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Reconciliation and Truth and Reconciliation Commissions
What Is Reconciliation?
- What does the term ‘reconciliation’ mean to you?
- is an ambiguous term. Different writers use different definitions.
e.g., Susan Dwyer defines reconciliation in terms of ‘reducing the sting of tension’,
especially bringing apparently incompatible descriptions of events into ‘narrative
equilibrium’ (e.g., making sense of things).
- John Paul Lederach conceptualizes reconciliation as a created social space that requires
relationships, encounters, and a discourse
Space: the confluence of four elements—truth, mercy, justice, and peace
Relationships: Because ethnic violence is frequently intimate and relational, repair
also must function on that level.
Members of the “Other” group must be treated as individuals
(rejection of stereotypes)
Encounters: Importance of respect in encounters
- It takes different forms – e.g., mutual coexistence; mutual co-operative action; shared identity.
- In its most basic sense, reconciliation means building solidarity: forging either a collective identity,
shared values, or common commitments in an effort to overcome and prevent repetition of the past.
- It is more than just feelings of forgiveness. Involves reparations and social-economic justice, too.
Goals of Reconciliation and T&R Commissions
- In T&R commissions, the implicit goal is often forgiveness between former adversaries (see
Minow, 1998; Tutu, 1999).
However, as we shall see, some observers argue that forgiveness is unrealistic or unnecessary
and that reconciliation can happen if there is profound social structural change.
- Ideally, the goal of reconciliation is not to forget the past but to make it possible for those
wronged and those who have committed wrongs to live together in a manner that is
respectful and healthy in a fundamentally reformed social structure.
- Facilitation of Nation-Building After Conflict
Reconciliation occurs in the context of reconstruction or nation-building and is usually
intended to facilitate that (which can be problematic – e.g., Australia – where the
subordinated groups have sovereignty aspirations).
Some say that reconciliation as a peacemaking paradigm suggests that appropriate forms of
redress should follow the identification of injustice (Lederach, 1999). Such redress should
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involve mechanisms that facilitate the attainment of restorative justice, so that a post-conflict
state can achieve legitimacy in the eyes of the victims.
Others argue for a forward looking approach that focuses on social and structural
change, esp. the elimination of inequalities.
Mandates of T& R Commissions
- Typical Mandate
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gathering of testimony and documentation regarding the period and/or events covered by the
commission;
writing a public report based on the information collected;
allowing victims an opportunity to recount their experiences;
promoting national reconciliation while sometimes contributing to the realization of legal
justice;
recommending institutional reforms; and
providing information regarding possible reparations.
- Variation in Mandate and Powers of T& R Commissions
The mandate and powers of a TRC are very important to its ability to be successful.
- Some have subpoena power, some do not.
- Some have a parallel judicial process, some do not.
- Some have the power to grant amnesty from prosecution, but others do not.
- Some have the power to certify individuals for reparations.
Diversity of Contexts of Truth & Reconciliation Commissions
- in Australia, Stolen Generations + centuries of gross and subtle human rts violations;
- war (invasion by Indonesia) in East Timor;
- apartheid in S.A. with its state-sponsored violence, black on black violence, & liberation
violence;
- unsuccessful revolutionary war and village ‘cleansing’ (Shining Path communist guerrillas)
in Peru
- disappearances in Chile
- civil war in Sierra Leone
‘Ubiquity’ of T & R Commissions
- 21 truth commissions completed their work between 1974 and 2003 (Nivens, 2003). They
are a mechanism for dealing with gross violations of human rights that usually involved
major trauma and often death, torture, and disappearance on a systematic basis.
- “Truth commissions have become an almost obligatory component of the process by which
national societies attempt to reconstruct themselves in the aftermath of, and recover from,
periods of violent, authoritarian rule, and/or war, especially of the civil variety. Proponents of
truth commissions see them as indispensable to promoting reconciliation between former
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adversaries as well as a transition to a more just, democratic, and peaceful political order,
while serving as an important component in nation-state-(re)building.” (Nevins, 2003)
Examples- South Africa (a model for others, based on the study of those that went before it),
Panama, El Salvador, Guatemala, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Chad,
Uganda, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, East Timor, Phillipines
Are T&R Commissions Morally Second-Best?
- e.g. because they trade justice for truth by granting amnesty to perpetrators who tell the truth
- Often there are no real alternatives.
e.g., not enough resources to bring perpetrators to trial (too many perpetrators)
corrupt or decapitated judiciary
- Perhaps we shd consider T&R commissions to be morally inferior approaches to reconciliation
only when there are morally acceptable options available.
T&R Commissions as Ritual
- T&R hearings themselves are, at one level, a form of ritual that paves the way for the witness,
whether victim or perpetrator, to be better integrated, or symbolically integrated, into the
community (e.g., after a perpetrator’s confession and apology). (Kelsal, 2005)
Blurred Lines Among and Between Victims and Perpetrators
-Rsch in South Africa (Borer) reminds us of the dangers of oversimplification and
homogenization. That is, not all victims are the same, not all perpetrators are the same, and
some victims are also perpetrators of injustice/brutality/humanrightsviolations.
This is relevant to issues such as amnesty and compensation.
“Settling on an accepted definition of a perpetrator also proved difficult
for the commission, which acknowledged that the single word ‘perpetrator’ made no
distinction between the kinds of acts committed, the reasons why they were
committed, their consequences or their context; nor did it distinguish between
individuals who committed just one act and those whose entire operation and
purpose was the commission of such acts.3 In other words, the term was neither
nuanced nor contextual.” (Borer, 2003: 1092)
“The ANC thus had an ambiguous relationship vis-à-vis its self-identification as
victims and perpetrators. At times it said, “we are the victims, how dare you call us
perpetrators, but, o.k., maybe we were”; while at other times it said, “do not demean
our freedom fighters by calling them victims.” (Borer, 2003: 1095)
For the TRC, determining whether someone was a victim or a perpetrator
was a highly technical, legalized process. A victim was someone who
had suffered a gross violation of human rights, defined as killing, abduction,
torture, or severe ill-treatment, although as noted above, determining
whether a particular situation of violence fit one of these legal categories
was often not at all clear. (Borer, 2003: 1100)
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- Thus, it would be helpful to employ a more precise terminology than merely “victims” and
“perpetrators”. (Borer, 2003)
e.g., “Secondary Victims” – e.g. dependents of a jailed breadwinner
“Beneficiaries” – as distinct from perpetrators
“Direct vs Indirect Perpetrators” – to take into account persons issuing orders
“Institutional Perpetrators” – e.g., Security Service in S.A.
“Sectoral Perpetrators” – e.g., mass media, health agencies, business
“Passive Perpetrators” – i.e. those who committed acts of omission
We especially should be wary of the phrase “we are all victims”, for in the postcolonial society resources are needed for those who are most victimized.
Forgiveness and Moral Transformation: Some Dynamics of Reconciliation
- As noted, in T&R commissions, an implicit goal often is forgiveness between former adversaries
(see Minow, 1998; Tutu, 1999).
Behind such explanations seems to be the notion that “reconciliation” means an
acknowledgement of wrongdoing by the guilty party along with some sort of appropriate
reparative action—ranging from a formal apology to material reparations—as a concrete
manifestation of that acknowledgement.
This would seem to entail an agreement by the aggrieved that the acknowledgement and
reparation are sufficient. In this regard, truth-telling, reconciliation, and restitution are
inherently linked.
- Moral Generosity and Danger of Excessive Reliance on It
Repentance, transformation and restitution by perpetrators take place in a context of ‘grace or
acceptance’ that comes from the moral generosity of victims who want to build an inclusive
society. (Hayner, 2000: 4, 10)
However, reconciliation can become overly dependent upon the moral generosity of victims.
In other words, it is not self-evident that morally transformative approaches are
suitable or politically workable.
In South Africa, national reconciliation was premised upon moral
transformation of victims: as forgiving rather than angry, and generous rather
than demanding.
The strong pressures to forgive misplaced the burden of reconciliation on
victims rather than on those who were responsible for apartheid. In these
respects, the commission undermined its own claim that beneficiary
acknowledgement is part of national reconciliation.
- Are Remorse and Apology Necessary for Forgiveness?
Bishop Desmond Tutu argues that apology, or remorse of perpetrators, is not
‘‘absolutely indispensable’’ for forgiveness.
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Indeed, it would be ‘‘palpably unjust’’ to make the victim a prisoner of the
perpetrator’s whim. Rather, a stance of forgiveness can initiate repentance and
apology whereby the spirit of forgiveness flows into the perpetrator’s heart.
If this happens, perpetrators re-evaluate the morality behind their violations,
leading in essence to a conversion or spiritual renewal.
Similarly, Dwyer argues that reconciliation can be achieved without apology, if
reconciliation is defined in terms of reduced tension (finding meaning) in narratives.
- Anger (Mis)Management
The catchword is reconciliation, and on top of that, in South Africa the chairperson was
an archbishop of a religion in which forgiveness is the central theme. So at the witness
table of the commission, it seems better to cry than to be angry and smash things up.
The legitimacy of anger, and its role in psychological progress, is undermined by the
call to ‘turn the other cheek’.
This religious dimension of reconciliation in S.A. marginalized non-Christians.
- Collective Apologies
- Are symbolically important to victims, but tend not to include expressions of regret and
sorrow, except in ‘‘pro forma fashion’’
Accordingly, collective apologies may seem artificial and impersonal (, with little
room for flexibility or spontaneity).
- They are also constrained by institutional, political, and personal interests.
-To call for personal forgiveness in response to ‘‘weak’’ collective apologies is to ask
victims of apartheid for a grossly unmatched moral transformation.
- Apologies from institutional and political representatives are crucial to reconciliation
but they should not be interpreted as a call for forgiveness; rather, official apologies and
recognition of wrongdoing indicate (one hopes) a commitment to making right. They
ought to be received and assessed for:
 their acknowledgment of responsibility,
 how well they build trust and respect through reparation and a commitment to
prevention. (Nagy, 2002: 335)
- So, official apology is not contrition so much as acknowledging wrong and
pledging reparation and a clean break with the past (Nagy, 2002: 346).
Psychological Healing and the Therapeutic Discourse
- Individuals’ very identities are often constructed in terms of whether they are members of the
oppressing or the oppressed class, especially if they have been subjected to life in a total institution
or to an all-encompassing oppressive regime like apartheid.
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This has implications for the psychological capacities of persons to engage in reconciliation.
In particular, reconciliation may require that people give up fundamental selfconceptions or face some very unwelcome truths about themselves. (Dwyer, :92)
Therefore, maybe we shouldn’t look at reconciliation as something that is
morally obligatory. (Dwyer)
- Testifying before a T&R commission involves a leap of faith (not necessarily religious faith) by the
witness -- faith by the perpetrator that vengeance will not be visited upon him, and faith by the
victim that s/he is contributing to change.
- In the healing model underlying T&R commissions, the hearing validates the authenticity of the
self that had been violated and silenced or was unacknowledged.
Shame and humiliation are transformed into moral dignity. The audience participates in the
restoration of dignity through its respectful witnessing.
- The implicit assumption that suffering is abnormal health rooted in the past places a burden on
victims to be reconciled to the present, often despite the continued presence of the structural
framework in which that suffering occurred.
- The therapeutic discourse marginalizes those who demand justice, not health, or who see
themselves as activists, not victims, in a war where the consequences of fighting were known.
- Dominant group members might remain in denial. The introduction of cognitively dissonant
information might retrench (white) isolation rather than encourage empathy.
e.g., At the start of the TRC, 41 per cent of white South Africans believed that victims were
exaggerating their accounts of terror. Since then, the majority of whites remain in
denial. Their inability to listen, or to believe, is exacerbated by continued segregation
and isolation. (Nagy, 2002 :337)
The Need for Empathy / Rehumanization (Halpern & Weinstein, 2004)
- Mere co-existence, without empathy, may be superficial and fragile. Mistrust, resentment,
and even hatred will be just below the surface if there is no empathy. Violence or racism
might break forth and rupture the apparent peace.
- Psychologically healthy functioning requires the overcoming of hatred, which in turn
requires that people see recent enemies (“The Other”) in human terms as people with whom
they can be open and to whom they can extend trust. However, peer pressure (social
ostracism) will often militate against that.
- Stereotyping removes individuality from persons and leaves them as part of a category.
Such stereotyping is necessary for de-humanization. So, re-humanization must combat
stereotypes.
- Empathy is a fundamentally individualizing view of the other.
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For empathy to develop, “the other” must be invested with qualities that are familiar
and accepted (establishing commonality)
- The ability to incorporate other people’s perceptions, to see the experience with their eyes,
plays a key role. How far it is possible for education to nurture this capacity to share in the
feelings of others—which is not simply a matter of sympathy—is an open question.
The distinction between empathy and sympathy is important.
Sympathy is about experiencing shared emotion;
Empathy involves imagining and seeking to understand the perspective
of another person.
Both sympathy and empathy involve experiencing emotional resonance or
attuned feelings in the presence of another. This is sufficient for
sympathy, but not for empathy.
- Social reconstruction then depends upon the degree to which people act in concert to
rebuild societal structures, and that process requires respect for and the synthesis of divergent
views.
Limitations of T& R Commissions
- memories are selective and comprise acts of recovery, repression and reinvention
- If rely only on oral testimony, they assume that the world is only knowable through words.
What about art? Silence? Drama? What happens when there were events or impacts
that remain unspeakable? ((Motsemme, 2004) Sometimes pain and trauma destroy
our language-making ability.
- A focus on acts of individuals neglects the structural, systemic violence/racism.
(Structural violence = the constraint on human potential caused by economic and
political structures.)
(Nevins, 2003) They therefore achieve less than they could have.
“Commissions achieve less than they might in terms of their goal of facilitating a justice-infused
notion of reconciliation between conflicting parties because of their tendency to focus on
individual acts or events of violence, while giving relatively little weight to systemic or
structural forms of violence.
- Barriers to Cross-cultural Communication
The difficulty of communicating across languages and cultures inhibits the healing
potential of storytelling. E.g., misinterpreting body language
- Oversimplification due to a narrow range of witnesses
- In viewing apartheid via the narrow lens of ‘victim’ and ‘perpetrator’, SA’s TRC
allowed the ‘truth’ to be turned into the experiences of a tiny minority of
political activists on the one hand, and state agents on the other. This
oversimplification masks the totality of South Africa’s experience, including
the experience of Black-on-Black violence in response to rumours of
informers.
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- Definition of ‘Victim’ may fail to identify women as victims, even though they may bear
the brunt of the daily injustices. (Hamber & Kimble in Motsemme, 2004)
- Pay insufficient attention to actors and institutions on the international scale that
contribute to and benefit from the violence in question. (Nivens, 2003)
- Politicization of the apology issue (e.g., Australia – Short, 2003; Ponting, 2006)
- especially around the value of equality as equity vs as uniformity (“no special
treatment”)
- An apology denied, or grudgingly given, merely exacerbates the hurt. An apology that is
almost coerced from the issuer is deemed insincere.
Problems of T& R Commissions
- Often the colonial situation leaves the two sides without much of a shared moral order
around which to build the new relationship.
- Invalid assumptions about reintegrative community shaming:
Public shaming ‘‘presupposes a moral reference group that most perpetrators avoid
by isolating themselves happily in their own ethnoracial enclave with similar
beliefs.’’ (Heribert Adam)
It is not easy for perpetrators to admit to themselves that they have made a
fundamental moral error.
- Refusal to self-identify as a victim results in foregoing eligibility for reparations.
- Reopens some individuals psychological wounds that took years to heal.
- There will be those who deny the legitimacy of the TRC (e.g., those in S.A. who referred to
it as ‘The Kleenex Commission’ (Nagy). Other denialists will refuse to admit to the
atrocities and systemic violence. Some newspapers will challenge and ridicule the
whole reconciliation process in the form that it is being undertaken.
- Some who ‘confess’ to the TRC will speak in terms that are ritualised platitudes
rather than genuine expressions of remorse.
- Australia:
By tying justice for indigenous peoples to a nation-building framework, the
Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation effectively placed a ceiling on indigenous
aspirations. (Desire of some Ab. Ppls to be recognized as sovereign nations – Short,
2003)
Australian nationalist rhetoric since the 19th century has always defended the
“one nation and one state, in one territory” formula of nationhood.
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A further problem with the C.A.R.’s ‘one nation’ rhetoric is that it reduces the
strength of Aboriginal claims (e.g., claims to Native title to land) based on their
traditional “separateness” from settler culture.
- The use of the word “social” to modify the word “justice” in the C.A.R.’s vision of
reconciliation (“There can be no reconciliation without social justice”) limits the
notion of justice to a superficial attempt at addressing present social disadvantage
without dealing with the underlying structural causes and solutions (land reform and
self-determination).
-In any society, to predicate national reconciliation upon individual healing is a flawed
approach when the structural conditions of gross inequality persist.
The biggest barrier to reconciliation is not simply the lack of acknowledgment by
beneficiaries, but the persistence of structural inequality. (Nagy, 2002)
Benefits of T& R Commissions
For Victims
- facilitates healing, especially when victims publicly express the pain (phys or psych)
inflicted upon them
- may provide a degree of closure to victims and their friends and relatives
- helps to restore the human dignity of victims and break the pride of perpetrators
- Gives voice and catharsis to those who had been silenced
- provides consensual validation of the pain felt from racism, violence, and colonialism
- provide an opportunity to deepen our understandings of meanings of pain, suffering,
resistance and loss experienced
At the Societal Level
- corrects distorted histories conveyed in official curricula by replacing settler heroics
with balancing info, such as brutalities inflicted by settlers
- provides for reintegration of falsely accused informers into the community
- decriminalizes the behaviour of some freedom fighters
e.g.: ““We found that many parents are not aware whether their children died as
heroes because at that time you couldn’t go home and tell your parents what you
were involved in. . . .
What is important to me is that maybe the Commission will give out a report
that will help you to go to your children’s graves, to talk to your children—
that you were not aware that they were fighting for their country—so that
you can salute them.”14 (Borer, 2003: 1095)
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- true reconciliation may be a prerequisite for effective social policy
Truth at T&R Hearings
- Some observers contend that the full truth is seldom told at T&R hearings.
Others point out that there are different truths for different participants (no one single truth).
Some will reject the Commission’s truth.
- Truth, whether of the forensic, legal-positivist, or cathartic, emotional-confessional variety, is
not easy to elicit, especially in contexts where such practices are not part of the cultural
mainstream. In addition, sometimes the truth is too much to bear.
- Some commissions make a trade-off between justice and truth – e.g., by granting amnesty to
truth-teller perpetrators.
Such a trade-off makes a truth commission far less threatening to the powerful.
(Nevins, 2003: 683).
Sometimes it might be sufficient if the unbearable truth of atrocities is partially eclipsed by
the more palatable truth of perpetrators’ remorse and desires for peace. (Kelsal, 2005: 390)
- Perhaps, as Michael Ignatieff has suggested, “all that a truth commission can achieve is to
reduce the number of lies that circulate unchallenged in public discourse.”
Does Truth-telling Lead to Attitudinal Reconciliation?
- Attitudinal studies show that, for the most part, knowing the truth about a country’s history
is associated with (and often leads to) attitudes of reconciliation.
However, that is not always the case.
e.g., Gibson’s (2004) large survey in S. Afr. found that acceptance of the truth about
Apartheid was related to reconciliation attitudes among irreligious Blacks, but not
among religious Blacks. The religious Black respondents apparently were coming
at reconciliation out of religious principles (e.g., the Christian obligation to extend
forgiveness)
- The truth helps the community to understand the gravity of the suffering experienced and
prevents collective amnesia about atrocities that were committed.
The Politicization of Reconciliation: Australia as an Example (Short, 2003; Ponting, 2006)
- There was a distinct lack of political will toward reconciliation on the part of the Prime Minister.
Rather than trying to shape/lead public opinion in favour of reconciliation, the way Glen
Clark’s govt did in British Columbia, Howard’s govt went along with it. Howard refused to
issue a govt apology for the ‘Stolen Generations’ or other injustices and gross violations of
Aborigines’ human rights.
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This kept him in good standing with the majority of Australians.
- The Howard govt used a politics of fear (e.g., ordinary Australians’ groundless, but very real, fear
of Native title claims being made to their own back yard; also, fear of costly reparations payments)
to cater to that sector of the Australian population that favoured equality as uniformity and therefore
rejected “special privilege” for Aborigines.
- Despite emphasizing so-called “practical measures” to improve the situation of Aborigines, the
Howard govt brought in amendments to the Native Title Act that appeased ranchers and the
mining industry, but largely emasculated Native land rights, and thereby undermined
reconciliation.
- Following the Wik case, the Howard government sought to shift the reconciliation discourse away
from rights issues by promoting a “practical reconciliation” agenda that focused on “individuals”.
e.g., individual-skills development and productive business enterprises
-- i.e., integration and asssimilation (note the absence of any reference to cultural
protection)
- Furthermore, Howard repeatedly undermined the C.A.R. through leaks of its research results.
Effectiveness of T&R Commissions
See also ‘Limitations’ and ‘Problems’ above.
South Africa
- Surveys (Vora and Vora, 2004
) of South Africans show that among
Blacks, the approval ratings for the T&R Commission there were high and
assessments of its effectiveness were high. Among Whites, those ratings were
significantly lower.
The TRC was perceived to be more effective at bringing out the truth than at
bringing about reconciliation.
El Salvador and Honduras (Kaye, 1997)
The Truth Commission (El Salvador) and the Valladares Report (Honduras) made
considerable contributions to the establishment of accountable institutions which could
begin to tackle the problem of impunity.
Both commissions' reports included recommendations which helped to establish new
police forces under civilian authority. In addition, the judiciary in both El Salvador and
Honduras was strengthened by the work of the truth commissions. In El Salvador
corrupt judges were replaced in the CSJ, and some decentralisation of power was
carried out within the judiciary. The professionalism of the judiciary was improved
through training programmes.
Ultimately, their success may be judged by whether they prevent a repetition
of the kinds of violations that they documented from occurring in the future.
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Lessons for Canada
- From Australia:
Reconciliation is not a ‘motherhood and apple pie’ matter. Rather, it is prone to
politicization and controversy.
- From South Africa:
A T&R commission is only the starting point for reconciliation.
T&R commissions which have a social and judicial focus will be less effective at bringing
about reconciliation than those that also have a psychological focus. (Vora & Vora, 2004)
Yet, a large percentage of the victims who testify will experience serious
psychological difficulties after testifying. (Nagy, 2002:336) So, psychological
support for victims must be provided by any T&R commission.
Beneficiaries must be brought into the reconciliation process for it to be lasting. (Borer,
2003: 1113)
Furthermore, bystander acknowledgement of moral responsibility is fundamental
to redressing the past, but deeply personal and moralising approaches risk retraction
and denial. The challenge, then, is to elicit responsibility through a delicate
balance of grace and demand. (Nagy, 2004)
The binary distinction between victim and perpetrator needs to be more nuanced. (Borer,
2003)
Some perpetrators were also victims (e.g., conscripted army soldiers suffering post-traumatic
stress syndrome). They are in need of reconciliation, not demonization (Borer, 2003: 1113)
The legitimacy of the T&R commission must be cultivated if it is to be effective in promoting
reconciliation.
Dominant group members will be inclined to say “We should be focusing on the future rather
than the past.” (Vora and Vora, 2004) Members of both dominant and subordinant groups
will be more inclined to attribute egregious violations of human rights to individuals than to
systemic forces. (Gibson, 2004)
Those who accept the ‘truth’ about the country’s past are more likely (than those who don’t)
to hold reconciled attitudes. Inter-racial contact is also an important determinant. (Gibson,
2004)
Truth and reconciliation commissions are not counterproductive. That is, for no group in
Gibson’s (2004) study was increased acceptance of the truths revealed in the Commission’s
hearings associated with irreconciliation attitudes.
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T&R Commissions make a mistake if they focus only on GVHR. The mundane, everyday
oppression (e.g., in pass laws, job discrim., etc.) is overlooked by such a focus.
- From East Timor:
Reconciliation and redistributive justice are inextricably tied. (Nevins, 2003)
- From Bosnia:
Hand in hand with macrolevel interventions must be the development of grassroots programs
that facilitate interpersonal interaction.
- From Sierra Leone (Kelsall, 2005):
In some cultures, ritual around repentance, cleansing, and forgiveness may be more
important than truth-telling or may enhance truth-telling. (Kelsall, 2005) T&R commissions
should allow for ritual.
Some cultures’ norms militate against the public display of emotion or public confession,
such that the emotional content of T&R hearings might not be very deep or cathartic.
Witnesses might just “circle around the truth” or provide a surface truth rather than a deep
truth, especially if no counselling is available after they give their deposition and testimony.
If a commission’s mandate gives it a role in reparations, some victim witnesses will come to
view the commission in mainly instrumental terms – a place where they stake a claim to
reparations in exchange for their story.
- In General:
- The guiding principle for international assistance in the justice and reconciliation arena
should always be to seek to empower local actors and to promote the building of
sustainable indigenous capacity while reinforcing respect for human rights and
international norms. (Fluornoy and Pan, 2002)
Questions:
What obligations attach to having indirectly benefited from gross violations of human
rights?
Is moral transformation necessary? (Nagy, 2004)
T&R Commissions As Political Theatre
- Is made likely by the choice of a set of procedures that centre on perpetrators’ and
victims’ telling of stories.
- symbolized perpetrators submission (or at least partial submission) to community
- In SA, the discourse privileged Christian themes and symbols of forgiveness and
healing (e.g., confession) over African symbols and processes of healing.
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- Involves taking responsibility for one’s actions, with the community as witness to that
taking of responsibility.
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Role of Women (Motsemme, 2004)
The numerous strategies women had to employ to protect and maintain their families, and which at
times failed and broke down, are also allowed to surface. In addition, these stories also reveal the
formulation of new forms of agency by women in unexpected places under daily conditions of
horror. Further, they draw us to the focus of this article – women’s articulation of their languages of
‘pain and grief’ through the language of silence.
Meanings of Women’s Silence As Revealed in Testamony at T&R Hearings
 silence as resistance and courage;
 silence as illusion of stability; and
 silence as a site for coping and the reconstitution of self.