This month marks 20 years since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report was given to President Nelson Mandela.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is touted as one of the premier examples of transitioning power after turmoil, garnering international attention for its metanarrative of forgiveness.
The 4,554-page report details the abuses of apartheid on all levels of society. Parts of it are meditative, like the seventh volume beginning with a poem and ending with nearly 1,000 pages of victims’ names.
The commission received 7,112 applications for amnesty, a demand that was made by the deposed National Party, from applicants on both sides of the conflict. A total of 849 were granted.
In the years since, the predominant narrative of the TRC making great strides to heal apartheid has been re-examined. In focus group interviews with victims, analysis of the victims’ transcripts, and amnesty hearings, University of Connecticut researcher Audrey Chapman found a disparity between the goals of the TRC and of the South African people.
Chapman’s research showed only 14 percent of testimonies in her sample discussed forgiveness, and less than 2 percent of her overall sample offered unconditional forgiveness—the ideal goal of the TRC.
Furthermore, she points out a distinction between societal forgiveness and interpersonal forgiveness, saying “In the political realm, wrongdoers typically act out of a quite different set of motives than in the private sphere.”
Chapman identifies how the TRC didn’t have the resources or ability to track down perpetrators and have them meet with the victims. Much of the abuse, she notes, that occurred during apartheid was random, leaving victims desperate to know who and why.
Solving these mysteries motivated many applications, but the TRC didn’t have the apparatus to answer these questions — as shown in this document called Unknown victims.
Researchers James L. Gibson and Amanda Gouws analyzed data from a survey of South Africans conducted in 1996-97, based on their attributions of blame. Their conclusion? “Only those who have received amnesty seem pleased with the process.”
And yet, many of the voices were erased before the TRC was even created.
Mary Burton, Deputy Chairperson of the Council of the University of Cape Town, in her article Custodians of Memory called apartheid a “story of the systematic elimination of thousands of voices that should have been part of the nation's memory.”
She describes how in 1993, the year before the presidential election, the National Intelligent Service of South Africa “destroyed approximately forty-four tons of paper-based and microfilm records” in an attempt to purge the past.
The TRC, chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, sought to reclaim memories that could still surface given the right space. The idea was that listening would engender empathy —empathy, forgiveness, and forgiveness, healing.
The ethos of the commission was “the need for understanding but not for vengeance, a need for reparation but not retaliation, a need for ubuntu but not for victimisation.”
Tutu describes the term ubuntu as one’s humanity being “inextricably bound up, in yours” saying that “A person is a person through other persons”—a paradox that captures his belief in a shared South African identity.
What made the TRC distinct was how it broadcast testimonies. Some, like those featured in Volume 5 of the TRC report, were remarkable stories of forgiveness. These, however, were exceptions and not representative of the whole.
With the world watching, the TRC emphasized a path to healing through forgiveness — one that was corroborated enough to cement it in history.
The TRC Final Report created space where “both victims and perpetrators gave meaning to the multi-layered experiences of the South African story …” in its attempt to form a “‘healing’ truth … that places facts and what they mean within the context of human relationships.”
This definition of a healing truth aligned with Tutu’s vision of a rainbow nation — one which would take generations to realise but immediate intervention to forge.
The TRC explored the memories and subsequent interpretations of victims and perpetrators locked together in a toxic system. The story it synthesized was aspirational. The report revered South Africa’s oral tradition — a custom that doesn’t negate empirical data but amalgamates it. Perhaps that’s not a bad thing.
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