The truth and reconciliation commission in South Africa: perspectives and prospects

ABSTRACT

Debate about the TRC has become necessary in South Africa today, 20 years since the final Report was handed over to government on 29 October 1998. Assessment of its efficacy and longer-term value is being undertaken, unfortunately, within an environment of intense disillusionment about the promise of constitutional democracy. This paper sets out the environment in which the TRC was established in 1996, its legal and constitutional frameworks, its achievements for creating a climate of reconciliation, for granting amnesty to perpetrators of human rights violations, and for setting a reparations framework. South Africans are conscious of grinding poverty and inequality, pervasive racism, and unfulfilled aspirations of the democratic settlement of 1994. What value, then was the TRC? This paper attempts a fair assessment, seeks to be honest about its grandiose claims, and undertakes a philosophical, political and ethical analysis of its achievements. Drawing on many studies on the TRC it seeks to chart a more rational course than some, noting that circumstances in Africa are such that the TRC is being revisited, The Gambia, for example, being the latest country that has introduced the TRC. Others may follow suit: Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, to name a few.

KEYWORDS:

• Human rights violations
• transitional justice
• victims
• perpetrators
• constitutional democracy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

N. Barney Pityana is Professor Emeritus of Law, University of South Africa (UNISA) and Honorary Professor, Department of Philosophy, Allan Gray Centre for Leadership Ethics, Rhodes University.

Notes

1. [1996] ZACC 16; 1996 (8) BCLR 1015; 1996 (4) SA 672.

2. At paragraph 59 of the judgment above.

3. For more details on the reception of the TRC report see also Desmond (1999), Charles and Verwoerd (2000), Donald (1995) and Antjie (1998).

4. Of course, Boraine fails to provide a critique of the philosophy of Ubuntu. Vide more fully, Eze (2008, 111–114), and for a comprehensive treatment of the subject, see also Praeg and Magadla (2014).