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’.

scholarly journals Taking responsibility for reconciliation: a Christian response to the legacy and challenges of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)

2009 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Barry
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Healing Process ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Good News ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
To Come ◽  
Desmond Tutu

At the conclusion of the TRC, Desmond Tutu stated that the Commission’s task was to promote, not to achieve, reconci- liation. Reconciliation, he maintained, is the responsibility of all South Africans, and expressed the hope that the Christian churches would be in the forefront of this healing process.  This article explores how the Christian church can be in the forefront of binding up the wounds, facilitating the healing pro- cess, and living as a people and a sign of hope. The answers it seeks to offer fall under three interrelated themes, namely the church’s:  • spirituality of reconciliation; • ministry and mission of reconciliation; and • resources for its ministry and mission of reconciliation. Cultivating a spirituality of reconciliation would mean making reconciliation a lifestyle, rather than a series of strategies, pro- grammes or initiatives, yet remaining concrete, practical, mea- surable and accountable.   The church’s mission is primarily to proclaim the good news of God’s Kingdom that is already here, but not yet fully here and therefore still to come. This proclamation is the message of reconciliation between God, others and the self, and anticipates the unity of all creation in Jesus Christ.   The resources given to the church to fulfil this apostolic ministry include prophecy, evangelism, pastoral care and teaching, as well as its liturgical and sacramental life, its ministry of pre- sence, its people and its commitment to social justice.

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.

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 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.

Deification, Demonization and Dispossession

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 420-444 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan A. Boesak
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Collective Responsibility ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Nelson Mandela ◽  
Primary Obstacle ◽  
Reconciliation Project ◽  
Reconciliation Process

Many regard South Africa’s reconciliation process as a model for a search for peace in and among nations. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission played an admirable part in this. However, problems remain in continuing and completing this reconciliation project. For many the failure to secure social justice through reconciliation remains one challenge. At issue is also how South Africans deal with their fractured and painful past. This article revisits issues of culpability and responsibility by asking whether a primary obstacle towards reconciliation might be that South Africans, instead of taking personal and collective responsibility for reconciliation, have hidden behind two major and completely opposite South African figures: Nelson Mandela and Eugene De Kock. It is argued that the ‘deification’ of Mandela and the ‘demonization’ of De Kock pose an important obstacle for the acceptance of culpability and responsibility for addressing historic wrongs with a view to true reconciliation.

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.

When the Landscape of the Face is Hidden from Us

2017 ◽  
pp. 68-71
Author(s):  
Paula Horta
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Affective Quality ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Ethical Response ◽  
Desmond Tutu

How do we respond to the vulnerability of the Other when we do not see his face? How do photographer and viewers position themselves ethically in relation to the (hi)story of suffering they are called to witness? These are the questions that steer my reflection about Jillian Edelstein’s unpublished photograph of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Taken shortly after the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) completed its work, the photograph evokes the moment during the TRC hearings when the Archbishop, Chairman of the commission, laid down his head and wept. Drawing on Emmanuel Levinas’s conceptualization of “the face”; I discuss how affect is produced within and through Edelstein’s photograph, and specifically how the affective quality of the photograph both contributes to an understanding of the experience of suffering within the context of the TRC and summons an ethical response from the viewer. Keywords: Desmund Tutu, Emmanuel Levinas, gesture and photography, Jillian Edelstein, photography portrait

Seeking Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa

2004 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Therese Sacco ◽  
Wilma Hoffmann
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Social Work ◽  
South African ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Social Work Educators ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
To Come

South Africa’s attempt to come to terms with its horrific past; mechanisms and responsibilities of countries endeavoring to deal with such pasts; objectives of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and critiques of it are identified. A public acknowledgement submitted by some South African social work educators is included.

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