essay about the successes of the trc

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Introduction

Establishment and mandate of the commission

Challenges and limitations

What is apartheid?
When did apartheid start?
How did apartheid end?
What is the apartheid era in South African history?

Truth and Reconciliation Commission, South Africa

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Table Of Contents

Truth and Reconciliation Commission, South Africa (TRC) , courtlike body established by the new South African government in 1995 to help heal the country and bring about a reconciliation of its people by uncovering the truth about human rights violations that had occurred during the period of apartheid . Its emphasis was on gathering evidence and uncovering information—from both victims and perpetrators—and not on prosecuting individuals for past crimes, which is how the commission mainly differed from the Nürnberg trials that prosecuted Nazis after World War II . The commission released the first five volumes of its final report on Oct. 29, 1998, and the remaining two volumes of the report on March 21, 2003.

(Read Britannica’s biography of this author, Desmond Tutu.)

The unbanning of the liberation movements and opposition political parties in 1990 by Pres. F.W. de Klerk , the release from prison of Nelson Mandela , and the lifting of the state of emergency in South Africa paved the way for a negotiated peace settlement between the apartheid regime and those who fought against it and brought an end to the struggle against colonialism and apartheid that had lasted in South Africa for more than 300 years. The negotiations resulted in the establishment of a date for the country’s first democratic elections and for an interim constitution to be enacted. A major obstacle to finalizing the interim constitution was the question of accountability for those guilty of gross human rights violations during the years of apartheid. It became clear during the negotiations that the political right and many in the security forces were not loyal to President de Klerk and posed a major threat to stability in the country. They demanded that President de Klerk issue them a blanket amnesty for past actions. The dominant view among the liberation movements at the time, however, was that there should be accountability for past crimes, along the lines of the Nürnberg trials.

Those negotiating for the apartheid regime insisted that a guarantee of general amnesty be written into the interim constitution. Without it, it is unlikely that the apartheid government would have given up power. The strength of the amnesty deal was that it was part of a package of initiatives contained in the interim constitution that set the country on the road to becoming a democratic, constitutional state. This included a strong and justiciable bill of rights. The terms of the amnesty were to be decided on by the country’s first democratically elected government once elected in 1994.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was born of a spirit of public participation, as the new government solicited the opinions of South Africans and the international community regarding the issue of granting amnesty as well as the issue of accountability in respect to past violations and reparations for victims. Civil society, including human rights lawyers, the religious community, and victims, formed a coalition of more than 50 organizations that participated in a public dialogue on the merits of a truth commission . This consultative process lasted a year and culminated in the legislation, the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act 34 of 1995 (the Act), that established the TRC.

The Act provided for the establishment of a TRC made up of 17 commissioners. The commission was tasked with investigating human rights abuses committed from 1960 to 1994, including the circumstances, factors, and context of such violations; allowing victims the opportunity to tell their story; granting amnesty; constructing an impartial historical record of the past; and drafting a reparations policy. Finally, the TRC would compile a final report, providing comprehensive accounts of the activities and findings of the commission together with recommendations of measures to prevent future violations of human rights.

In order to achieve these objectives, the Act established three committees: the Human Rights Violations Committee, the Reparations and Rehabilitation Committee, and the Amnesty Committee. The commissioners were selected through an open countrywide nomination process and publicly interviewed by an independent selection panel comprising representatives of all the political parties, civil society , and the religious bodies in the country. Nelson Mandela, then president of South Africa, appointed Archbishop Desmond Tutu as the chair of the commission and Alex Boraine as the deputy chair.

The primary focus of the commission was on victims. It received more than 22,000 statements from victims and held public hearings at which victims gave testimony about gross violations of human rights, defined in the Act as torture, killings, disappearances and abductions, and severe ill treatment suffered at the hands of the apartheid state. Those who had suffered violations at the hands of the liberation movements—by members and leaders of such groups as the African National Congress , the Inkatha Freedom Party , and the Pan-Africanist Congress —also appeared before the commission . The commission received more than 7,000 amnesty applications, held more than 2,500 amnesty hearings, and granted 1,500 amnesties for thousands of crimes committed during the apartheid years.

An important feature of the TRC was its openness and transparency. The public hearings held by the TRC ensured that South Africans became aware of the atrocities that had been committed during the apartheid years.

Lessons from the TRC: then and now

Veteran journalist Pippa Green presented a series of reflections by TRC commissioners as part of the ICA’s current focus on the TRC hearings.

It has been more than 20 years since the first hearing of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). It was on that first day, 15 April 1996, that Archbishop Desmond Tutu broke down in tears.

The commissioners knew the hearings would be gruelling. But the TRC process promised hope and a pathway to some sort of healing. Two decades later, however, the process is widely criticised and regarded by many as having been a failure.

In an attempt to unpack the strengths and weaknesses of the TRC, and to generate the ideas and energy required to move forward, veteran journalist Pippa Green presented a series of reflections from 13 former TRC commissioners, on 19 April.

Her presentation formed part of the Institute for Creative Arts’ (ICA) 2017 Great Texts / Big Questions lecture series, with its current focus on the TRC in light of the Institutional Reconciliation and Transformation Committee (IRTC) process taken up by UCT in the wake of Shackville and the 2016 student protests.

Born out of a 13-part podcast series, History for the Future: What we can learn from the TRC , her talk was a retrospective on a critical historical chapter.

It presented a snapshot of the country as it was during the commission, and as it is now.

Dr Khwezi Mkhize, who chaired the proceedings, noted the following: “I think about those protests and the way students have constructed the idea of a TRC to address those protests themselves, as something of an allegory of history. So these lectures are echoing things that are real, visceral and immediate within our own political context.”

How we treat our history

Disillusioned and despairing of the culture of impunity and the demonisation of our independent institutions, the commissioners were nonetheless proud of what they achieved during the TRC.

This culminated in a seven-volume report, which included the recording of 21 000 names of people identified as victims.

Brought into being by the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act, the TRC had a particular mandate to review a specific period of our history.

Positioned somewhere between the prosecutorial approach of the Nuremberg trials and the blanket amnesty approach adopted in the wake of the Chilean dictatorship of 1973–1999, the TRC was made up of three committees: the Human Rights Violations Committee, which was chaired by Tutu, the Amnesty Committee and the Reparation and Rehabilitation Committee.

“I think the key thing for people who have been critical of the weaknesses of the TRC was perhaps not the TRC so much, but what happened afterwards,” said former commissioner Yasmin Sooka.

It was not within the TRC’s power to make reparations, only recommendations. But of the 300 names handed over for prosecution, not a single case was prosecuted.

“I think to not prosecute makes a mockery, really, of the ones who did come before the commission,” noted Sooka.

The root of the rot

South Africa is saddled with a culture of impunity, said former commissioner Advocate Dumisa Ntsebeza. This is rooted in the reluctance to accept the TRC’s findings and recommendations.

“It began in the unwillingness to take the legal process of the TRC to its logical conclusion. Not only in terms of prosecution, but in terms of actually even accepting the report,” he explained.

The ANC party, led by Thabo Mbeki, sought to interdict the release of the report on the day it was due to be handed over.

“It was indicative of things to come. That is spite of the Freedom Charter, in spite of what was reflected in the constitution as the values for which people had lost their lives and these values were enacted in large measure through the TRC … In spite of that, there was an attempt by government, by those who are in the liveries of power, to muzzle the coming into the open.”

All dictatorships start with a culture of impunity, he noted.

A time of despair

“It was a very difficult time in the country. It still is,” said Green, reflecting on the six-month period between 2015 and 2016 when she interviewed the commissioners. “The student protests were strong, robust and strident.”

There had been outbursts of racism on social media. It looked as if we were pretty far from the South Africa we had set out to be during the TRC, reflected Green.

“I think we have been really disappointed, in the way in which some of our core institutions have been silent in the face of violations. I mean, why have none of them stood up to protect Thuli Madonsela?” Sooka asked.

It is imperative for citizens to be able to trust independent institutions such as the judiciary and the public protector.

Indeed, as Green noted, it is only once we have an accountable and sensitive government that we will be able to have meaningful conversations about policy, education and youth unemployment.

Responding to Green, writer Antjie Krog drew upon the words of a Chilean commissioner who visited during the hearings. He warned that it is the process after the commission itself that is the most difficult. The words had not meant much to her at the time. But she has internalised them now.

It is then when “you can no longer depend on comrades for morality”, she said.

“But what you must demand is accountability.”

Please view the republishing articles page for more information.

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During the transition, South Africa faced an important question: how to deal with the past and abuses committed under apartheid. As Desmond Tutu, chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and 1984 Nobel Peace Prize winner, warned: “The past has a way of returning to you. It doesn’t go and lie down quietly.”

Nomonde Calata Reads the Newspaper

Nomonde Calata, widow of Fort Calata, reads the newspaper to learn the fate of the seven policemen who applied for amnesty for their involvement in the death of Fort Calata at the TRC hearing.

The following document relates to the death of political leader Fort Calata, whom the security police murdered in 1985. Below is the victim statement that his widow, Nomonde Calata, gave to the TRC. At the end of her testimony, she says that she would like to know who killed her husband and why.

MRS CALATA: I am Nomonde Calata, a wife to the late Fort Calata. . . . The community of Craddock felt that [the new government rent for our housing] was too much for them, because it is a small place and the people were not earning much . . . . Then a meeting was organized to discuss the issue. This is where the committee was elected which was going to handle all this and Matthew [Goniwe, Fort’s friend] was the chairperson of this Committee and Fort was a treasurer . . . This organization then started to become more important. . . . . . . [T]hings went on and I was arrested in November 1983 . . . [for] wearing a T-shirt on which was printed, “Free Mandela” . . . [Later I was found guilty of wearing that T-shirt and fined a large amount. The next day] [w]hen I arrived at work . . . [they] just dismissed me with immediate effect . . . MRS. CALATA: On the 27th of June [1985] [Fort] informed me that he and Matthew would be going for a briefing in Port Elizabeth . . . [H]e mentioned when they’ll be coming back because they usually came back at eight . . . So I kept on, I was awake suffering from insomnia. When I looked out, the was a casper [armored vehicle] and vans. The casper was on the other side of the street but not a single car moved around as they usually did. This was also an indication that something was wrong . . . We slept uneasily on Friday as we did not know what happened to our husbands. Usually the [Port Elizabeth] Herald was delivered at home because I was distributing it. During the time that it was delivered I looked at the headlines and one of the children said that he could see that his father’s car was shown in the paper as being burned. At that moment I was trembling because I was afraid of what might have happened to my husband, because I wondered, if his car was burned like this, what might have happened to him? . . . (sobbing) MR SMITH: Mr Chairman, may I request the Commission to adjourn maybe for a minute, I don’t think the witness is in a condition to continue at the present moment. CHAIRPERSON: Can we adjourn for 10 minutes please? OBSERVERS SINGING [a song from the struggle]: What have we done? What have we really done? What have we done? MRS CALATA: Well of course, I arrived with other women at that place [Mrs. Goniwe’s house]. Mrs. Mkhonto was there with us, Mrs. Goniwe was also there, people were very full in the house, and I learned the news that the bodies of Sparrow Mkhonto, and Mhlawuli have been discovered. I was wondering what happened to Matthew and Fort . . . When I got home, the reverend from my church visited me. He had come to explain that the bodies of Fort and Matthew were found. . . . The community and the family members went out to identify the bodies. Mr. Koluwe, the man we the families asked to go and identify the bodies, has passed away. He said that he had seen the bodies but he discovered that the hair was pulled out, his tongue was very long. His fingers were cut off. He had many wounds in his body. When he looked at his trousers he realised that the dogs had bitten him very severely. He couldn’t believe that the dogs already had their share . . . MR SMITH: . . . Would you want to know the identity of the person or persons who were responsible for your husband’s death, and if so, why would you like to know who exactly killed your husband? MRS CALATA: I’d be very glad to know this person. If I can know the individuals who are responsible for this I will be able to understand why they did it. . . . [My children] always ask how he [their father] was and what he will be doing at this time. Tomani, the last born is a child who always wants attention, always wants to be hugged, and even if he’s playing with the other children and talking about the others who always say that their fathers are coming at a certain time, you’ll find that when he comes back he doesn’t know what to say about his father. As a mother I always [have] to play the roles of both parents but I’ll be really glad if I can know what happened so that my children can get an explanation from me, so that I can say it is so and so and so and so. This will probably make me understand. I do not know the reason for their cruelty, but I just want to know and my family will also be happy to know who really cut short the life of my husband. Not to say that when they are old I’m just teaching them to retaliate or be revengeful, it’s just to know who’s done this and who changed our lives so drastically. 1

The second testimony came two years later, when Johan van Zyl, the leader of the police unit that murdered Fort Calata, decided to apply for amnesty. Van Zyl gave this account of killing Fort Calata and three other anti-apartheid activists, who became known as the Cradock Four.

MR VAN ZYL: Colonel Van Rensburg summoned me to his office and told me that the situation at that stage had become so critical that there was only one way in which to try and stabilise these areas, and that was by means of the elimination of Mr Matthew Goniwe and his closest colleagues [including Fort Calata and two others]. . . . Colonel Van Rensburg's words to me were that a drastic plan should be made very quickly with these particular people and that I accepted to mean that they should be eliminated. MR VAN ZYL: Colonel Van Rensburg . . . informed us [of] that final permission to proceed. Colonel Van Rensburg proposed or gave order that the attack should appear as if it was a vigilante or AZAPO attack [i.e., from the Azanian People’s Organization, an anti-apartheid group]. In other words we should use sharp objects to eliminate the individuals and that we should burn their bodies with petrol. . . . We poured petrol over [their car]. . . . I then gave the order that petrol contained in two petrol cans in my car, be poured over the corpses . . . I can recall that I told them not to forget to remove the handcuffs. The three black members [of the security police] and myself then went back to where Mr Mhlauli's corpse was and I took petrol from the boot of my car, whilst Mr Faku and the other members removed the handcuffs from the body, from the corpse. CHAIRPERSON [of this hearing]: Whose corpse are you referring to? MR VAN ZYL: It was Mr Mhlauli's corpse. When Mr Faku [a black policeman] took the petrol from me, they then told me that they could not get the cuffs off the body and that they had to remove his one hand to get the cuffs off. CHAIRPERSON: You did not see this? MR VAN ZYL: No, at that stage I was not close to the corpse. MR VAN ZYL: [I] returned to the city] early in the morning, but it wasn’t light yet. And then for the first time in the light of the parking area, I saw that there was blood on the seat of my car and I washed it off while I was there and then I returned to the office where I arrived at about seven and I reported to Mr Du Plessis that the operation was concluded and Mr Du Plessis and myself went to Captain Snyman's office and we reported to him that the operation was concluded. ADV BOOYENS [lawyer for van Zyl]: Mr Van Zyl, what you have done, do you agree that this was in contradiction with the laws of the country, did you act on own initiative, did you receive instructions, was this an authorised operation, what is the position? MR VAN ZYL: I knew strictly speaking that it was an illegal operation, but I knew and I felt that it was an authorised operation . . . . I am applying [for amnesty] because I feel that the crimes in which I participated formed a part of the political struggle of that time. Unfortunate as it was, it was nothing else but that and that is what I base it upon. The facts which I received from Colonel Van Rensburg and later Colonel Snyman personally, are part of that . . . CROSS-EXAMINATION BY ADVOCATE BIZOS [on behalf of the families of the four activists]: Thank you Mr Chairman. Mr Van Zyl, 63 stab wounds were inflicted on the four people you murdered on the night of the 27th, 1985. Do you agree with the District Surgeon's report with that? MR VAN ZYL: I cannot disagree with that Mr Chairman. ADV BIZOS: Do you agree that the 63 stab wounds is evidence of barbaric conduct? MR VAN ZYL: Mr Chairman, in retrospect, absolutely. The fact is though that instruction was that this killing should look like a vigilante attack and that a more humane way of doing it, would not have had the same effect. ADV BIZOS: Does your answer mean that you were prepared to behave like a savage barbarian in order to mislead anyone that bothered to investigate the murders that you had committed? MR VAN ZYL: In effect yes, Mr Chairman. I thought at the time that I could do it and it turned out that I personally was not able to do it myself. ADV BIZOS: What is it that makes an Officer such as yourself, able to command a Unit that inflicts 63 stab wounds, but you yourself want to have hands supposedly free of blood? MR VAN ZYL: I was fully intentional to do the whole operation myself at the time, to try and protect the two younger members from the same act. It turned out in the end that I could not do that. ADV BIZOS: You couldn't stab anybody? MR VAN ZYL: I have never attempted it, Mr Chairman. ADV BIZOS: But you could give orders to your black colleagues and supervise their inflicting 63 stab wounds, and you thought that that was better? . . . CHAIRPERSON: Now, this operation, I am sorry to have to put it this way, but I can think of no other way to put it. Did you enjoy it? MR J VAN ZYL: No, Mr Chairman. To the contrary. CHAIRPERSON: Why did you do it? MR J VAN ZYL: Mr Chairman, I have asked myself that question many times. . . . I think at that time I was just so motivated that I was prepared to do anything for this country. Which in retrospect was misplaced, but I have no other real explanation as that. CHAIRPERSON: Would these killings have occurred without you being told or ordered to do so? MR J VAN ZYL: No, Mr Chairman . . . CHAIRPERSON: You were at liberty to refuse to do so. Is that correct? MR J VAN ZYL: That’s correct. CHAIRPERSON: You did not like to do it. Why did you proceed with those orders? MR J VAN ZYL: Because I agreed that it was probably the only way that we saw at the time to try and stabilise this area. CHAIRPERSON: What would have happened had you refused? MR J VAN ZYL: Probably nothing much, Mr Chairman. 2

After deliberations, the TRC rejected Johan van Zyl’s application for amnesty, because the security forces never made a full disclosure regarding the killings. "The commission could therefore not find a relationship between the act and political motives," a TRC spokesperson said. It was a unanimous decision by all three judges and the two panel members." 3

Connection Questions

What can we learn about both Nomonde Calata’s and Fort Calata’s lives? What was Nomonde hoping to gain by testifying before the commission?
Nomonde Calata’s testimony immediately appeared in the news media in all the regional languages, including Afrikaans. What did South Africans gain from hearing her testimony? What does her testimony reveal about the TRC?
What do we learn about the disappearance of Fort Calata and his three colleagues from Johan van Zyl’s testimony? Does his testimony answer Nomonde Calata’s questions?
What is the significance of the fact that van Zyl’s application for amnesty was rejected by the commission?
1 Republic of South Africa, ‘ Statement by Nomonde Calata to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission ” (transcript, April 16, 1996, East London), Department of Justice and Constitutional Development website.
2 Republic of South Africa, “Truth and Reconciliation Commission Amnesty Hearing” (transcript), Department of Justice and Constitutional Development website.
3 “No Amnesty for Killers of the Cradock Four,” IOL (Independent Media) website, December 14, 1999.

How to Cite This Reading

Facing History & Ourselves, “ The Truth and Reconciliation Commission ”, last updated July 31, 2018.

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Introduction: The South African TRC and Its Narrative Legacies

First Online: 19 May 2020

Cite this chapter

Francesca Mussi 2

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This introduction chapter begins by outlining the main features of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) proceedings, as well as drawing attention to the impact of the Commission’s reconciliation project on the South African literary landscape, both during the life of its work and many years after the completion of its mandate. The chapter briefly discusses how different literary genres have engaged in dialogue with the TRC over time, starting with an exploration of plays that relate to questions of truth-telling, healing and reconciliation, and moving to analyse Ingrid de Kok’s lyrical sequence “A Room Full of Questions” and Antjie Krog’s creative non-fictional milestone Country of My Skull . Through analysis of Sindiwe Magona’s Mother to Mother and Gillian Slovo’s Red Dust , the chapter then considers the novel’s particular capacity for interrogating and challenging the TRC’s key concepts of trauma, truth and reconciliation, which are the focus of the subsequent chapters.

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Although it did not use the name “truth and reconciliation commission”, the first truth commission occurred in Uganda in 1974 and was known as the Truth Commission: Commission of Inquiry into the Disappearances of People in Uganda to investigate and report on disappearances in the first years of the Amin government from 25 January 1971 until 1974. The early truth commissions established in Latin America are, however, more famous and widely discussed. In 1983, Argentina’s National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons was created by President of Argentina Raúl Alfonsín. It issued the Nunca Más (Never Again) report, which documented human rights violations under the military dictatorship known as the National Reorganization Process. In Chile, shortly after the country’s return to democracy, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established in April 1990 to investigate human rights abuses resulting in death or disappearance that occurred in Chile during the years of military dictatorship under Augusto Pinochet , which began on 11 September 1973 and ended on 11 March 1990. It was the first commission to use the name “truth and reconciliation commission” and most truth commissions since then have used a variation on the title. Other early commissions were established in diverse locations including Nepal (1990), El Salvador (1992), Guatemala (1994) and South Africa (1995). Paul Gready observes that, in the aftermath of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, truth commissions “have gone global”: one estimate, in fact, suggests that by mid-2004, thirty-five truth commissions had been established worldwide ( 2011 , p. 4).

In connection with the life of the TRC, the year 1995 refers to the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act, No. 34 of 1995, which authorised the establishment of the Commission. As explained later, the victim hearings as well as the work of the Reparation and Rehabilitation Committee lasted from 1996 to 1998; the year 1998 also coincides with the delivery of the first part of the TRC’s final report. The Amnesty Committee completed its mandate in 2001, delivering the last two volumes of the final report in 2003.

See, for example , Boraine ( 2000 ), Charles Villa-Vicencio and Wilhelm Verwoerd ( 2000 ), Richard Wilson ( 2001 ) and Ross ( 2003 ). More recent studies include Chapman and van der Merwe ( 2008 ), Verdoolaege ( 2008 ), Gready ( 2011 ) and Swart and van Marle ( 2017 ).

In particular, Graham adopts literature as a line of enquiry into South Africa’s process of memorialisation and preservation of the traumatic past, and its re-organisation of the social space after apartheid. He focuses on literary or dramatic texts that either explicitly address the TRC as content or that “have taken full advantage of the new narrative and dramatic possibilities generated in part by the Commission’s processes” ( 2009 , p. 5).

See, for example, Robert I. Rotberg and Dennis Thompson ( 2000 ).

See Colvin ( 2006 ) for a full account of the reparations policy.

In this connection, see, for example, Boehmer, Gunner and Maake ( 1995 ), Nixon ( 1997 ), Attwell and Harlow ( 2000 ) and Barnard and Farred ( 2004 ).

It is interesting to note that for the first six months of the TRC, as Herzberg started to write The Dead Wait , the Commission had heard only from victims; however, in October 1996, the TRC started to accept amnesty applications from apartheid’s perpetrators as well.

The play’s indebtedness to Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi is acknowledged by Taylor in her writer’s note in the hardcopy of the play ( 1998 , pp. ii–vii).

Examples of such characters abound in the literature of late- and post-apartheid years, appearing, for example, in works by J. M. Coetzee and Nadine Gordimer. Although set before the official demise of the apartheid regime, Coetzee’s Age of Iron ( 1990 ) perfectly exemplifies this type of narrative, where the encounter with the Other “awakens” the privileged white and becomes an opportunity to foster healing.

De Kok’s sequence about the TRC consists of twelve poems. For further analysis, see Sharp ( 2018 ). All poems by Ingrid de Kok are here cited from her collection Terrestrial Things ( 2002 ).

Magona is emphatic that Mother to Mother is a novel, a work of fiction, since she did not interview either of the two families involved in the crime. Indeed, although four youths were convicted for the murder of Amy Biehl, Magona makes only one youth responsible for the killing, here fictionalised as Mandisa’s eldest son Mxolisi.

See also Magona’s interview in Attwell, Harlow and J. Attwell ( 2000 ). In this interview, Magona asserts that “the African government was waging a war against African families” (p. 285) forcing fathers to leave the household and search for better job opportunities, while mothers and children had to stay behind in the village. In some instances, because wages were so low, or when men deserted the family, women were compelled to go to work and leave the children alone. The absence of one or both parental figures to raise the children was a common feature of African families during apartheid and this painful situation of leaving the children without care forms the emotional core of Mother to Mother .

The Group Areas Act of 1950 was the title of three acts enacted under apartheid. These acts assigned racial groups to different residential and business sections in urban areas, causing many non-white people both to have a long-distance commute to go to work and to be forcibly removed from their homes and allocate in specific zones.

MK is the abbreviation for uMkhonto we Sizwe, which was the armed wing of the African National Congress.

In this connection, see Magona’s autobiography To My Children’s Children ( 1990 ) and Slovo’s memoir Every Secret Thing : My Family, My Country ( 1997 ).

Further books that engage either directly or indirectly with the work of the TRC and its legacies include: Jann Turner’s Southern Cross ( 2002 ), which tackles the issue of betrayal on both sides of the political spectrum and related questions of truth-telling, confession and accountability; Zoë Wicomb’s David’s Story ( 2000 ) and its investigations of the problems of narrativising the coloured voice; Tony Eprile’s The Persistence of Memory ( 2004 ) which explores the question of a wider white complicity in apartheid’s crimes, a question that was inadequately addressed by the TRC; Zakes Mda’s Rachel’s Blue ( 2014 ) and its scrutiny of themes such as truth, loss, rape, healing and justice, among others.

Rebecca Saunders, in fact, observes that “while trauma theory has primarily been produced in Europe and the United States, trauma itself has, with equal if not greater regularity and urgency, been experienced elsewhere” ( 2007 , p. 15). In connection with Western trauma theory, please refer to the work of Dori Laub and Shoshana Felman ( 1992 ), Cathy Caruth ( 1996 ) and Dominick LaCapra ( 2001 ).

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Mussi, F. (2020). Introduction: The South African TRC and Its Narrative Legacies. In: Literary Legacies of the South African TRC. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43055-9_1

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The Truth and Reconciliation Commission : success or failure?

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Negotiation, Conflict Resolution and Peace Studies Journal.

Jason le Grange

In order to evaluate whether or not the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was a success or failure would require an analysis of the whether or not the reason that the commission was set up in turn met its goals. What this paper will explain is that this process of evaluation is unfortunately complex and therefore the question of success or failure is not possible in simplistic terms, as the subject matter requires analysis beyond a singular paper. Research directed at the South African population conducted by a group of South African and American researchers (Stein et al, 2008) which specifically looked at the impact of the TRC on psychological distress found that the TRC was ‘moderately positive’ in the eyes of ordinary South Africans. This paper hopes to consider whether the TRC helped to relieve the multiple layers of conflict in South Africa and whether in fact there should have been different commissions to address different issues.

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This was a presentation answering the titled question. My presentation found that the South African Truth and Reconciliation commission was successful in establishing 'truth', although the truth was largely subjective in certain cases by nature and virtue of TRC. However, South Africa has had no significant social reconciliation which can be attributed to the TRC despite reconciliation being in the mandate of the TRC, this can be witnessed through the academic research and in the absence of any 'positive peace' in contemporary South African society.

Brandon LaFavor

This paper analysis the effectiveness of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the fall of apartheid South Africa. At the end of the racial segregation fostered by the apartheid regime in South Africa, The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was formed in Cape Town to give South Africans the opportunity to come to terms with what happened in the past and advance reconciliation among its national citizens. Reconciliation is defined as the restoration of friendly relations, but unfortunately throughout the history of South Africa, there is no time in which it was not a deeply divided society (Barrow, 1998). Therefore, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was fighting an uphill battle from the start.

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This work explores the effectiveness of truth commissions, particularly the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, in bringing justice.

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The twenty-year anniversary of the establishment of democratic governance in South Africa presents a fitting time to reflect upon the work of the country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). This article focusses on the TRC as a key institution in the transition from apartheid to democracy, and commences by outlining the context and remit of the TRC and considering some of its more recent critiques. I conclude that many of these perspectives present an unfair judgement of the Commission based on either a misreading or misunderstanding of its mandate, and to a certain extent, a disregard for the contextual constraints within which it operated. Whilst acknowledging its limitations, I argue that the TRC played an important role in facilitating political transition and maintaining a fragile peace, and that it contributed to creating a more inclusive official historical narrative, as well as a human rights culture. I identify that the Commission's therapeutic ethos and its emphasis on the human capacity for empathy and compassion were particularly significant in cultivating a shared purpose and sense of national community. I conclude by considering the TRC in the context of key contemporary challenges facing South Africa, underscoring the need for ongoing attention to structural injustice.

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The impact of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of South Africa is a contested terrain. On the one hand, it pioneered an entirely new level of national " truth telling " by empowering the victim's voice through public hearings and reparations, and by insisting on accountability for all amnesty applicants by treating them in a uniform manner (regardless of claims of moral high ground). Additionally, it applied a conditional amnesty, robust public hearings, sectorial submissions, and provided intensive national media coverage coupled with investigative services to verify confessions and exhumations to locate missing remains. On the other, there were also multiple deficits attached to the TRC process. Many evaluators assessed the TRC to be ineffectual in reaching the community " grassroots " level masses due to its " top-down " centralized approach, its perceived perpetrator bias, and its unacceptable level of victim compensation. Other critiques pointed to a lack of follow through, limited timeframe and mandate, and its coercive forms of forgiveness and reconciliation. This entry is concerned with the wider societal impact of the TRC 20 years after its inception. Three broad themes will be utilized to frame this entry and to identify future research forays: the contribution of the TRC to public participation processes; the contribution to the construction of a new narrative discourse at a societal level; and the contribution to collective social justice in South Africa today.

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This paper is giving an overview of the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa through a thesis of congruence between its protocols and elements of theatrical performance. After an introductory survey of the historical context of apartheid, it offers an analysis of TRC’s work through two roles it had – the role of a legal instrument, and the one of a tool for facing the past and producing the national historical narrative. This paper analyses the relation between theatrical and performative characteristics, and concepts of transitional and restorative justice; the influence of elements of performance is also studied in TRC’s effect on creating national narratives, which are used to legitimate new legal and political order.

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It would be clear that our use of the designation “victim” or “survivor” is not meant to convey the idea that we are just hapless people waiting for salvation from the state or civil society officials. There is no gainsaying that this is the struggle that we cannot win by ourselves – how can we, when this struggle is simply not about the wrongs that were done to us as individuals but it is a struggle against structures and system that are designed to ensure that only a handful of people lord over the rest? The struggle is against neoliberal globalization that puts a serious limit to ‘post-conflict’ being-togetherness and any thorough going social emancipation. The struggle is against the global coloniality of power and being that arose in the long 16th century and that still determines which lives are grievable and which are not, and thus which pains are worthy of honour and reparation, and which are not. The struggle is also against the coloniality of knowledge that determines which ways of understanding the world and thus being in the world and (re) making the world are legitimate and which are not. It is this coloniality that tells that there is only one formula to follow to achieve healing, re-harmonization and restorative justice. For us, the discourse and practice of transitional justice does not exhaust all the possibilities that exist for achieving all these goals.

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