kairos (timeliness) and to prepon (fit) for South Africa. As Kader Asmal stated, “We will be guided, to a greater or lesser extent, by experiences elsewhere. . . . But at the end of the day, what is most important is the nature of our particular political settlement and how best we can consolidate the transition in South Africa” (in Boraine and Levy 27). While the guiding assumptions and final form of the TRC did incorporate the lessons gained from Latin American and Eastern European transitional experiences, they also reflected the unique historical and sociocultural context of South Africa.
Building on the concerns expressed at the first Justice in Transition conference, South Africans at the second conference again questioned whether and how the proposed truth commission could address the particularities of the South African context. The anti-apartheid activist Mamphela Ramphele, now vice chancellor of the University of Cape Town, asked whether the language of human rights, such as “crimes against humanity” and “human rights violations,” would adequately encompass the destruction wrought by apartheid or too narrowly define the scope of responsibility for that destruction (in Boraine and Levy 32–36). Ramphele wondered whether it would create a narrow “truth,” one that would exclude many victims from its purview and exculpate those “silent voters who did not stand up and say ‘no!’ loudly enough” (36). While endorsing the proposed truth commission, Willie Esterhuyse, a professor of philosophy, voiced the concerns of many in the white Afrikaner community about South Africa’s adoption of a mechanism that was developed to address the legacy of Latin American dictatorships. Esterhuyse pointed to the factors that, in the eyes of white Afrikaners, distinguished apartheid from those dictatorships—namely, that apartheid took place under a limited democracy and that both the government and “anti-apartheid” activists committed atrocities (31). Esterhuyse further noted that the Roman Catholic influence in Latin America made “confessions and repentance semi-public affairs,” whereas in South Africa the guiding principle is “confess your sins privately and live accordingly” (31). Finally, he suggested that the “ugly face of truth” might threaten the fragile reconciliatory process already under way (32). Esterhuyse concluded his remarks by again endorsing the proposal for a TRC while cautioning that its architects should include “a cross-section of interest groups” (32).
Other South African participants sought to localize the human rights rhetoric, particularly the imperative to document and acknowledge past wrongs. They drew connections between the absence of truth telling about events in South Africa’s past and social relations in the present. Antjie Krog followed Mary Burton in referencing the abuses suffered by Afrikaners in the concentration camps, but she did so to endorse Omar’s proposal for a truth commission. Presenting a counter-factual, she suggested that the lack of recognition of the Afrikaners’ “intrinsic humanity” and “equality,” evidenced first by their imprisonment in concentration camps and then again by the absence of truth telling about their suffering, contributed to the inhumane mindset of apartheid: “Wasn’t the mere fact that the abuses of the [Anglo-Boer] war were never exposed perhaps not a key factor in the character that formulated apartheid’s laws? . . . Perhaps if compensation had been experienced not only in material terms but also through the recognition of the intrinsic humanity and equality of all inhabitants then South Africa’s history would have looked different (in Boraine and Levy 112–13). Had the English acknowledged the extent of their wrongdoing, Krog suggests, perhaps the Afrikaners would have been less likely to imagine and enforce the dehumanizing system of apartheid. Febe Potgeiter, deputy secretary-general of the African National Congress Youth League, considered the implications of Krog’s argument for South Africa’s future by linking analysis of the abuses of the more recent apartheid past to the creation of a different culture for the “new” South Africa. He observed, “In the process of identifying where boundaries have been over-stepped, we will be redefining our common understanding of a human rights culture” (23). In his response to the South African attendees, Dullah Omar echoed Krog’s and Potgeiter’s understanding, asserting that “the proposed commission should be seen as part of the attempt to build a new society” (130). Despite some misgivings, then, the South African conferees generally agreed that the proposed truth commission’s critical and moral inquiries into the past would serve the goals of the new South Africa.
Prior truth commissions, along the lines advocated by Ignatieff and Steiner, had sought the most basic form of truth: a “record of who did what to whom and when” (Steiner 16). The TRC, in contrast, acknowledged truth’s inherent rhetoricity by acknowledging and theorizing four kinds of truth: forensic, social, narrative, and healing. With the exception of forensic truth, the Commission’s four-pronged typology recognized the role of human perception and language in the production and effects of truth claims. Participants at the South African Conference on Truth and Reconciliation first introduced the notion of multiple truths. Albie Sachs distinguished “microscopic” truth (“factual, verifiable and can be documented and proved”) from “dialogic” truth (“the truth of experience that is established through interaction, discussion, and debate”), and he argued that the latter should be the TRC’s “primary concern” (in Boraine and Levy 103). Sachs’s “microscopic” truth became, in the language of the TRC, “forensic or factual truth,” which encompassed “the familiar legal or scientific notion of bringing to light factual, corroborated evidence, of obtaining accurate information through reliable (impartial, objective) procedures” (TRC, Report 1: 111). The Amnesty Committee’s quasi-juridical function made it rely most heavily on this form of truth. The TRC’s notion of “social or dialogic” truth echoed Sachs’s language almost exactly. The final Report defines it as “the truth experience that is established through interaction, discussion, and debate” (1: 113–14). The TRC’s public process facilitated the making of “social truth.”
At the same conference, Antjie Krog presaged the TRC’s notion of “narrative” truth. She pleaded for the proposed truth commission to allow for the “uninterrupted telling of experiences as perceived by the victims” (in Boraine and Levy 116). The TRC heard Krog’s plea. “Narrative truth” informed the “victim-centered approach” of the HRVC, wherein deponents had the “right to tell their stories of suffering and struggle” (TRC, Report 1: 53). According to the Report, “narrative truth” coincided with the “value [that] continues to be attached to oral tradition” in South Africa (1: 112–13). Through the extensive use of simultaneous interpretation, the TRC also heeded Krog’s proposal that it record these stories “with respect to the individual’s language, vocabulary, accent and rhythm” (in Boraine and Levy 116).
The fourth truth, “healing and restorative truth,” furthered the Commission’s goal of reconciliation as well as its attempt to foster a culture of human rights. The Report explains that “[healing truth] places facts and what they mean within the context of human relationships—both amongst citizens and between the state and its citizens—[and] contributes to the reparation of the damage inflicted in the past and to the prevention of the recurrence of serious abuses in the future” (1: 114). Healing truth worked in tandem with the Commission’s embrace of ubuntu, a Nguni term typically translated as “humanness.”5 In the section entitled “Ubuntu: Promoting Restorative Justice,” the TRC Report defines ubuntu as a “traditional African value” that “expresses itself metaphorically in umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu—‘people are people through other people’” (1: 127). Nosisi Mpolweni of the Xhosa department of the University of the Western Cape describes the social relationships that lie at the heart of ubuntu: “The African kind of interconnectedness . . . opens up all the time, it broadens. First we take care of the person next to us, then it opens up to the family, you share, then it grows to the community. Whatever we do, we don’t do it alone” (Krog, Mpolweni, and Ratele 202). In her explanation of the term, Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, former TRC commissioner and now a professor of psychology at the University of Cape Town, similarly emphasizes the roots of ubuntu in African culture and its role in repairing and sustaining relationships. She states, “The emphasis of ubuntu is on social relationships that are based on cooperation for the good of the community. Ubuntu is part of the deep cultural heritage of African people” (Gobodo-Madikizela 163).
There
