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Incomplete Truth, Incomplete Reconciliation: Towards a Scholarly Verdict on Truth and Reconciliation Commissions

Sarah Zwierzchowski

Since their emergence as political and legal institutions in South America in the 1980s, truth and reconciliation commissions have become the dominant international paradigm for resolving tensions and preventing further atrocities in the aftermath of intrastate conflicts. These truth commissions generally operate on a purely Western understanding of objective truth and reconciliation as a means of securing political unity, overriding traditional and alternative reconciliation practices. In the same vein, the commissions conclude by producing a report that serves to present a uniform narrative of the past and a commitment to future co-operation that is presumed to be unanimous. While truth commissions are upheld at an international level, major critiques of these processes revolve around the strict forms and narratives inherent in them. Truth commissions have an undeniable value, but these critiques are valid and should be considered. Both truth and reconciliation can be sought and enacted in a variety of ways, taking many different forms, but existing examples have not adequately mined alternative solutions, nor have they addressed the potential and necessity for multiplicities of truths and reconciliations.

This chapter will examine scholarly evaluations of truth and reconciliation commissions. It will begin with a general analysis of the purpose of truth commissions, their functions, and the results expected of them. Attention will then be turned to the scholarship pertaining to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. Academics first began paying attention to the proceedings and results of truth commissions in the 1990s and the popularity of the subject in academia has since increased. The scholarship shows that conceptual understandings of commissions depend on idealistic and politically impractical expectations. The case of the South African TRC demonstrates how scholars have struggled to reconcile their expectations with an often disappointing reality. Overwhelmingly, scholars looking at existing case studies have determined that all truth commissions fall short of completing or respecting their mandates; as a result, reconciliation is only ever partially achieved. The scholarship identifies several main reasons for this failure, including the interference of political factions, the uneven participation of religious institutions, the unclear definitions of the very concepts of truth and reconciliation found in TRC mandates, and the marginalization of particular victims and alternative reconciliation practices.

Setting the Standards for Evaluating Truth Commissions

There have been many attempts to pin down reconciliation and its implications in political and social realms, though most scholars admit that reconciliation can take many forms in different contexts. Erin Daly and Jeremy Sarkin note that while there is unanimity that reconciliation can repair divided societies, there is no consensus on what reconciliation entails or requires.1 Reconciliation can take on various political, cultural, and socio-economic implications. The combined enthusiasm for reconciliation and the lack of understanding of its mechanics or consequences create serious challenges for governments and communities, who are equally unsure of what results to promise or what to expect from reconciliation processes. Methods of measuring the success of reconciliation or how long such processes should be in effect remain undetermined. Reconciliation is used to describe various kinds of healing, ranging from personal to interpersonal, and including the rebuilding of communities and the attainment of national stability and peace. Daly and Sarkin argue that reconciliation offers the possibility for healing divided societies undergoing political transition, but only if societies articulate reconciliation within their own political and historical contexts. A structural conception of reconciliation would prove useful for such societies and transitional governments should create political and economic structures rooted in the needs of their societies that are inclusive, allowing all involved to participate in public life equitably.

Though it has proven difficult to pin down an exact definition of or expectation for reconciliation, scholars have acknowledged the existence of various reconciliation practices. Johann Galtung identified twelve broad practices of reconciliation: the exculpatory nature-structure-culture approach; the reparation/restitution approach; the apology/forgiveness approach; the theological/penitence approach; the juridical/ punishment approach; the codependent origination/karma approach; the historical/truth commission approach; the theatrical/reliving approach; the joint sorrow/healing approach; the joint reconstruction approach; the joint conflict resolution approach; and the ho’o ponopono approach.2 He argues that there is no one solution for every situation and that, in fact, none of the identified approaches alone can properly address the complexities that emerge following serious conflicts. These approaches are ineffective because they cannot end the cycle of violence nor can they reconcile the involved parties to each other; they are each loaded with various assumptions regarding the nature of truth and community, and so they cannot address multiplicities of experiences and needs. For example, Westerners would recognize ho’o ponopono as a practice that is culturally specific to Hawai’i, but Western theological and juridical approaches to reconciliation are considered universal solutions for transitional societies. The above approaches would be most effective when paired or grouped together, though no society has thus far undertaken this alternative.

All forms of reconciliation depend on understandings of the role of forgiveness in the aftermath of conflict. Mark R. Amstutz focuses on the concept of forgiveness itself as played out in the proceedings of truth commissions to determine whether a nation can move past serious injustices and atrocities and what role forgiveness can play in countries experiencing political conflict.3 Amstutz argues that political forgiveness cannot act as a guarantor that human rights violations and conflicts will be forgotten. Instead, forgiveness must be understood as an ethic that demands that political actors confront their guilt and responsibility through an exploration and acknowledgement of the truth. It also requires that political actors express remorse, preferably sincerely, offering reparations and submitting to punishment. Political forgiveness is not the only option for achieving reconciliation, but truth commissions are nonetheless most promising when they empower victims and restore community ties. Legal retribution is effective in promoting and protecting the rights of individuals, but a communitarian approach emphasizing social and political goods is effective when communities are divided.

In her widely read book Unspeakable Truths, Priscilla B. Hayner remarks that while truth-seeking commissions aim to allow countries to move forward by acting as a public stage for forgiveness, state violence and abuse leaves a legacy that is not easily overcome.4 There is a need in such societies to rebuild victims’ trust in their government, the police, and the armed forces. While some have suggested that countries should merely try to move forward by forgetting past atrocities, this cannot provide a solid foundation for a democracy. Though Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs) are gaining attention on an international level, there remain misconceptions regarding the manner in which they operate and the impact they can have for victims, perpetrators, policies, and society as a whole. In addition, the contingency of truth causes many discrepancies, depending on the mandates and resources governments allocate to fund commissions, as well as the views of the panelists of the commissions. Because of these misconceptions, there remain doubts that truth commissions can serve as mechanisms for individual accountability, especially since they are sometimes offered up as alternatives to criminal tribunals for those responsible. Criminal remedies cannot be discussed without considering the political context of states or the perceived alternative. Trials and TRCs can perform different functions, but their goals can also overlap.

The relationship between truth-seeking mechanisms and criminal justice mechanisms is crucial, as Vasuki Nesiah has demonstrated.5 Each process has its complexities and positive and negative attributes in dealing with serious community divisions by revealing the truth and punishing those that have done wrong. A perfect mechanism would be able to accomplish both tasks, but truth commissions have often failed to deliver consequences to perpetrators and courts have marginalized the needs of victims to speak out about their experiences. Nesiah argues that the pursuits of justice and truth can and should be complementary, rather than put in opposition, as has been the paradigm in the field of international conflict resolution until recently. Courts focus on questions of guilt and innocence, determining appropriate punishments for perpetrators, and truth commissions allow victims to speak their piece and be reconciled to their oppressors. These two functions are very important and one cannot be adopted without the other if serious reconciliation and societal healing are to be attained. The pitting of truth against justice represents a false dichotomy because each concept and its corresponding institution can be so diverse and offer a variety of solutions.

In all of the scholarship mentioned thus far, authors have understood the potential of commissions to bring the dominant and oppressed groups together to reconcile and smoothly transition from intrastate conflict to reconstruction. Robert I. Rotberg emphasizes that commissions can provide meaningful inquiry and careful research that allows a society to engage in a collective apology.6 He argues that state apologies drawn from the investigations of commissions achieve more healing and provide a durable foundation for reconciliation. Commissions and other restorative judicial institutions contribute to the process of reconciliation by allowing victims to express their grievances to their perpetrators and learn more about the atrocities that affected them. From a political perspective, the research conducted by commissions lends an informed sincerity to an official apology. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission is noted as a successful turning point by many scholars because it operated as though reconciliation were possible despite the many challenges it faced and it solved many problems that previous commissions had confronted. The commission process has its flaws, but if nothing else its commitment to truth-finding and truth-telling allows for more compelling and sincere apologies following intrastate conflict.

The proliferation of literature related to truth and reconciliation commissions continues and scholars have presented a more nuanced understanding of their workings and goals. Onur Bakiner looks back on the now thirty-year history of TRCs, noting that they embody the modern desire to address the wrongs of the past.7 The success of TRCs has been mixed, stemming from the political nature of these institutions, which involve interest groups from all levels of society who seek to advance their own agendas. The political nature of the commissions is a product of the fact that those involved “constantly make choices when they define such basic objectives as truth, reconciliation, justice, memory, reparation, and recognition, and decide how these objectives should be met and whose needs should be served.”8 As a result, the task of evaluating the achievements and weaknesses must follow from an understanding of the interests, values, and expectations that inform the political dimensions of each TRC. Commissions frequently struggle to strike a balance between the interests of the governments that sponsor them, the religious groups that support and promote them, and the victims relying on them for moral support and reconciliation. The limits imposed on TRCs by these competing groups necessarily affect the progress and outcomes of their work, especially when their goals are described in narrow terms to begin with.

While truth commissions are an increasingly popular phenomenon globally, scholarly assessments have tended to find fault with many of their aspects. Based on the theoretical outlines explored above, the consensus emerges that most truth commissions have fallen short of their potential and left an unresolved or unsatisfactory legacy. Taking texts devoted to the TRC in South Africa as a case study, it becomes clear that, despite their various contributions to reconciliation and political transition, TRCs have been found lacking for a variety of reasons. In South Africa, analysts have located the TRC’s shortcomings in intervention from political parties and factions, the uneven participation of religious institutions, ambiguities in its mandate regarding the very concepts of truth and reconciliation, and its marginalization of those victims who preferred alternative routes to achieving reconciliation.

Healing from Apartheid: Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa

Though truth and reconciliation commissions had been in existence under other names for over a decade, the TRC in South Africa drew unprecedented international attention, thereafter popularizing the term truth commission. All future truth commissions had to look back to the South African experience for lessons both positive and negative. This response was due to a number of factors, including the high profile of its most ardent proponents, its use of public hearings, and the controversy surrounding its policy of granting amnesty to perpetrators in exchange for testimony. The South African TRC is noted for its attempt to create a new national truth to replace the national narrative of the apartheid regime, for granting amnesty to some individual perpetrators who admitted their actions, and for giving victims a chance to tell their stories in a public forum in an attempt to create national reconciliation.9 In the words of Gillian Slovo: “The TRC’s great virtue, it was suggested, was to exchange retributive justice (or legal punishment) for restorative justice: a justice that would direct attention to the needs and participation of the victims and, in that way, help repair the damage done.” These hearings were “shot through with accounts of what had happened to individuals and with lamentations of pain and suffering. People had come to mourn. To be heard. To put their truths on record. There lies the paradox: the wonder of the TRC, and the thing for which it is best known, resides not in its original purpose—to provide amnesties—but in its by-product, the victims hearings.”10

In 1995, the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act was passed by the South African parliament and over the course of the following months seventeen commissioners were selected from nominations made by private citizens, churches, and political parties. The TRC was empowered to grant amnesty to individual perpetrators, to conduct searches and seize evidence, and to subpoena witnesses, but its mandate was limited to “gross” human rights violations. Its period of investigation was set to cover the period from May 1960 to the elections of May 1994.11 In 1998, the TRC’s five-volume report was presented to the South African parliament. It immediately drew criticism due to its downplaying of the liberation struggle on the part of the African National Congress and the strict narrative of reconciliation presented in the report. A great deal of public attention in South Africa has since focused on the lack of community and institutional reparations extended by the government.12 The failures of the TRC remain contestable, while some continue to argue in its favour.

The failure of South Africa’s TRC to achieve reconciliation is apparent from surveys done among the population since the commission’s closure in 1998. Truth commissions operate on the assumption that knowledge of the past can lead to acceptance and reconciliation, and that the truth can allow citizens to reconcile and embrace a democratic future. Using statistical analysis, James L. Gibson argues that there has been moderate, though incomplete, reconciliation in South Africa, thanks in part to the work and findings of the TRC. Data from popular surveys undertaken in South Africa reveals a racial divide between the reconciled and the unreconciled: among South Africans of Asian origin and Coloured South Africans, accepting the truth has heightened their feelings of reconciliation. Among white South Africans, truth leads to reconciliation, but those who already felt reconciled were more prepared to accept the truth about apartheid. Among black South Africans, however, truth has not led to reconciliation and reconciliation has not led to truth. These results give a mixed impression of the impact of the truth and reconciliation process, demonstrating that the outcome depends on one’s race and personal experiences with the apartheid system.

The political influences that plagued the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa are significant in understanding its failure, though many scholars have chosen to focus on larger conceptual issues. The TRC mandate, however, was given a decidedly political slant, which necessarily affected its impact and results. Graeme Simpson argues that the commission’s primary mandate to determine responsibility for politically motivated human rights violations and ensure reconciliation on a political level limited the truths that the TRC could access and reveal.13 The TRC delivered a politically whitewashed version of the truth about apartheid. Truth clashed with reconciliation: the role of the commission in fostering reconciliation and preventing future human rights violations was constrained by the conception that apartheid was based on political differences. Specific categories for victims and perpetrators were therefore established in political terms at the opening of the TRC’s work. The focus on individuals blurred the systemic issues of racism that lay at the centre of the apartheid system. This misconception of the past further mystified, rather than revealed, the truth. Right-wing political parties, fearing what the TRC would make public about their participation in apartheid, decried it as a witch hunt and openly rejected its legitimacy as a forum for reconciliation. Due to these attacks, the TRC’s mandate was made sufficiently ambiguous to avoid allegations of political bias. The imperative to appear as fair as possible from all political vantage points seriously limited the extent to which the TRC could uncover the truth, promote reconciliation, and deliver justice. Ultimately, the political tensions in the TRC have allowed issues of longstanding and deep-seated social imbalances to remain ignored.

Some scholars have identified the influence of religious institutions on the TRC in South Africa as the source of its inability to properly promote both truth and reconciliation. Russell H. Botman, for example, stressed that the history of apartheid is equally political and religious; the apartheid stance of “separation of races” developed out of the Dutch Reformed Church’s mission policy, which itself stemmed from debates over the position of Indigenous converts in the church throughout the nineteenth century.14 In other words, through apartheid, the original segregation policies of the Dutch church were extended towards all aspects of individual and political life. Botman notes that as apartheid was dismantled and reconciliation became a national focus, the role of religion in the creation and perpetuation of apartheid posed a major problem. Throughout the process, restorative justice was favoured as the most Christian approach, but this drew criticism that the process was taking the airs of a Christian initiative. While Christian leaders like Anglican archbishop Desmond Tutu served as TRC commissioners, the Dutch Reformed Church did not participate meaningfully in the process and merely published its own report, in which it admitted its part in apartheid, though in a calculated way. These issues relating to the participation of the church prevented a deep reconciliation from taking place.

Hugo van der Merwe has written extensively on the outcome of the South African TRC, arguing that many different factors contributed to its incomplete mandate and its ambiguous success. Van der Merwe notes that the end of the apartheid era challenged church leaders in general to struggle against a serious source of social division in South Africa—apartheid itself.15 He argues that, while this struggle in the name of justice allowed the church to legitimize itself as a political actor with power to promote change and reconciliation, the institution continues to struggle to clearly define its role in the reconciliation process and has negatively impacted the process as a result. The church’s broad reach and moral influence over the general population granted them a potentially powerful role in all major societal discussions and activities; this potential, however, can only be realized through principled commitment, for which there is no clear strategy or even enthusiasm. Church leaders believe their institution is especially qualified to undertake the challenge of reconciliation since they see reconciliation as a distinctly Christian and biblical concept. Practical strategies for church participation, however, have not been fully fleshed out, and potential has not become reality. The church’s exclusionary claims on reconciliation have contributed to these problems because secular developments in reconciliation have been neglected. The role of the churches in the TRC was ambiguous, presenting both a positive and a negative influence on the reconciliation process.

Some scholars have argued that the TRC failed to reconcile all South Africans because truth and reconciliation had already been defined narrowly in its mandate, the result of negotiations among the African National Congress and the apartheid government. In an earlier publication, van der Merwe discusses the impact of the TRC on reconciliation in two particular communities that experienced violence during apartheid.16 While it attempted to mold its processes based on a multitude of inputs, the TRC often lacked a coherent approach to the questions of justice and reconciliation. He argues that competing interpretations of these key concepts created tensions both within the TRC and between the TRC and the community, which can be seen in its hearing proceedings. The tension that stands out the most is that between top-down approaches to restorative justice and reconciliation, as adopted by the TRC itself, and bottom-up approaches, which were preferred by local communities. While the TRC’s intervention in particular communities resulted in both successes and challenges, significant ideas about reconciliation and justice emerged during the hearings. There was a clear engagement with the ideas of reconciliation, justice, and forgiveness and a broad acceptance of restorative justice as embodied in the TRC’s amnesty policy over the punitive justice that would have been possible through the work of an international criminal tribunal. There was some resistance to the top-down conceptions of restorative justice as offered by the TRC and communities pushed for a bottom-up approach to justice as an alternative.

Later, in collaboration with Audrey R. Chapman, van der Merwe compared the TRC mandate with its actual results to determine how much the mandate was respected and when it was limited by various factors.17 They argue that the TRC did not adequately deliver the truth, reconciliation, and justice described in its mandate, although this failure does not negate the fact that TRC made significant contributions to South Africa’s transition from apartheid to an inclusive democratic state. The TRC’s role should not be idealized but rather clearly understood, because it set the precedent for other commissions. The TRC uncovered both “macro truths” (related to contexts, causes, and patterns of humans rights abuses) and “micro truths” (related to specific events); both truths join together to determine responsibility, but the types and levels of responsibility vary. Van der Merwe and Chapman conclude that the TRC’s truth-finding mandate was poorly realized because it lacked a coherent conception and process for such work. Its public hearings were innovative, but storytelling is an ineffective route to the objective truth.

Perhaps due to the need to balance the interests of South Africa’s major political parties, the TRC’s narrow mandate prevented a significant exploration of the root causes or origins of apartheid. More recently, Paul Gready has argued that the paradigm for transitional justice and human rights has not properly addressed structural violence, in particular the wealth inequality and social and criminal violence that remain as legacies of unresolved violent conflicts.18 The TRC in South Africa was conceived post hoc based on a mandate and manner of work that had already been forced upon it; as a result, concepts of truth, justice, and reconciliation were weak, hampering the progress of the commission’s work. Gready posits that human rights need to be reimagined in three ways: truth commissions must use a broader understanding of human rights, emphasizing economic, social, and cultural rights, in addition to legal and political rights. Holistic approaches to transitional justice work that blend traditional and non-traditional practices should be adopted because they show great potential for community reconciliation. A balance must be struck between the demands of law and politics and those of interests and values, while making absolute claims and moral judgments. Truth commissions also require a deeper understanding of how the past and present interact, encouraging continuity and change. By allowing for public discussion and constituency-building, the influence and significance of truth commissions on national consciousness could be strong. But in order to do so, truth commissions must also address economic and social inequality—something the South African TRC failed to do.

At the behest of the South African parliament, the TRC presented reconciliation as a foregone conclusion to be embodied in the conclusions of its report. Claire Moon argues that reconciliation in South Africa was presented as the closure of the story of apartheid, narrated by the TRC report and constructed to frame the ways in which the violence of the past was related in the testimony of victims. Further, reconciliation as an institution of transitional discourse is necessarily constructed to fit a prescribed narrative form.19 She identifies the TRC in South Africa as a definitive case of “the construction of reconciliation as a widespread and hegemonic discourse of political transition,” one that addresses the shortcomings of previous commissions and sets a precedent for those that would follow them.20 She asserts that reconciliation is constructed and in no way inherent; rather it is a political practice that is controlled by societal elites. The TRC narrated South Africa’s past as defined by political violence undertaken and perpetuated by the state and its agents, in addition to those who opposed the state. It also narrated a present that constituted a confessional story told in the testimonies of victims and perpetrators alike. The confessional story was constructed as a stage for a future story about reconciliation and reunification on a national and community level.

Most significantly, scholars have argued that the use of the hegemonic Western ideal of truth commissions marginalized victims who preferred to present their testimony in the contexts of traditional, local, or alternative reconciliation practices. Philipa Rothfield examines reconciliation as a normalization process and the forms of resistance to reconciliation found in South Africa, including why people sought to resist it.21 Reconciliation requires looking into the past to address losses and damages, but also to mend divisive conflicts to ensure that past atrocities are not repeated. It is in some ways apart from justice, allowing parties in conflict to unite to vent their differences and claims against each other, concluding with an agreement to move forward together. Rothfield argues that national reconciliation processes are necessarily ambivalent towards victims of violence due to the tension between the needs of society and the needs of individuals. Resistance to reconciliation is not necessarily pathological, but can “enact a critical stance towards the sociality of reconciliation on behalf of the singularity of corporeal life.”22 In the South African TRC, the state attempted to create a single narrative of South African history during the apartheid years; in order to achieve this, victims and perpetrators had to be clearly identified and allowed to speak their piece. Unreconciled victims, by contrast, were described as morally deranged obstacles to a stable national future. Yet resistance for many survivors was actually an act of defiance and an assertion of agency after experiencing dehumanizing events.

Some scholars have analyzed specific examples of the alternative approaches to truth and reconciliation processes enacted in South Africa since the end of the TRC’s mandate.23 For example, Kay Schaffer argues that the South African TRC initiated a process of reconciliation and nation building by allowing victims of apartheid to engage in truth-telling and forgiveness, though in a lopsided manner. Acts of remembrance staged in South Africa since the closing of the TRC simultaneously celebrate the country’s strong sense of diversity and reveal the social divisions that continue to plague it. Some stagings adopt top-down approaches to national reconstruction while others emphasize interpersonal exercises; both can lead to redemption, but the former marginalizes dissonant voices and the latter emphasizes the singularity of each victim’s experiences. Further, the contradictions and tensions within the TRC highlight the challenges of reconciliation and nation building and a need to recognize that victims may be drawn to different methods of reconciliation. She points to the alternate testimony of a witness whose son had been murdered during apartheid: her testimony had deviated from the expected narrative of victimization and resilience and seemed to lack chronological or logical sequence; she was subsequently ignored and marginalized in order to further that overarching narrative. TRC testimony continues to be contested and alternative reconciliation methods allow unconventional victims to speak their piece.

In the same vein, Richard Wilson notes that the TRC, as well as the Human Rights Commission and the Commission for Gender Equality in South Africa, created new moral and cultural leadership in the country, constituting a new hegemony to represent the transition undertaken by South African society.24 Human rights replaced apartheid as the guiding narrative for the new South Africa. This new hegemony was first presented as part of the effort to ensure accountability for past state crimes and to decide whether human rights violators should be pardoned or punished. The TRC set out to perform two main functions, truth-telling about apartheid and reconciling various groups within the nation with each other. The TRC’s account of apartheid was constrained by an excessive legalism and positivist methodology that prevented the successful creation of a coherent and inclusive socio-political history. Responses to the TRC’s language of reconciliation combined local values and human rights. Survivors used human rights procedures to pursue their own agendas without necessarily taking on human rights values and many local actors were resistant to restorative human rights, preferring a retributive model instead. Wilson argues that human rights institutions exist within a concurrent web of centralizing and pluralizing strategies. The TRC adopted a purely religious-redemptive definition of reconciliation and so it was unable to engage with or even transform emotions of vengeance. Despite the existence of the TRC, South Africans continue to resort to alternative local channels for justice, reconciliation, and social order.

Conclusion

Though scholars have worked out a general framework for the goals, procedures, and expected outcomes of truth and reconciliation commissions, there has yet to be a practical example that meets these criteria and allows all victims to speak their piece and reconcile themselves with their perpetrators. Indeed, there is a risk that efforts to develop “best practices” can themselves end in the imposition of a single template on local communities. In the case of South Africa, a significant majority of scholars have identified various factors contributing to the shortcomings of the truth and reconciliation process. Political parties obstructed the work of the TRC through public attacks on its work and credibility. Religious institutions sought to dominate the language and hearings of the TRC and, as a result, were incapable of participating meaningfully in its proceedings. The mandate of the TRC included an unclear and contradictory understanding of the truth and reconciliation it sought, because its mandate was the result of negotiations between rival political parties, and so its work suffered. Finally, the perceived need for a unified procedure and narrative marginalized many victims who continue to seek alternative routes to reveal the truth and achieve reconciliation.

These problems are encountered by all truth commissions as they set out to accomplish a task that seems insurmountable. All of the authors discussed above acknowledge the value of the truth commission process, but the various obstructions and issues that plague the commissions must be addressed to improve the process and outcomes. With mixed success, this is what truth commissions, from Timor-Leste to Canada, have attempted to do.

Notes

1  Erin Daly and Jeremy Sarkin, Reconciliation in Divided Societies: Finding Common Ground (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007).

2  Johann Galtung, “After Violence, Reconstruction, Reconciliation, and Resolution: Coping with Visible and Invisible Effects of War and Violence,” in Reconciliation, Justice, and Coexistence: Theory and Practice, ed. Mohammed Abu-Nimer (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2001), 3–24.

3  Mark R. Amstutz, The Healing of Nations: The Promise and Limits of Political Forgiveness (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005).

4  Priscilla B. Hayner, Unspeakable Truths: Facing the Challenge of Truth Commissions (New York: Routledge, 2001).

5  Vasuki Nesiah, “Truth vs. Justice? Commissions and Courts,” in Human Rights & Conflicts: Exploring the Links between Rights, Law, and Peacebuilding, ed. Julie A. Mertus and Jeffrey W. Helsing (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2006).

6  Robert I. Rotberg, “Apology, Truth Commissions, and Intrastate Conflict,” in Taking Wrongs Seriously: Apologies and Reconciliation, ed. Elazar Barkan and Alexander Karn (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006), 33–49.

7  Onur Bakiner, Truth Commissions: Memory, Power, and Legitimacy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016).

8  Ibid., 3.

9  Hayner, Unspeakable Truths.

10 Gillian Slovo, “Truth and Reconcilation in South Africa,” Maisonneuve, 1 June 2003, http://maisonneuve.org/article/2003/06/1/crime-and-no-punishment/(accessed 10 February 2017).

11 Alex Boraine, “South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission from a Global Perspective,” in Peace versus Justice? The Dilemma of Transitional Justice in Africa, ed. Chandra Lekha Sriram and Suren Pillay (Scottsville, SA: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2009), 138.

12 Boraine, “South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission from a Global Perspective,” 139.

13 Graeme Simpson, “‘Tell No Lies, Claim No Easy Victories’: A Brief Evaluation of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” in Commissioning the Past: Understanding South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, ed. Deborah Posel and Graeme Simpson (Johannesburg, SA: Witwatersand University Press, 2002), 220–51.

14 Russell H. Botman, “Truth and Reconciliation: The South Africa Case,” in Religion and Peacebuilding, ed. Harold Coward and Gordon S. Smith (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004), 243–60.

15 Hugo van der Merwe, “The Role of the Church in Promoting Reconciliation in Post-TRC South Africa,” in Religion & Reconciliation in South Africa: Voices of Religious Leaders, ed. Audrey R. Chapman and Bernard Spong (Philadelphia, PA: Templeton Foundation Press, 2003), 269–81.

16 Hugo van der Merwe, “Reconciliation and Justice in South Africa: Lessons from the TRC’s Community Interventions,” in Reconciliation, Justice, and Coexistence: Theory and Practice, ed. Mohammed Abu-Nimer (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2001), 187–208.

17 Hugo van der Merwe and Audrey R. Chapman, “Did the TRC Deliver?” in Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: Did the TRC Deliver?, ed. Audrey R. Chapman and Hugo van der Merwe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 241–79.

18 Paul Gready, The Era of Transitional Justice: The Aftermath of the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in South Africa and Beyond (New York: Routledge, 2001).

19 Claire Moon, Narrating Political Reconciliation: South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Plymouth, UK: Lexington, 2008).

20 Ibid., 1.

21 Philipa Rothfield, “Resistance and Reconciliation: Antimonies of Post-Traumatic Justice,” in Trauma, History, Philosophy, ed. Matthew Sharpe, Murray Noonan, and Jason Freddi, 164-185 (Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), 164–85.

22 Ibid., 169.

23 Kay Schaffer, “Testimony, Nation Building and the Ethics of Witnessing: After the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa,” in Pathways to Reconciliation: Between Theory and Practice, ed. Philipa Rothfield, Cleo Fleming, and Paul A. Komesaroff (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2008), 89–102.

24 Richard Wilson, The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: Legitimizing the Post-Apartheid State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).