TRC Process Research Articles

Truth and reconciliation –Beyond the TRC process and findings

This article argues that the truth about colonial‐cum‐apartheid South Africa should inform the planning and development of a new social order, a society that is caring and sharing and where universal human rights are acknowledged, protected and being validated in the everyday life‐experiences of ordinary people. It suggests that the socio‐economic practices of the past, however partly disclosed by the TRC, should be transcended, to eliminate the conditions that gave rise to human rights abuses. Based on a content analysis of a random selection of newspaper reports, this appears to be a daunting task. Discursively, the period before the constitution of the TRC is as important as the period after the release of TRC findings as it constitutes the dialectical nexus with the historical antecedents informing, and quite often, determining the form, substance and dimensions of ‘truth and reconciliation’ in South Africa. Hence the need to go beyond the TRC to its antecedents to understand the uneven relations of power that shaped its operational concepts, determined its empirical investigations and influenced its discursive framework.

Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Citizens of South Africa are confronting a painful past through the new nation's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, or TRC, which thus far has heard thousands of reports (many televised) about murders, torture, and other human rights abuses that took place during the apartheid era. South Africa's TRC is grounded in a constitutional commitment to the African concept of “ubuntu,” or humaneness. Amnesty is available on a conditional basis to alleged perpetrators. The author assesses the potential restorative power of truth‐telling; the significance of sympathetic witnesses; and the tasks of both perpetrators and bystanders in the TRC process. Aspirations for justice are considered along with restoring dignity to victims, offering a basis for individual healing, and promoting reconciliation of a divided society.