The Elusive Pursuit of Truth and Justice: A Review Essay; History after Apartheid: Visual Culture and Public Memory in a Democratic South Africa; Country of My Skull: Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa; Shattered Voices: Language, Violence, and the Work of Truth Commissions; Commissioning the Past: Understanding South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission; Bearing Witness: Women and the Truth Commission in South Africa.; Truth Commissions and Courts: The Tension between Criminal Justice and the Search for Truth; The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: Legitimizing the Post-apartheid State

2007 ◽  
Vol 2007 (97) ◽  
pp. 143-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Nolan
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
New South ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth Commissions ◽  
Truth Commission ◽  
Bearing Witness ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
The Past

scholarly journals Khoisan Identity: A Contribution towards Reconciliation in Post-Apartheid South Africa

2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
John Stephanus Klaasen
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Narrative Approach ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Significant Period ◽  
Fixed Boundaries ◽  
Or History

This article seeks to explore the identity of the Khoisan as symbolic for reconciliation in South Africa. What contributions can the narrative of a marginalised people such as the Khoisan make to reconciling a divided nation such as South Africa? The Khoisan have been victims of continuous dispossession since the arrival of Bartholomew Diaz at the Cape in 1488. However, it was the taking of land in 1657 from the Khoisan for the free burgers that marked a significant period for the current discourse on land and for identity and reconciliation within post-apartheid South Africa. Notwithstanding the attempts by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to use narratives for healing, restoration, and continuing engagement with the meta-narratives of the past, my own use of narrative is open-ended with space for dialogue through interaction. The past or history does not have fixed boundaries, but rather blurred boundaries that function as spaces of transcendence. The narrative approach has four interactionist variables which are personhood, communication, power as reflected experience, and fluid community. I point out weaknesses of the use of narrative by the TRC as well as the interaction between experience and theory by practical theologians to construct an open-ended narrative of the Khoisan for reconciliation in South Africa.  

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 "We Never Did Return": Migration, Materiality and Time in Penny Siopis' Post-Apartheid Art

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 45-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allison K. Young
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Return Migration ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Medium Specificity ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Related Object

This article explores “migration” as both theme and operation in two works by the South African artist Penny Siopis, each created in the year 1997: the artist’s first film, My Lovely Day, and a related object installation entitled Reconnaissance (1900-1997). In each work, Siopis traces the course of her grandmother’s emigration from Europe to Africa through a variety of found, collected, or inherited components that bore witness to the longue durée of imperialism and Apartheid. Mediating between national, cultural, and familial narratives, these works are inherently archaeological in nature, and allowed viewers at the time to reflect on the multiple entangled histories that comprised the post-Apartheid condition. The late nineties in South Africa were defined by the conclusion of Apartheid, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and two major biennale exhibitions of contemporary art. The decade thusly saw a stream of collective efforts to both unearth the past and envision the future, marking a time of great cultural, artistic, political, and discursive transition. Mapping questions of medium-specificity and affect over this larger context, I investigate Siopis’ use and manipulation of historical traces as well as notions of contemporaneity and temporality in her art.

Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: Attributions of Blame and the Struggle over Apartheid

1999 ◽  
Vol 93 (3) ◽  
pp. 501-517 ◽  
Author(s):  
James L. Gibson ◽  
Amanda Gouws
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
New South ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Attributions Of Blame ◽  
Democratic Transformation ◽  
Reconciliation Process

In an effort to put its past firmly behind, the New South Africa created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to document human rights abuses under apartheid and to grant amnesty to those confessing their nefarious deeds. South Africa's democratic experiment depends mightily upon whether truth does in fact bring about reconciliation. Consequently, we examine whether ordinary South Africans accept the theories of blame that underlie the truth and reconciliation process. Based on a formal experiment within a representative sample of South Africans, our results confirm some conventional hypotheses (e.g., leaders are judged more responsible for their deeds than followers), repudiate others (noble motives do little to exonerate violent actions), and modify still others (actors are judged by the severity of their action's consequences, although it matters little whether “combatants” or “civilians” were the victims). We conclude that the dark legacy of the apartheid past makes the consolidation of the democratic transformation problematical.

Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act, 1995 (South Africa)

1995 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-231 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
National Unity ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Full Disclosure ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Political Objective

In July 1995 this long-awaited Act was signed into law. Its Preamble states that it is: “To provide for the investigation and establishment of as complete a picture as possible of the nature, causes and extent of gross violations of human rights committed during the period from 1 March 1960 to the cut-off date contemplated in the Constitution, within or without the Republic, emanating from the conflicts of the past, and the fate or whereabouts of the victims of such violations; the granting of amnesty to persons who make full disclosure of acts associated with a political objective committed in the course of the conflicts of the past during the said period; affording victims an opportunity to relate the violations they suffered; the taking of measures aimed at the granting of reparation to, and the rehabilitation and the restoration of the human and civil dignity of, victims of violations of human rights; reporting to the Nation about such violations and victims; the making of recommendations aimed at the prevention of the commission of gross violations of human rights; and for the said purposes to provide for the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a Committee on Human Rights Violations, a Committee on Amnesty and a Committee on Reparation and Rehabilitation…”

Looking Forward, Looking Back: The Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry

2012 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim Stanton
Keyword(s):  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Residential Schools ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth Commissions ◽  
Truth Commission ◽  
Emerging Democracies ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commissions ◽  
The Government

AbstractWhen we talk about truth and reconciliation commissions, we are accustomed to speaking of “transitional justice” mechanisms used in emerging democracies addressing histories of grave injustices. Public inquiries are usually the state response to past injustice in the Canadian context. The Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is the result of a legal settlement agreement involving the government, representatives of indigenous peoples who attended residential schools for a period lasting more than a century, and the churches that operated those schools. Residential schools have been addressed in a series of public inquiries in Canada, culminating in the TRC. I argue that some of Canada's previous public inquiries, particularly with respect to indigenous issues, have strongly resembled truth commissions, yet this is the first time that an established democracy has called a body investigating past human-rights violations a “truth commission.” This article considers some of the reasons for seeking a truth commission in an established democracy and looks to a previous public inquiry led by Thomas Berger, the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry, for some useful strategies for the TRC as it pursues its mandate. In particular, I suggest that a commission can perform a social function by using its process to educate the broader public about the issue before it.

Truth commissions: a schematic overview

2006 ◽  
Vol 88 (862) ◽  
pp. 295-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
Priscilla B. Hayner
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth Commissions ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
The World ◽  
Different Types

Numerous truth commissions of different types are being created around the world. The purpose of this schematic overview is to study the variety and to sketch out the differences and similarities between the different truth commissions established since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa launched in 1995.

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