Performing South Africa's Truth Commission

Performing South Africa's Truth Commission

Author: Catherine M. Cole

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 0253353904

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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.


Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa

Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa

Author: Hugo van der Merwe

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2008-02

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 9780812240597

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"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.


The South African Truth Commission

The South African Truth Commission

Author: Dorothy C. Shea

Publisher: US Institute of Peace Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 126

ISBN-13: 1929223099

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In the latter half of the 1990s, South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) offered the country the chance to build a better future by facing up to its past. Amid saturation media coverage, victims of human rights abuses told their harrowing stories and perpetrators confessed to horrendous acts. Meanwhile, the commissioners grappled with decisions that would not only apportion responsibility and grant or deny amnesty but also have a profound political and social impact. To this highly charged, controversial subject, Dorothy Shea brings a rare combination of objectivity, thoroughness, and a firm grasp of both the principles and the political interests at stake. She begins by investigating the origins of the TRC in South Africa's transition from apartheid to democracy, and she examines the extent to which it learned from the experiences of earlier, Latin American commissions. Then she focuses on how the politics of the TRC were played out in issues such as amnesty, reparations, and prosecutions. Her report on the TRC offers a generally positive assessment and explains not only how South Africa measured up but also why. Finally, Shea draws lessons from the TRC experience that may help to inform future efforts to shape and establish truth commissions in other transitional societies.


The Limits of Transition: The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission 20 Years on

The Limits of Transition: The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission 20 Years on

Author: Mia Swart

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2017-08-28

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 9004339566

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The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a noble attempt to begin to address the continuing traumatic legacy of Apartheid. This interdisciplinary collection critiques the work of the TRC 20 years since its establishment. Taking the paralysing political and social crises of the mid-1990s in South Africa as starting point, the book contains a collection of responses to the TRC that considers the notions of crisis, judgment and social justice. It asks whether the current political and social crises in South Africa are linked to the country’s post-apartheid transitional mechanisms, specifically, the TRC. The fact that the material conditions of the lives of many Apartheid victims have not improved, forms a major theme of the book. Collectively, the book considers the ‘unfinished business’ of the TRC.


Narrating Political Reconciliation

Narrating Political Reconciliation

Author: Claire Moon

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 9780739140451

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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


The South African Truth Commission

The South African Truth Commission

Author: K. Christie

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2000-05-26

Total Pages: 227

ISBN-13: 0333983149

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Over the last thirty years, many political transitions from authoritarian regimes and dictatorial political systems have been accompanied by Truth Commissions. Since 1974 there have been over twenty of these Commissions established in countries as diverse as Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia, El Salvador, Ethiopia, the Philippines and Germany, among others. Perhaps the most important Truth Commission of our time is the South African one which also seeks to act as a mechanism for reconciliation in a divided society. The South African conflict was extremely long and violent; its victims suffered traumatic experiences and, in part, one of the Commission's functions is to allow their story to be told. This book tries to examine the Truth Commission here and the issues that surround it, assessing different versions of the South African past and the complex negotiations leading to the establishment of the Commission and the complex politics of amnesty, justice and nation-building.


A Country Unmasked

A Country Unmasked

Author: Alex Boraine

Publisher:

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 466

ISBN-13: 9780195718058

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


Apartheid

Apartheid

Author: Edgar H. Brookes

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-10-05

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 1000624412

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Originally published in 1968, this volume traces the history and growth of Apartheid in South Africa. The acts which enforced Apartheid – the Group Areas Act, Population and Registration Act are given in full. The book also includes documents which reflected reaction to these measures: Parliamentary debates, newspaper reports and policy statements by the leading political parties and religious denominations. The documents are headed by a full historical and analytical introduction.


Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa

Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa

Author: Erik Doxtader

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 500

ISBN-13:

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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?