A NATION BECOMING? MEDIATING POST-APARTHEID IDENTITIES IN ANTJIE KROG’S COUNTRY OF MY SKULL

Imbizo ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-50
Author(s):  
Solomon Mwapangidza
Keyword(s):  
Nation Building ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Conventional Form ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Salient Features ◽  
Building Project ◽  
Anti Form

 In this paper I use postmodernism to explore Antjie Krog’s engagement with post-Apartheid identities in Country of My Skull. These identities, often complex and multiple, are mediated in the process of nation-building. I take the exercise of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) as metonymy for the nation-building project, and I argue that Krog quite deliberately chose an ambiguous and complex genre to represent equally ambiguous and complex identities. One of the salient features of postmodernism is its anti-systemic, anti-form impulse, and the form that Krog uses refuses to be conscripted into any single conventional form. Dominated by testimonies of victims and perpetrators of apartheid violence, the form also bears aspects of autobiography, novel, poetry and journalistic snippets interlaced with quotes from psychoanalysts and philosophers. From time to time, anecdotes, fairytales, myths and legends are interpolated into the narrative to remind the reader of the porous borders between fiction and reality.

scholarly journals Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: the role of the faith communities

2005 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 146-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
P G J Meiring
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Democratic Society ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Faith Communities ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
The Past

Ten years after the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission commenced with its work (1995), the author – using the statements made by representatives of the different faith communities in South Africa – analyses the role the communities played in the past: as agents of oppression, as victims of apartheid, as opponents of apartheid, as well as their role in the country’s transition to a new democratic society. Finally, the contribution of the faith communities in the process of reconciliation and nation building is discussed.

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’.

Using African Truth and Reconciliation Commission documentation for truth telling and reconciliation

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Proscovia Svärd
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Truth Telling ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commissions ◽  
Reconciliation Process

Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs) are established to document violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in post-conflict societies. The intent is to excavate the truth to avoid political speculations and create an understanding of the nature of the conflict. The documentation hence results in a common narrative which aims to facilitate reconciliation to avoid regression to conflict. TRCs therefore do a tremendous job and create compound documentation that includes written statements, interviews, live public testimonies of witnesses and they also publish final reports based on the accumulated materials. At the end of their mission, TRCs recommend the optimal use of their documentation since it is of paramount importance to the reconciliation process. Despite this ambition, the TRCs’ documentation is often politicized and out of reach for the victims and the post-conflict societies at large. The TRCs’ documentation is instead poorly diffused into the post conflict societies and their findings are not effectively disseminated and used.

The Triumph of Olemaun: Survivance, Empathic Unsettlement, and Restorying the History of Canadian Residential Schools

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 132-146
Author(s):  
Anah-Jayne Markland
Keyword(s):  
Residential Schools ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Aboriginal Peoples ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Mandatory Education ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Young Readers ◽  
History Of ◽  
Age Appropriate

The ignorance of many Canadians regarding residential schools and their traumatic legacy is emphasised in the reports of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) as a foundational obstacle to achieving reconciliation. Many of the TRC's calls to action involve education that dispels and corrects this ignorance, and the commission demands ‘age-appropriate curriculum on residential schools, Treaties, and Aboriginal peoples' historical and contemporary contributions to Canada’ to be made ‘a mandatory education requirement for Kindergarten to Grade Twelve students’ (Calls to Action 62.i). How to incorporate the history of residential schools in kindergarten and early elementary curricula has been much discussed, and one tool gaining traction is Indigenous-authored picturebooks about Canadian residential schools. This article conducts a close reading of Margaret Pokiak-Fenton and Christy Jordan-Fenton's picturebook When I Was Eight (2013). The picturebook gathers Indigenous and settler children together to contest master settler narratives regarding the history of residential schools. Using Gerald Vizenor's concept of ‘survivance’ and Dominick LaCapra's notion of ‘empathic unsettlement’, the article argues that picturebooks work to unsettle young readers empathetically as part of restorying settler myths about residential schools and implicating young readers in the work of reconciliation.

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