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>> 133 6 Beyond the TRC Negotiating the Aftermath of Collective Violence But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up, And hope and history rhyme. Seamus Heaney, The Cure at Troy1 To focus solely on the deep and persisting societal divisions in South Africa today is to ignore the reverberating example set by the TRC as a national institution for gathering truth and promoting reconciliation after decades of violent conflict. Even with its setbacks and limitations , the TRC stands today as an enduring example of the potential for restorative justice on a national scale and a prototype for other national truth commissions.2 Over a span of six years following the end of apartheid, the achievements of the TRC’s amnesty hearings sent several resonant messages throughout South Africa: truths about widespread human rights violations will be uncovered, secrets of illegality will be disclosed, government crimes will be illuminated, and perpetrators will be held publicly accountable for their crimes. By describing and generalizing the goals of the Amnesty Committee and the procedures and concepts that supported these goals, the distinctive achievements of the TRC’s amnesty hearings can be applied to future efforts in negotiating the aftermath of collective violence.3 In the process, broader contributions of the amnesty hearings to restorative justice can be identified and elaborated, including the consideration of a truth commission in the United States. 134 > 135 suspicions and educated guesses. Even with surviving witnesses and available forensic evidence, perpetrator testimony contributed necessary information about the human rights abuses of apartheid. Notably, victims and perpetrators were permitted to tell their own stories , unconstrained by the procedures of a courtroom. In the process, the TRC produced a history of apartheid more comprehensive and an education of the public more thorough than if the South African government had endeavored to prosecute a selected group of perpetrators in criminal trials (Hayner 2002; Verwoerd 2003).4 Overall, more than 1,600 perpetrators and 22,000 victims told their stories, creating a massive archival record of the crimes and sufferings of apartheid (Posel and Simpson 2002a; TRC 2003a; Verdoolaege 2008). With prosecutions, the history of events is typically only a by-product of the legal adversarial process of examination and cross-examination. The witnesses (victims) tell their stories within the narrow range of the charges against the defendants (perpetrators), and the defendants answer only those questions they are asked (Landsman 1996; Minow 1998). Indeed, truth commissions and criminal trials have been characterized as contradicting one another, with truth commissions focusing on truth, and courts of law focusing on traditional , retributive justice (Rosenbaum 2004). In addition, when perpetrators admitted their guilt during the amnesty hearings, they resolved the uncertainties that can occur in trials when offenders maintain their innocence even after a guilty verdict (Ntsebeza 2000). Recommendations As with the TRC, future truth commissions should obtain documents and collect oral testimony. To obtain documents, truth commissions need subpoena power, access to pertinent information from governmental organizations, and the power of search and seizure, within the mandate of the commission. To go beyond documentation, truth commissions need to collect testimony from victims and perpetrators, with perpetrators giving testimony under oath. Accountability Against the backdrop of criminal trials and civil cases, the TRC enforced accountability for the perpetrators through conditional 136 > 137 to the victim and to the lives of family members. The magnitude gap that occurred during confrontations between victims and perpetrators, however unsettling, provided an opportunity for individual perpetrators to learn directly of the victim’s experience of suffering. Similarly, victims learned of the systemic influences within the perpetrators’ violent organizations and the reasons that motivated their violent actions. Ideally, confronting the magnitude gap allowed perpetrators and victims to see each other’s humanity more fully and in more detail. It is noteworthy that the Amnesty Committee did not promise or enforce reconciliation; rather, it promoted individual reconciliation through its hearings and encouraged national reconciliation through its publicdisplayofcivilityandfairness.Infact,Verdoolaege(2008)proposed that promoting a culture of reconciliation was the most enduring legacy of the TRC, and one that would continue long after the hearings ended. Recommendations Reconciliation is most urgent when large numbers of people have perpetrated crimes against even larger numbers of victims, creating a fundamental need to accommodate and reconcile across a broad spectrum of the population. In South Africa, for example, 40 million people (approximately 90 percent of the population) suffered under the institutions and laws of apartheid, and the violations...

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