DEALING WITH HISTORY A Country Unmasked: Inside South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. By ALEX BORAINE. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. xv+466. £20 (ISBN 0-19-57-1805-4). The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: Legitimizing the Post-Apartheid State. By RICHARD A. WILSON. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. xxi+271. £45; $64.95 (ISBN 0-521-80219-9); £15.95; $22.95, paperback (ISBN 0-521-00194-3).

2002 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 313-376
Author(s):  
STUART WILSON
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Oxford University Press

Disappointed Remains: Trauma, Testimony, and Reconciliation in Post-apartheid South Africa

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Field
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Trauma Survivors ◽  
National Unity ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Apartheid Regime ◽  
Democratic Elections

The apartheid regime in South Africa and the fight against the same, followed by the reconciliation is the crux of this article. The first democratic elections held on April 27, 1994, were surprisingly free of violence. Then, in one of its first pieces of legislation, the new democratic parliament passed the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act of 1995, which created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. At the outset, the South African TRC promised to “uncover the truth” about past atrocities, and forge reconciliation across a divided country. As oral historians, we should consider the oral testimonies that were given at the Human Rights Victim hearings and reflect on the reconciliation process and what it means to ask trauma survivors to forgive and reconcile with perpetrators. This article cites several real life examples to explain the trauma and testimony of apartheid and post-apartheid Africa with a hint on the still prevailing disappointments and blurred memories.

scholarly journals Truth and reconciliation in South Africa: Hindu experiences and concerns

2004 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
P.G.J. Meiring
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Faith Communities ◽  
The South ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Hindu Community ◽  
The Way

The author who served on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), focuses on the Hindu experience in South Africa during the apartheid years. At a special TRC Hearing for Faith Communities (East London, 17-19 November 1997) two submissions by local Hindu leaders were tabled. Taking his cues from those submissions, the author discusses four issues: the way the Hindu community suffered during these years, the way in which some members of the Hindu community supported the system of apartheid, the role of Hindus in the struggle against apartheid, and finally the contribution of the Hindu community towards reconciliation in South Africa. In conclusion some notes on how Hindus and Christians may work together in th

Reconciliation in the Public Domain

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 412-427 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eddy Van der Borght
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Religious Symbol ◽  
The Public ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Way

Reconciliation shifted in South Africa during the transition from being a contested idea in the church struggle to a notion proposed and rejected by the fighting parties and finally embraced by the two main political protagonists when they reached an agreement on the transition to a democratic order. This article analyses the layered meaning of the reconciliation concept within the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. On the basis of this description the questions that will be explored are whether reconciliation functioned as a religious symbol at the trc, and if so, in what way. In the conclusion, the way the concept of reconciliation itself was transformed due to the role it played in the transition in South Africa will be summarized and the consequences for theological research will be indicated.

‘I Was Those Thousands!’: Memory, Identity and Space in John Kani'sNothing But the Truth

2007 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-84
Author(s):  
SHANE GRAHAM
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
The Public ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Spatial Configurations

John Kani'sNothing But the Truth(2002) dramatizes South Africa's collective confrontation with its traumatic past – played out on the public stage most visibly in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings – through the personal situation of Sipho Makhaya and his family. This essay analyses the obstacles Sipho and his daughter face in their attempts to negotiate new identities within the shifting social and physical geographies of post-apartheid South Africa. Identities in the apartheid era were rooted in specific places and socio-spatial configurations that are now being radically and rapidly transformed; Kani's play implies that this transitional moment in the country's history provides the opportunity to rewrite the codes that determine the ways that space is produced and used, and in the process to alter the ways that people form identities and memories in relation to both social space and other people.

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