transition from apartheid to democracy, their interests converge on the ways in which South Africans came to accept the norms of new South Africa, namely, the valuing of deliberation, rather than violence, as a means to resolve conflict. In An African Athens, Philippe Salazar calls the post-apartheid South Africa “a signal terrain for rhetoric studies” (ix) and compares it to classical Athens, noting that in each site “the contest of words is a matter of national interest” (xviii–xix). He claims that the rhetorical nature of the transition “imbued [South Africans] with a sense of the inner dignity—the ethos—of deliberation as a human right, or deliberation as the fundamental right that gives shape to other rights” (165) and analyzes the post-apartheid government’s attempt to create a rhetorical culture thus distinguished by its valuing of deliberation in “the search for a common denominator” (165). Thomas A. Moriarty’s Finding the Words similarly calls attention to the creation of a deliberative culture in post-apartheid South Africa, though he focuses more narrowly on the role of South African political leaders in forging it. Moriarty argues that they “moved the country out of the realm of violent conflict and into the realm of rhetorical conflict” (4). He shows how their rhetorical constructions fostered the belief that negotiations and electoral politics are “the method for resolving differences and achieving social and political change in the country” (11). Finally, Erik Doxtader’s With Faith in the Works of Words: The Beginnings of Reconciliation in South Africa, 1985–1995 excavates the roots of this novel rhetorical culture by tracing the history and rhetorical purchase of the term “reconciliation” before the advent of democracy. Doxtader’s history explains why, in South Africa, reconciliation is best understood as “a call to speak and the calling of speech . . . a practice of exchanging words in the name of fostering interaction and composing relationships that do not rest on the necessity of violence” (286). Thus defined, the rhetoric of reconciliation creates opportunities for identification and persuasion and also fosters the rhetorical culture that Salazar, Moriarty, and Doxtader describe, rather than marking its achievement.
From Apartheid to Democracy likewise argues that the valuing of rhetorical deliberation in post-apartheid South Africa places it in the center of twenty-first-century rhetorical studies. The task at hand, however, is to examine the contested terms and values that emerged from the new nation’s “search for a common denominator” (Salazar 165). Richard Marback’s Managing Vulnerability: South Africa’s Struggle for a Democratic Rhetoric, which I was delighted to read as I was preparing this manuscript for publication, complicates these earlier studies’ discussion of the deliberative culture of the new South Africa. Marback rightly observes that democratic participation requires not only a high degree of inclusion but also a “sensitivity to vulnerabilities,” so that “democratic citizens come to share the burden and risk of belonging” (10). Marback’s investigation of the reciprocal relations of vulnerability and sovereignty complements my analysis of the persistence of dissent in post-apartheid South Africa. From Apartheid to Democracy tracks the TRC’s elaboration of arguments about truth and reconciliation, and participants’ and artists’ responses to those arguments, to show how the Commission’s irenic impetus toward “national unity and reconciliation” was troubled at various axes of struggle, especially race and gender.
Chapter Overview
Chapter 1 sets the stage for this analysis. In it, I analyze the proceedings of two Justice in Transition conferences to reveal the interplay of national and international arguments about truth telling that led to the particular form and distinctive rhetorics of the South African TRC. While the Commission’s focus and goals evolved over the duration of its existence, certain of its key claims, what Paul Gready calls the TRC’s “meta-message” (71)—namely, those concerning the healing power of speaking one’s truth, the accountability of individual perpetrators, and the desirability of reconciliation—circulated with enough coherence and consistency to provoke the critical receptions that the subsequent chapters examine. From Apartheid to Democracy focuses on these highly publicized receptions of the Commission’s meta-messages by oft-cited victims and notorious perpetrators—so publicized, in fact, that their TRC hearings generated imaginative responses.
Chapters 2 through 4 exemplify the argument that the TRC’s public dimensions—in the dual sense of the hearings being open to the public and of their subsequent uptake and circulation—generated agonistic deliberation that began in the TRC hearings and continued in their imaginative receptions. Each of these chapters focuses on a particular topos (place of argument) that the TRC introduced into circulation: accountability, speech and silence, and reconciliation. I understand topoi to be “bioregions of discourse” that become recognizable as topoi when they function as inventional resources for rhetors (Eberly 6). My analysis travels across time, space, and genre, following various lines of reasoning. I first examine each topos as it was established by the TRC. I then note how it sprouted in its travels from the TRC mandate to the commissioners’ statements during the public hearings and finally to the Report. I examine varied receptions of the Commission’s process that stem from these topoi, including those of participants in the public hearings and select literary and photographic texts that represent or explicitly reference the TRC process. These receptions contribute to the “cultural conversation” about South Africa’s past that the TRC helped to instigate (Mailloux 54). My method is inspired by that of anthropologist Fiona Ross, who “trac[es] the shifts of interpretation, the processes of social reworking, [and] the grounds of acceptance on which narratives come to rest” (102). Unlike Ross, who studied the reception of women’s TRC testimonies in their hometowns and the effects of this reception on their everyday lives, I track the evolution of these topoi from the public hearings into a range of imaginative texts. These “imaginative combinations” provide insights and make arguments that were difficult to express during the public hearings due to the rhetorical and ideological constraints of the TRC process (Ndebele, “Memory, Metaphor” 21).
Chapter 2, “Ambivalent Speech, Resonant Silences,” interrogates the assumptions about speech, dignity, and selfhood that informed the hearings of the TRC’s Human Rights Violations Committee, and, more specifically, the special women’s hearings that the TRC held to counter the silence of women victims of apartheid-era violence. How did women survivors of sexual violations challenge the TRC’s assumptions about their needs and healing process, best exemplified by the TRC’s maxim “revealing is healing”? After tracing the ideological origins of the Commission’s approach, I examine the experience of one woman deponent, Thandi Shezi, with the TRC. I then follow the arguments around the topos of speech and silence into Achmat Dangor’s novel, Bitter Fruit (2001), which shows how, contra the TRC’s logic, a woman’s decision to maintain a public silence can simultaneously facilitate and reflect her growing independence and sense of agency. This chapter challenges the logic of human rights discourse and the Western rhetorical tradition, both of which equate discourse and the speaking subject with power and presence.
Chapter 3, “Contesting Accountability,” examines the conflict between the Commission and anti-apartheid activists’ ways of framing the past and determining accountability. I outline the historical and ideological origins of the TRC’s unwillingness to address the effects of apartheid’s systemic racism and its concomitant focus on the individual perpetrator. I then ask how black perpetrators, in particular, responded to the constraints imposed by the Commission’s liberal, and thus race-blind, ideology. To answer this question, I analyze the testimonies of two well-known and controversial figures, former Umkhonto we Sizwe7 soldier Robert McBride and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Nelson Mandela’s former wife. I then follow arguments around the topos of accountability into Njabulo Ndebele’s novel The Cry of Winnie Mandela (2003). This chapter demonstrates how and why the TRC’s approach conflicted with anti-apartheid activists’ understanding of the collective
