scholarly journals REMORSE AND REPENTANCE STRIPPED OF ITS VALIDITY. AMNESTY GRANTED BY THE TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION OF SOUTH AFRICA

2015 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-184
Author(s):  
Eugene Baron
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
The South ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Full Disclosure ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Perpetrators And Victims ◽  
Reconciliation Process

During the South African amnesty process perpetrators would get amnesty if they could prove that there was a political motive for committing their actions, their deeds were proportionate, that they happened during and between the years 1960 and 1994, and if they gave full disclosure. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the following: the fact that remorse and repentance were not required in order for perpetrators to get amnesty, left the reconciliation process in a vacuum. The inclusion of remorse and repentance as a requirement for amnesty, would have established a true (not a cheap) forgiveness and a ‘thick’ reconciliation process between perpetrators and victims. Remorse and repentance would have requested an admission and regret of wrongdoing, followed by an act of repentance underwritten by acts of contrition. 

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

Discourses of Order and Their Disruption: The Texts of the South African Truth & Reconciliation Commission

2000 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek Hook ◽  
Bronwyn Harris
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Political Efficacy ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
The South ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Political Discourses ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Special Power ◽  
Social Orders

This paper asserts that selected texts of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission possess a powerful political potential in their ability to challenge and refute historical relations of racialised power in South Africa. The prospective political efficacy of these texts is seen as residing in their critical ability to subvert and challenge the predominant understandings, discourses and representations of Apartheid, or the ‘old’, South Africa. Three overlapping routes of enquiry are explored in this regard. Firstly, the political efficacy of such texts is seen as arising from their role in terms of the recovery of previously repressed histories. This recovery enlarges the archive of South Africa's past and contributes to the constitution of a new body of knowledge, from which credible standpoints of resistance and opposition may be articulated. A second explanation highlights the fact these texts are able to exert a form of discursive critique upon the predominant practices and representations of both former and reigning social orders. This level of critique enables us, in Foucautt's (1981) terms to restore to political discourses their nature as contextual and discontinuous practices of construction as opposed to naturally-occurring, seamlessly-unified, purely significatory instances of language. The last account engages more directly with the radical and transgressive nature of these texts, with their affective and ultimately symptomatic qualities. It is here suggested that these texts have earned their extraordinary visceral charge, their special power and horror, for many South Africans, precisely because they have exposed and stretched to the limit the boundaries of the past discursive order, of what had been known, what was understood and what could be represented in the Apartheid State.

scholarly journals Reconciliation and psychiatry in South Africa

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 62-64
Author(s):  
Bernard Janse van Rensburg
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
South African ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
African Society ◽  
The South ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
South African Society ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Form Part

Although psychiatrists did not form part of the structures of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), the Society of Psychiatrists of South Africa (SPSA) at the time did make a submission. Since then, the local association of psychiatrists has been reconstituted as the South African Society of Psychiatrists (SASOP). Psychiatry and psychiatrists may have to extend their activities beyond rehabilitation and restoration, to include endeavours to prevent future violations of human rights.

A Splintering and Shattering Activity

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
David W. McIvor
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Traumatic Events ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
The South ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
African Experience ◽  
Reconciliation Process

This chapter examines the nettlesome politics of reconciliation from within the framework of public mourning developed over the preceding chapters. Like many interpreters of the politics of reconciliation, it focuses primarily on the South African experience. Not only has the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission become the most widely surveyed and scrutinized reconciliation process, it has also become exemplary for communities seeking an extrajudicial “rejoinder” to traumatic events in their past, such as Greensboro. South Africa's transition from apartheid rule in the 1990s is commonly seen as the paradigmatic case of how societies torn by deep and seemingly intractable conflicts can account for or in some respect come to terms with a violent past and all the ways in which the present has been shaped by that past.

scholarly journals Narrative Pertaining Truth and Reconciliation

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
John Stephanus Klaasen
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Structure And Function ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Narrative Approach ◽  
The South ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
And Function

The use of the oral historical form of communication was tantamount to the failures and successes of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). In this article, narrative or storytelling is the theoretical framework to assess the successes and failures of the work of the South African TRC. A correlation between the Commission’s work and what followed after it had completed its mandate, points to the successes of the Commission in contemporary South Africa. Current limitations to form unity and build a reconciled society can be placed within the structure and function of the truth as relayed through stories and narratives of individuals and groups at hearings of the Commission. There exists a corpus of literature regarding the post-TRC period. This contribution provides a perspective of the work of the TRC from a narrative approach.

scholarly journals Truth and reconciliation: Should the key notions be revised?: Experiences from South-Africa and Rwanda

Temida ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 33-44
Author(s):  
Heidy Rombouts
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
The South ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Precise Meaning ◽  
Fact Finding

Both the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Gacaca tribunals, which started recently in Rwanda, are framed in terms of truth and reconciliation. But what does the truth mean? What does reconciliation mean? It can be argued that searching the truth has a very precise meaning - namely determining the details of what factually happened. And it is in this sense that most people understand the search for the truth. However it can be questioned whether this fact-finding is what the search for truth aims at in a context of transitional justice. .

scholarly journals The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission: Rev. James Buys at the Microphone

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pieter Gerhard J Meiring
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
The South ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
The Road ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
Mixed Marriages ◽  
On The Road

On October 19, 1997, Rev. James Buys presented the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa’s submission to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). He firstly reported on the extent to which URCSA, through its theology and activities, contributed to the violation of human rights during the years of apartheid, especially referring to the church’s stance on the notorious Group Areas Act, the government’s Labour Policy, the Mixed Marriages Act and the chaplain services. For all of this, a heartfelt apology was rendered. Buys, secondly, reported on the decisions and actions taken by URCSA during the 1970s and 1980s to resist apartheid, ranging from prophetic statements by individuals and synods, to eventually taking an active part in the struggle against apartheid. The role that the ecumenical community inside as well as outside South Africa had played to encourage and empower URCSA to define its message and actions, was also mentioned by Buys. Concluding his statement, Buys discussed URCSA’s recommendations for the process of reconciliation in South Africa. The author, who was present at the Faith Communities Hearing when Buys addressed the TRC, added a number of personal remarks pertaining to URCSA’s statement and to the role that URCSA is called to play on the road to reconciliation and nation-building in the country.

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.

'Papieren' voor de toekomst

1970 ◽  
Vol 60 ◽  
pp. 43-52
Author(s):  
Gustaaf Janssens
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
The South ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Cultural Perception ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
The Government

A purely cultural perception of records and archives is one-sided andincomplete. Records and archival documents are necessary to confirm therights and the obligations of both the government and the citizens. "Therecords are crucial to hold us accountable", says archbishop D. Tutu, formerpresident of the South African 'Truth and Reconciliation Commission'. Forthis reason, the government should organize the archives in such a way thatarchival services can fulfil their task as guardians of society's memorie.Citizens' rights and archives have a close relationship.

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