Conjoined Twins of Transitional Justice?: The Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Special Court

2004 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 1082-1099 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. A. Schabas
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Conjoined Twins ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation

The pressures of getting it right: Expertise and victims’ voices in the work of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 300-319
Author(s):  
Anne Menzel
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Staff Members ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Victim Participation ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract∞ This article contributes to scholarship on power, agency and ownership in professional transitional justice. It explores and details the relationship between ‘professional’ agency arising from recognized expertise and ‘unprofessional’ voices relaying lived experiences, concerns and needs. I approach this relationship via a microperspective on the work of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2002-2004), specifically its work on women and sexual violence, which the commission was mandated to pay special attention to. Based on interviews and rich archival materials, I show how this work was driven by the notion that there was a right way of dealing with women and sexual violence. To avoid mistakes, commissioners and staff members demanded and relied on recognized expertise. This led to a marginalization of victims’ voices. I argue that, to some degree at least, such marginalization belongs to professional transitional justice and will persist despite improved victim participation.

scholarly journals Ominous Inevitabilities: Reflecting on South Africa's Post-Transition Aporia in Achmat Dangor's Bitter Fruit

2013 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aghogho Akpome
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
One Dimensional ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
National Reconciliation ◽  
Reconciliation Project ◽  
Bitter Fruit

Achmat Dangor's novel Bitter Fruit (2001), nominated for the prestigious Man Booker Prize in 2004, is one of several important works of fiction that comment on the imperfections of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), offering a polemical critique of South Africa's on-going transition. In this article, I examine two significant ways in which Dangor's novel questions the work of the TRC. First, I posit that the story represents the TRC's model of transitional justice as being too determined by a “forgive and forget” approach that is inadequate as a means of providing reconciliation and thus fundamentally flawed. Second, I argue that, overall, the novel depicts the national reconciliation project as a mission that has in a way resulted in the appropriation of justice from – instead of its delivery to – some victims of Apartheid-era crimes. The aim of this article is not to present Dangor's fictional text as a one-dimensional reflection of complex social realities, but rather to foreground the practical and imaginative means that his inspired realist narrative offers for dealing with the aftermath of the massive social injustices perpetrated in South Africa during the Apartheid era.

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