Performing South Africa's Truth Commission

Performing South Africa's Truth Commission PDF Author: Catherine M. Cole
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253353904
Category : Apartheid
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commissions helped to end apartheid by providing a forum that exposed the nation's gross human rights abuses, provided amnesty and reparations to selected individuals, and eventually promoted national unity and healing. The success or failure of these commissions has been widely debated, but this is the first book to view the truth commission as public ritual and national theater. Catherine M. Cole brings an ethnographer's ear, a stage director's eye, and a historian's judgment to understand the vocabulary and practices of theater that mattered to the South Africans who participated in the reconciliation process. Cole looks closely at the record of the commissions, and sees their tortured expressiveness as a medium for performing evidence and truth to legitimize a new South Africa.

Performing South Africa's Truth Commission

Performing South Africa's Truth Commission PDF Author: Catherine M. Cole
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253353904
Category : Apartheid
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Get Book

Book Description
South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commissions helped to end apartheid by providing a forum that exposed the nation's gross human rights abuses, provided amnesty and reparations to selected individuals, and eventually promoted national unity and healing. The success or failure of these commissions has been widely debated, but this is the first book to view the truth commission as public ritual and national theater. Catherine M. Cole brings an ethnographer's ear, a stage director's eye, and a historian's judgment to understand the vocabulary and practices of theater that mattered to the South Africans who participated in the reconciliation process. Cole looks closely at the record of the commissions, and sees their tortured expressiveness as a medium for performing evidence and truth to legitimize a new South Africa.

The South African Truth Commission

The South African Truth Commission PDF Author: Dorothy C. Shea
Publisher: US Institute of Peace Press
ISBN: 1929223099
Category : South Africa
Languages : en
Pages : 126

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Book Description
In the latter half of the 1990s, South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) offered the country the chance to build a better future by facing up to its past. Amid saturation media coverage, victims of human rights abuses told their harrowing stories and perpetrators confessed to horrendous acts. Meanwhile, the commissioners grappled with decisions that would not only apportion responsibility and grant or deny amnesty but also have a profound political and social impact. To this highly charged, controversial subject, Dorothy Shea brings a rare combination of objectivity, thoroughness, and a firm grasp of both the principles and the political interests at stake. She begins by investigating the origins of the TRC in South Africa's transition from apartheid to democracy, and she examines the extent to which it learned from the experiences of earlier, Latin American commissions. Then she focuses on how the politics of the TRC were played out in issues such as amnesty, reparations, and prosecutions. Her report on the TRC offers a generally positive assessment and explains not only how South Africa measured up but also why. Finally, Shea draws lessons from the TRC experience that may help to inform future efforts to shape and establish truth commissions in other transitional societies.

The Limits of Transition: The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission 20 Years on

The Limits of Transition: The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission 20 Years on PDF Author: Mia Swart
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004339566
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
The Limits of Transition: The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission 20 Years on is an interdisciplinary collection that celebrates and critiques the work of the TRC after 20 years. The authors consider whether the TRC has continued relevance for South Africa. The book further explores the legacy of the ‘unfinished business’ of the TRC.

Narrating Political Reconciliation

Narrating Political Reconciliation PDF Author: Claire Moon
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 9780739140451
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
Narrating Political Reconciliation advances a distinctive discourse analysis of South Africa's reconciliation process by enquiring into the politics of the following: writing national history, confessional, and testimonial styles of truth, and reconciliation as theology and therapy. Moon argues that the TRC was the catalyst for, and shaped the parameters of, what is now powerful 'reconciliation industry, ' and her insights provide a theoretical framework through which to think and problematise the politics of transitional justice in post-conflict and democratizing states more generally

Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa

Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa PDF Author: Hugo van der Merwe
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 9780812240597
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
"Of the truth commissions to date, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has most effectively captured public attention throughout the world and provided the model for succeeding bodies. Although other truth commissions had preceded its establishment, the TRC had a far more expansive mandate: to go beyond truth-finding to promote national unity and reconciliation, to facilitate the granting of amnesty to those who made full factual disclosure, to restore the human and civil dignity of victims by providing them an opportunity to tell their own stories, and to make recommendations to the president on measures to prevent future human rights violations.

Ubu and the Truth Commission

Ubu and the Truth Commission PDF Author: Jane Taylor
Publisher: Juta and Company Ltd
ISBN: 9781919713168
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 100

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Book Description
"Ubu and the Truth Commission" is the full play text of a multi-dimensional theatre piece that tries to make sense of the madness that overtook South Africa during apartheid.

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report PDF Author: South Africa. Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Publisher: Commission
ISBN:
Category : Amnesty
Languages : en
Pages : 866

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Book Description
CD-ROM contains full text of print volumes and expanded name index.

African Truth Commissions and Transitional Justice

African Truth Commissions and Transitional Justice PDF Author: John Perry
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498504086
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 121

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Book Description
African Truth Commissions and Transitional Justice examines the functioning of truth commissions in Africa, outlining the lessons learned, the best practices, and the successes and failures of seven African truth commissions. Its introduction and conclusion then work further to place truth commissions within the growing academic field of transitional justice. The first African truth commission was convened by the despot Idi Amin for reasons unrelated to the defense of human rights, but despite this ambiguous beginning, other African truth commissions have done important work. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission of 1996 has become the ‘gold standard’ for future truth commissions not only in Africa, but throughout the world: it unearthed much truth about the Apartheid era abuse of human rights and took vital first steps towards restorative justice in the Republic. Each truth commission is distinctive. However, although much has been written about South Africa’s truth commissions, much less is known about the other six studied in this book—and an attentive reader will notice the suggestive patterns which emerge.

The South African Truth Commission

The South African Truth Commission PDF Author: K. Christie
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0333983149
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
Over the last thirty years, many political transitions from authoritarian regimes and dictatorial political systems have been accompanied by Truth Commissions. Since 1974 there have been over twenty of these Commissions established in countries as diverse as Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia, El Salvador, Ethiopia, the Philippines and Germany, among others. Perhaps the most important Truth Commission of our time is the South African one which also seeks to act as a mechanism for reconciliation in a divided society. The South African conflict was extremely long and violent; its victims suffered traumatic experiences and, in part, one of the Commission's functions is to allow their story to be told. This book tries to examine the Truth Commission here and the issues that surround it, assessing different versions of the South African past and the complex negotiations leading to the establishment of the Commission and the complex politics of amnesty, justice and nation-building.

Commissioning the Past

Commissioning the Past PDF Author: Deborah Posel
Publisher: Wits University Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
This work includes the uncensored voices of survivors of human rights abuses who testified before South Africa's Truth and Reconcilation Commission and in whose name the hearings were undertaken. The views of three groups with different perspectives are reported: academic scholars, commissioners and researchers and people who related stories of victimization perpetrated on themselves or a family member. The emerging dialogue between "outsiders" and "insiders, " and between national, local, and individual experiences is a distinguishing feature of the book.