The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa

The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa
Author: Richard A. Wilson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2001-05-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780521802192

The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was set up to deal with the human rights violations of apartheid. However, the TRC's restorative justice approach did not always serve the needs of communities at a local level. Based on extended anthropological fieldwork, this book illustrates the impact of the TRC in urban African communities in Johannesburg. It argues that the TRC had little effect on popular ideas of justice as retribution. This provocative study deepens our understanding of post-apartheid South Africa and the use of human rights discourse.

Narrating Political Reconciliation

Narrating Political Reconciliation
Author: Claire Moon
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2009
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780739140451

Narrating Political Reconciliation advances a distinctive discourse analysis of South Africa's reconciliation process by enquiring into the politics of the following: writing national history, confessional, and testimonial styles of truth, and reconciliation as theology and therapy. Moon argues that the TRC was the catalyst for, and shaped the parameters of, what is now powerful 'reconciliation industry, ' and her insights provide a theoretical framework through which to think and problematise the politics of transitional justice in post-conflict and democratizing states more generally

Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa

Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa
Author: Lyn S. Graybill
Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2002
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781588260574

Graybill (mind and human interaction, U. of Virginia) provides students not only the facts about the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but also the broader context in which it operated. She asks whether it led to reconciliation and healing, what criteria were used to decide whether to pardon or punish, whether politics necessitated the compromise, and other questions. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa

Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa
Author: Hugo van der Merwe
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 366
Release: 2008-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780812240597

"Of the truth commissions to date, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has most effectively captured public attention throughout the world and provided the model for succeeding bodies. Although other truth commissions had preceded its establishment, the TRC had a far more expansive mandate: to go beyond truth-finding to promote national unity and reconciliation, to facilitate the granting of amnesty to those who made full factual disclosure, to restore the human and civil dignity of victims by providing them an opportunity to tell their own stories, and to make recommendations to the president on measures to prevent future human rights violations.

Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa

Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa
Author: Erik Doxtader
Publisher:
Total Pages: 500
Release: 2007
Genre: Amnesty
ISBN:

What are the political roots of South Africa's truth and reconciliation commission (TRC)? By what means did the Commission endeavor to understand South Africa's violent past and promote a spirit of national unity?

From Apartheid to Democracy

From Apartheid to Democracy
Author: Katherine Elizabeth Mack
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2015-06-18
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0271066385

South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings can be considered one of the most significant rhetorical events of the late twentieth century. The TRC called language into action, tasking it with promoting understanding among a divided people and facilitating the construction of South Africa’s new democracy. Other books on the TRC and deliberative rhetoric in contemporary South Africa emphasize the achievement of reconciliation during and in the immediate aftermath of the transition from apartheid. From Apartheid to Democracy, in contrast, considers the varied, complex, and enduring effects of the Commission’s rhetorical wager. It is the first book-length study to analyze the TRC through such a lens. Katherine Elizabeth Mack focuses on the dissension and negotiations over difference provoked by the Commission’s process, especially its public airing of victims’ and perpetrators’ truths. She tracks agonistic deliberation (evidenced in the TRC’s public hearings) into works of fiction and photography that extend and challenge the Commission’s assumptions about truth, healing, and reconciliation. Ultimately, Mack demonstrates that while the TRC may not have achieved all of its political goals, its very existence generated valuable deliberation within and beyond its official process.

A Country Unmasked

A Country Unmasked
Author: Alex Boraine
Publisher:
Total Pages: 466
Release: 2000
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780195718058

The remarkable story of South Africa's "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" chronicles that country's journey towards national unity in the wake of Apartheid.

Performing South Africa's Truth Commission

Performing South Africa's Truth Commission
Author: Catherine M. Cole
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2010
Genre: Apartheid
ISBN: 0253353904

South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commissions helped to end apartheid by providing a forum that exposed the nation's gross human rights abuses, provided amnesty and reparations to selected individuals, and eventually promoted national unity and healing. The success or failure of these commissions has been widely debated, but this is the first book to view the truth commission as public ritual and national theater. Catherine M. Cole brings an ethnographer's ear, a stage director's eye, and a historian's judgment to understand the vocabulary and practices of theater that mattered to the South Africans who participated in the reconciliation process. Cole looks closely at the record of the commissions, and sees their tortured expressiveness as a medium for performing evidence and truth to legitimize a new South Africa.