scholarly journals Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: Jewish Voices and Perspectives

2004 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 546-567
Author(s):  
P G J Meiring
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Jewish Experience ◽  
Apartheid Regime

The author who served on the South African  Truth  and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) focuses on the Jewish experience in South Africa  during  the apartheid years. At a special TRC Hearing for Faith Communities (East London, 17-19  November 1997) Chief Rabbi Cyril Harris submitted a statement on behalf of his community. Two earlier documents were also put at  the TRC’s disposal: a statement on Reconciliation  presented by Gesher (a Jewish movement for social action) as a well as a comprehensive volume containing 27 interviews with Jewish activists (Cutting Through the Mountain). Taking his cue from both the Chief Rabbi’s presentation and the earlier documents, the author discusses the role of the Jewish community in overtly and covertly supporting the apartheid regime, as well the experiences of many Jews in struggling against apartheid. Finally the contribution of the Jewish community towards healing and reconciliation in South Africa comes under the spotlight.

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

scholarly journals Seeking feasible reconciliation: A transdisciplinary contextual approach to reconciliation

2014 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoffel H. Thesnaar
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Practical Theology ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Institutional Church ◽  
Daunting Challenge

In South Africa scholars in the broad field of practical theology are currently faced with a daunting challenge: to rethink the reconciling role of the institutional church in the light of continued challenges facing reconciliation within post-apartheid and post-Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) South Africa. This contribution investigates whether the transdisciplinary, region-centred scientific research approach with a focus on the Hölderlin perspective on reconciliation could assist scholars in practical theology to address reconciliation in a post-apartheid and post-TRC society. The article proposes a contextual and constructive approach to reconciliation in order to assist South African scholars in the field of practical theology and the institutional church to address the challenges of reconciliation in a post-apartheid and post-TRC society. The contribution confirms that this approach does indeed assist the field of practical theology to contribute to reconciliation without the risk of speaking a language that nobody beyond theology can understand.

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 The knowledge and perceptions of history students of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
M Oelofse ◽  
A Oosthuysen
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Research Method ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Mixed Method Research ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Group Interviews ◽  
The University

Using the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (TRC) and the concept of reconciliation as a case study, the article attempts to assess the knowledge and understanding of the registered undergraduate history students at the University of the Free State’s main campus about the TRC and the concept and process of reconciliation in the country at large. The research will firstly assess whether the younger generation of students, specifically students taking history as a subject, have any knowledge of such a significant and contemporary event in South African historiography as the TRC process. Secondly, in relation to the aims and recommendations of the TRC and against the background of reconciliation efforts in the country, to perceive the views and thoughts of undergraduate history students on the progress in reconciliation endeavours in South Africa. As a result, a sample of 128 undergraduate history students was randomly selected to complete a quantitative questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of both closed and open-ended questions. Group interviews, as a qualitative research method, were added and used to conduct interviews with 16 undergraduate history students selected randomly and answers were recorded. Accordingly, an explanatory mixed- method research method approach was employed by implementing both the qualitative and quantitative method.

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 Lydia’s silence: Representation of trauma from an ex-centric position in Achmat Dangor’s Bitter Fruit

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vipasha Bhardwa
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
Familial Bonds ◽  
Apartheid Regime ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
Bitter Fruit

South Africa, a place long caught in the crosshairs of hegemonic violence and racism, provides a fitting case study for the imbalance and marginalization of the traumatized individuals who lived through the fascist apartheid regime. Achmat Dangor’s celebrated novel Bitter Fruit (2001) is a tragic story of the coloured family of Silas Ali set during 1998; when Nelson Mandela’s presidency was gaining momentum in South Africa. It was a period when the violent and discriminatory apartheid regime was coming to an end and a fledgling democracy was still testing its wings in South Africa. The narrative of Bitter Fruit is centred around the silenced memory of Lydia’s rape, Silas’s wife, by a white security policeman called Francois du Boise. The novel begins with Lydia’s suppressed traumatic past erupting into the post-apartheid present when Silas accidentally encounters his wife’s rapist at a mall in Johannesburg thereby bringing back the traumatic memories of the past. Nineteen-year-old Mikey Ali, who is a child conceived in shame and terror, is the figurative ‘bitter fruit’ in the novel born of miscegenation and apartheid abuse. Lydia’s trauma haunts the family in complex ways ultimately leading to the disintegration of familial bonds. These personal experiences of trauma take place against the backdrop of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), a famous but controversial reparative model of justice. The proposed research article aims to understand trauma from the ex-centric position of a coloured woman who refuses to allow her personal experiences of trauma to be undermined and defined as merely wartime ‘collateral damage’. Lydia resists the reductionist approach that the members of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) had adopted while dealing with cases related to violence and human rights abuses. In the beginning, dialogue and discourses on trauma centred mainly around extremely unusual events but now trauma theories have infiltrated co

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.

Healing Painful Memories through Storytelling Cultivated by Vivid Images of Remembrance in Liturgy: Why the Liturgical Acts of the TRC (SA-1996) Did Not Produce the Healing Expected

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 134-151
Author(s):  
Ferdi P. Kruger ◽  
Ben J. De Klerk
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Holy Communion ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
South African Society ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Worship Service ◽  
African Context

This article elucidates the idea that opportunities for remembrance should be cultivated within liturgy. No participant within liturgy enters a worship service as a tabula rasa. People enter the worship service with all kinds of memories, some of which may be painful memories of the past while others may be good memories. People’s memories could influence their participation in liturgy profoundly. The following research question was identified: What is the role of storytelling cultivated by vivid images of liturgy in healing painful memories in a post-TRC South Africa? The authors contextualize this idea by scrutinizing the praxis within a South African context nearly 25 years after the activities of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the memories around it continue to be critically interrogated. The authors’ main focus is the communicative-liturgical approach that the TRC adhered to and why this approach seems to demonstrate shortcomings. This article examines the idea that the choice to remember will always be an ongoing process, mainly because a faith community is a remembering community. Three aspects are linked in a three-stroke relationship, namely liturgy, remembrance, and storytelling. Inter-disciplinary perspectives on remembrance and storytelling are offered while theological reflection reveals that remembrance and storytelling are interwoven. Two aspects in which remembrance and liturgy are connected, namely Passover and Holy Communion, are scrutinized and it is proposed that the idea of storytelling could be an intriguing aspect for further reflection within a Reformed tradition. We conclude with the idea that people’s memories are in need of editing through the process of remembrance. The telling of stories provides opportunities to do exactly this. We have explored the recognition that South African society needs people that continuously tell their stories of painful memories, while liturgy could cultivate vivid remembrances that will inevitably lead to healing.

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