Africa Reflections of Apartheid

In 1999, the author worked on an oral history of apartheid era teachers. Although many people were telling their life stories through South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, there had been very little in the way of teachers' voices. This article is part of that larger study and includes three oral history case studies of members of the Teachers' League of South Africa (TLSA). The article examines the TLSA during the apartheid era through the lives of Helen Kies, Tom Hanmer, and Richard Dudley. These teachers represent what I. B. Tabata called teachers with the 'fighting spirit'. The TLSA believed in non-racialism and equality and teachers wed pedagogy and politics in their work with non-white students. Academics were stressed and so were issues of racial and class equality. The three teachers whose stories are told in this article challenged the apartheid regime and they each paid a price for their work. Although they were greatly affected by apartheid, it did not rule their lives and it could not take their hearts, minds, or souls. Their personal stories and the story of the organization, labeled Trotskyite by critics, are portrayed in this article.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa: relation to psychiatric status and forgiveness among survivors of human rights abuses.

The impact on individual survivors of human rights abuses of testifying before South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has not been established. To examine the degree to which participation in the TRC is related to current psychiatric status and forgiveness among survivors. Survivors (n=134) who gave public, closed or no testimony to the TRC completed instruments measuring exposure to human rights abuses, exposure to other traumatic events, current psychiatric status and forgiveness attitudes towards the perpetrator(s). There was no significant association between TRC participation and current psychiatric status or current forgiveness attitudes, and low forgiveness was associated with poorer psychiatric health. Truth commissions should form part of, rather than be a substitute for, comprehensive therapeutic interventions for survivors of human rights abuses. Lack of forgiveness may be an important predictor of psychiatric risk in this population.

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Survey Article: Justifying the Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Truth commissions have emerged as popular devices for countries which are trying to move from a past of mass human rights violations to a stable and democratic future. South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was by no means the first official commission to inquire into and report on a fraught past, yet it has attracted more interest, including philosophical interest, than any of its predecessors.

Truth, Telling, Questioning: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Antjie Krog's Country of My Skull, and Literature after Apartheid

In a conversation near the end of Country of My Skull, the Afrikaans poet Antjie Krog's book on South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Krog's interlocutor, an academic who has been reading to her from a book of twentieth-century German verse, explains to her that "[a]fter the Second World War it was said in Germany: it is barbaric to write a poem after Auschwitz." Without linking the dictum to Theodor Adorno, who is well known as its author, the academic relates to her how Paul Celan, having found his poem "Fugue of Death" "too lyrical" and "too beautiful," asked that it be left out of future editions of anthologies which had included it (237/312). This was, it is supposed, his response to Adorno's polemical proscription. 2 For Krog, as a poet, the [End Page 13] conversation provokes the question of whether it is not barbaric to write poems after apartheid: "That is why I say maybe writers in South Africa should shut up for a while. That one has no right to appropriate a story paid for with a lifetime of pain and destruction. Words come more easily for writers, perhaps. So let the domain rather belong to those who literally paid blood for every faltering word they utter before the Truth Commission" (237-38/312). Krog's interlocutor meets her proposition with the question: "Are you saying this because you yourself can't find a form for dealing with your past?" This, he tells her, was the failure of German writers after World War II. "No," she replies, "I often write pieces down from memory, and when I check the original tape it is always, but always much better than my own effort" (238/312). Their conversation traverses the terrain between an impulse to leave the domain of words and utterance to those who testified before the Truth Commission, and the possibility of finding form, as a writer, specifically as a poet, for a collective memory in which she herself is implicated. Then it departs in another direction. When the poet doubts her ability to lend form to the testimony she recalls, yet wishes to let the domain of telling belong to the witnesses, whose efforts always outdo hers, she must find a way, other than memorial reconstruction, of being host to their words. As formulated by Krog, the question of poetry, or literature, after apartheid concerns less an excess of lyricism or beauty, from which its creator stands back, than a writer's facilitation of the utterance of others. If the question of literature after apartheid is a question of advocacy, of its dynamics and its ethics, then the Commission shares a set of concerns and conditions of possibility with literary works. In interpreting its public hearings as occasions for advocacy, the Commission reveals that the structures of identification and substitution, on which it relies when it solicits the testimony of victims, are as integral to its own operations as they are to a literary work. Krog's book makes itself host to testimony in ways which allow us to understand how this is the case, and how even lyric poetry, in a sense ignored by the Adornian proscription, is able to display this joint partaking.

Violence and Suffering, Responsibility and Choice: Issues in Ethics and Development

Part of the broadening of ideas of ‘development’ involves matters of personal security and societal peace. This article examines why and how, with reference to conceptual and historical analyses and to case studies of domestic violence, emergency relief in civil wars, and South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It considers physical violence as a major and ethically central aspect of many people's experience; how violence and the resultant suffering are neglected and even denied, due partly to an economics-style focus on commodities; and some alternative lines of intellectual and practical response – at individual, agency and societal levels – to past, present and prospective violence.

South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Process and International Humanitarian Law

Since its establishment in 1995, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission has captured the attention of an international community preoccupied with the problem of dealing with crimes of the past in divided societies. While the creation of a permanent international criminal court to punish those guilty of atrocities constituting international crimes has been the first priority, the international community has, albeit grudgingly, accepted that there may be circumstances in which amnesty and reconciliation hold out more hope for troubled societies than punishment. This realisation has led to the search for an acceptable alternative to punishment that does not result in absolute amnesty for those guilty of gross human rights abuses. The South African model, of conditional amnesty accompanied by the uncovering of the past, appears to offer such an alternative. This factor, together with the relief over the fact that apartheid has at last been laid to rest, accounts for the interest shown in the South African experience.The present note will not attempt to describe and analyse the South African precedent in detail. Instead it will provide an overview of the history, establishment and work of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC); examine the significance of the Report of the TRC for international humanitarian law; and consider the status of amnesty under contemporary international law in the context of the South African experience.

Getting to Accountability: Business, Apartheid and Human Rights

The article examines the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (TRC) 1 as a process for holding businesses accountable for human rights violations. The TRC convened special hearings in Johannesburg in November 1997 on the role of business under apartheid. Based on the evidence, white businesses should have applied for amnesty as perpetrators of human rights violations. But this did not happen. The article discusses the achievements and constraints of the business hearings, and examines some of the lessons which can be gleaned from the South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the continuing universal struggle to hold corporations responsible for human rights violations during authoritarian regimes.

The Justice of Amnesty? Towards a Theory of Retributivism in Recovering States

This article provides a framework for addressing concerns about retributive justice in states recovering from national traumas and it uses South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) as its focal point. The article begins by providing an overview of the origins and operations of the TRC, and then explores several conceptual and legal challenges that the TRC faced. These challenges are important to understand for two purposes: first, they highlight the probable criticisms that might emerge as other recovering states consider the particularized amnesty proceedings that were the heart of the TRC; and second, they provide a particular illustration of what I call the social expressivist opposition to the TRC. The paper then engages the TRC's justification of the practice of particularized amnesty, a justification that emanates from the TRC's account of truth, reconciliation, and justice. Here, I scrutinize not only the theory of justice propounded by the TRC, but also the theory of restorative justice offered by some of the TRC's most astute defenders. This examination reveals deficiencies that should renew our interest in the conceptual resources inhering in retributivism as a theory of criminal justice. There is an obvious tension between the TRC's defence of particularized amnesty and the challenges launched against it by those who adhere to the social expressivist view. The paper thus seeks to mediate this conflict by outlining the confrontational conception of retributivism - an account that I offer to answer not only why retribution for wrongdoing is internally justified and obligatory, but why it is also the sole province of the state in modern society. The theory offered here, which is premised on familiar notions of equal human worth and liberty under law, assures that in the face of known wrongdoing, the state responds as our agent to diminish the evidence of unequal liberty claimed by perpetrators through their actions. One conclusion I draw from this theory is that retributivism, once properly understood, need not be viewed as inextricably dependent upon traditional concepts of proportionality. Thus, under certain circumstances, a retributivist vision of punishment can find an authentic expression in particularized amnesty proceedings. In particular, I indicate how the confrontational conception of retributive justice differs from others insofar as it limits what kind of leniency the state may demonstrate in response to gross violations of human rights. In short, the paper defends the thesis that particularized amnesty proceedings are compatible with retributive justice properly understood.

'Truth' Is a Double-Edged (S)Word: On Truth and the Destruction or Restoration of Relationships'

AbstractThis article intends to explore the complex relationship between truth and reconciliation. Reconciliation is described as one of four typical responses to injury, the others being revenge, denial, and cheap forgiveness. With regard to the restoration of human relationships, truth is utilised in a twofold sense: to expose wrongs, and to establish a sacred space for reconciliation. Truth can also provide grounds for revenge and efforts to destroy relationships. Absoluteness, in its exclusivistic and inclusivistic forms, provides a framework within which truth can cause damage to human relationships. Examples of all these 'faces' of truth are found in the Old Testament, especially in the context of human relationships. Our views on reconciliation and truth, and the relationship between the two, will inevitably colour our views on the work of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Committee, and our hopes - or lack of them - for reconciliation in a post-TRC South Africa.

Debating South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Debating South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Religious Topoi and South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission

AbstractThe role of religious language in the activities of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is analysed in this study. The (Christian) religious rhetoric is a limiting factor with regard to the possibilities and/or contribution of the TRC by fashioning a dichotomising discourse and terminology. It also imposes constraints, visible in the TRC's dealings with concepts such as truth, responsibility and causation. This discourse is, furthermore, an assistant to a formalistic way of arguing about history and humanity, which problematises the plurality and heterogeneity of our society.