South Africa's morality tale for our time

2000 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 303-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
ADRIAN GUELKE
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Final Report ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Nelson Mandela ◽  
Public Hearings ◽  
Desmond Tutu

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report: Five Volumes, Basingstoke and Oxford, Macmillan, 1999On 29 October 1998 Archbishop Desmond Tutu presented the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to President Nelson Mandela. This massive report has now been published by Macmillan in a handsome, extensively illustrated five-volume set. The fine quality of the production would seem appropriate to what has been hailed as a document of lasting importance for South Africa. Indeed, it is evident that many foreign commentators see it as important not just for South Africa but for the whole world. That has been reflected in the interest shown in the TRC by commentators, such as Timothy Garton Ash and Michael Ignatieff, who have not previously written about South Africa. The report was the culmination of nearly three years of work by the TRC. President Mandela announced the names of the 17 commissioners (designating Desmond Tutu as chairperson and Alex Boraine as deputy chairperson) in November 1995. It began to function in December that year, while the first public hearings were held on 15 April 1996. However, while the report has been the most significant product of the TRC's endeavours, it is not the end of its work. In particular, the Committee on Amnesty will continue to function until it has reached decisions on all the outstanding applications for amnesty received by the deadline of 30 September 1997. When it has completed this task a further volume of the final report will be published.

When the Landscape of the Face is Hidden from Us

2017 ◽  
pp. 68-71
Author(s):  
Paula Horta
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Affective Quality ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Ethical Response ◽  
Desmond Tutu

How do we respond to the vulnerability of the Other when we do not see his face? How do photographer and viewers position themselves ethically in relation to the (hi)story of suffering they are called to witness? These are the questions that steer my reflection about Jillian Edelstein’s unpublished photograph of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Taken shortly after the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) completed its work, the photograph evokes the moment during the TRC hearings when the Archbishop, Chairman of the commission, laid down his head and wept. Drawing on Emmanuel Levinas’s conceptualization of “the face”; I discuss how affect is produced within and through Edelstein’s photograph, and specifically how the affective quality of the photograph both contributes to an understanding of the experience of suffering within the context of the TRC and summons an ethical response from the viewer. Keywords: Desmund Tutu, Emmanuel Levinas, gesture and photography, Jillian Edelstein, photography portrait

Evaluating the Truth and Reconciliation Commission

2001 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 525-546 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Stanley
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Developmental Change ◽  
Transition To Democracy ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Final Report ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Social Level

Following a negotiated transition to democracy in South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was established to deal with crimes of the past regime. Despite the detail of submissions and the length of the Final Report, this article highlights the partiality of truth recognised by the Commission. The usefulness of acknowledged truth to deal with South Africa's past is shown to have been neutralised by wider concerns of social and criminal justice. In detailing the governmental reticence to provide reparations, the judicial disregard to pursue prosecutions, and the dismissal of responsibility for apartheid at a wider social level, the author argues that opportunities for reconciliation and developmental change are limited. Against the problems of crime, violence and unresolved land issues, the potential of the TRC to build a ‘reconciliatory bridge’ is called into question. The truth offered by the Commission increasingly appears of limited value.

scholarly journals APLA and the Amnesty Committee of the TRC? An Ethical Analysis of the Amnesty Committee of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa

2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tshepo Lephakga
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
White People ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Bona Fide ◽  
White Settlers ◽  
Political Objective ◽  
Desmond Tutu

This article examines the role of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of South Africa, led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It focuses on the amnesty committee and challenges regarding amnesty applications of members and supporters of the Azanian People’s Liberation Army (APLA), an armed wing of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC). These complications emanated from policies and politics of the mother-body (PAC) and APLA, which made it difficult to distinguish between acts with a political objective committed by bona fide APLA members and purely criminal acts committed for personal gain. Such policies were expressed in: 1) The APLA slogan “One Settler, One Bullet”; and 2) The policy regarding “Repossession of property” by Azanians. The position of APLA needs to be understood against the fundamental politics of the PAC that the presence of white settlers in South Africa (occupied Azania) is an act of occupation, dispossession and colonisation. Thus, all white people in South Africa are regarded as settlers and targets for APLA. This position contends that, as a result of the settler status of all white people in South Africa, everything that they purportedly own belongs to Azanians and must be repossessed. Another complication—according to the TRC—was for some applicants to meet at least one of the requirements for amnesty, since any incident committed had to constitute an act associated with a political objective. Other challenges were lack of documentation to prove membership of APLA, and the autonomy or independence of the mother body (PAC) and its armed wing (APLA).

Rethinking the Self within an African Philosophical Paradigm

2021 ◽  
pp. 326-348
Author(s):  
Antjie Krog
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
The Self ◽  
News Story ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Nelson Mandela ◽  
Current Affairs ◽  
Desmond Tutu ◽  
A Current

This chapter explores the interconnected-Self manifesting within African Philosophy. Philosopher Michael Onyebuchi Eze suggests that ‘humanity is not embedded in my person solely as an individual . . . Humanity is a quality we owe to each other. We create each other and need to sustain this otherness creation.’ A current affairs news story about the parole of an apartheid-assassin, a poem, as well as the analyses of various concepts hallmarking South Africa’s move into full democracy, are the lenses through which this interconnected-Self is viewed. The exploration is underpinned by three areas: the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, texts of the /Xam (First People) and various utterances by Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela.

scholarly journals Bonhoeffer and costly reconciliation in South Africa – through the lens of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission

2017 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 18-34
Author(s):  
P. G.J. Meiring
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Church Leaders ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Dietrich Bonhoeffer ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Desmond Tutu

Dietrich Bonhoeffer never visited South Africa, and he probably did not know a great deal about the country. But the relevance of the German theologian for South Africa was never in doubt. In the struggle against apartheid his message and his theology served to guide theologians, church leaders as well as lay Christians alike. His life and his death served to inspire many during their darkest hours. Theologians, with John de Gruchy in the lead, studied his works extensively. Heroes from the struggle against apartheid, Beyers Naudé, Desmond Tutu and Steve Biko, among others, were hailed as latter-day Bonhoeffers. Nelson Mandela’s famous ‘Speech from the dock’ before his conviction and imprisonment at the Rivonia Trial was compared to Bonhoeffer’s essay on The structure of responsible life (1995). At ecumenical gatherings, his name and his teachings were often invoked, whenever protest was lodged against the injustices of apartheid. But it was especially in the aftermath of apartheid, when the very serious challenges of reconciliation and nation building, of healing and forgiveness, as well as of amnesty for perpetrators weighed against the demands of justice to the victims were at stake, that many turned to Bonhoeffer for guidance. The author who served with Archbishop Desmond Tutu on the TRC, discusses the prerequisites for reconciliation in South Africa against the backdrop of the TRC experience, emphasising the real need for South Africans, following in the footsteps of Bonhoeffer, to look for ‘costly reconciliation’.

‘The Young Wind Once Was a Man’

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 373-392
Author(s):  
Antjie Krog
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Comic Strip ◽  
Just World ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Nelson Mandela ◽  
The One ◽  
Desmond Tutu

Twenty years ago, the democratic vocabulary of tolerance and forgiveness was powerfully introduced to South Africans, especially by President Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Both their words and actions were later broadened during the hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. However, what remains neglected in studies around the transition is what the underpinnings of the words by these two gentlemen were. This article makes a case that a radically different ontology, different to the one made available by the Christian religion, informed them, an ontology that has its roots in the work of the First People. Comparing the sense of self as it appears in indigenous /Xam texts to the sense of self which comfortably misinterpret Mandela’s words in some comic strip frames, the article underlines how important a new sense of self is in redefining concepts desiring a more just world.

scholarly journals Ubuntu, Gender and Spirituality: Transformative Justice Considerations

Kalagatos ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 56-70
Author(s):  
Mechthild Nagel
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Ethic Of Care ◽  
New South ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Transformative Justice ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Desmond Tutu

The Ubuntu principle, popularized by Archbishop Desmond Tutu presiding over the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the New South Africa, has potential to assist Western philosophical conceptions of forgiveness in envisioning transformative justice. Aspects of Ubuntu overlap with the Western feminist inspired ethic of care while departing from Western ethics with its emphasis on spirituality and communalism.

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

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