South African Literature after the Truth Commission

South African Literature after the Truth Commission PDF

Author: S. Graham

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2009-04-27

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 0230620973

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This book studies a broad and ambitious selection of contemporary South African literature, fiction, drama, poetry, and memoir to make sense of the ways in which these works 'remap' the intersections of memory, space/place, and the body, as they explore the legacy of apartheid.

Performing South Africa's Truth Commission

Performing South Africa's Truth Commission PDF

Author: Catherine M. Cole

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 0253353904

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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 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

Published: 2017-08-07

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 9004339566

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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.

Memorializing the Past

Memorializing the Past PDF

Author: Heidi Grunebaum

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-28

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 1351506102

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This work is a meditation on the shaping of time and its impact on living with and understanding atrocity in South Africa in the wake of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). It is an examination of the ways that the institutionalization of memory has managed perceptions of time and transition, of events and happenings, of sense and emotion, of violence and recovery, of the past and the new. Through this process a public language of memory has been carved into collective modes of meaning. It is a language that seems deprived of the hopes, dreams, and possibilities for the promise of a just and redemptive future it once nurtured.Truth commissions are profoundly implicated in the social politics of memorialization. Memory, as a conceptual, historical, and experiential discourse about the past, relates to the ways in which cruelty is integrated into societal understandings, which include cognitive and philosophic frameworks and constructions of social meaning. The politics of historical truth, of memory and of justice, play out in unintended ways. There is not only the ongoing struggle for survivors of state terror, but also the ways that the everyday shapings of silences, the emptiness of reconciliation and the fracturing of hope remain embedded in political life.

Ambiguities of Witnessing

Ambiguities of Witnessing PDF

Author: Mark Sanders

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13:

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Ambiguities of Witnessing explores the complex relationship between law and literature in testimony before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the body that investigated crimes of the apartheid era in South Africa.

Country of My Skull

Country of My Skull PDF

Author: Antjie Krog

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2007-12-18

Total Pages: 434

ISBN-13: 0307420507

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Ever since Nelson Mandela dramatically walked out of prison in 1990 after twenty-seven years behind bars, South Africa has been undergoing a radical transformation. In one of the most miraculous events of the century, the oppressive system of apartheid was dismantled. Repressive laws mandating separation of the races were thrown out. The country, which had been carved into a crazy quilt that reserved the most prosperous areas for whites and the most desolate and backward for blacks, was reunited. The dreaded and dangerous security force, which for years had systematically tortured, spied upon, and harassed people of color and their white supporters, was dismantled. But how could this country--one of spectacular beauty and promise--come to terms with its ugly past? How could its people, whom the oppressive white government had pitted against one another, live side by side as friends and neighbors? To begin the healing process, Nelson Mandela created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, headed by the renowned cleric Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Established in 1995, the commission faced the awesome task of hearing the testimony of the victims of apartheid as well as the oppressors. Amnesty was granted to those who offered a full confession of any crimes associated with apartheid. Since the commission began its work, it has been the central player in a drama that has riveted the country. In this book, Antjie Krog, a South African journalist and poet who has covered the work of the commission, recounts the drama, the horrors, the wrenching personal stories of the victims and their families. Through the testimonies of victims of abuse and violence, from the appearance of Winnie Mandela to former South African president P. W. Botha's extraordinary courthouse press conference, this award-winning poet leads us on an amazing journey. Country of My Skull captures the complexity of the Truth Commission's work. The narrative is often traumatic, vivid, and provocative. Krog's powerful prose lures the reader actively and inventively through a mosaic of insights, impressions, and secret themes. This compelling tale is Antjie Krog's profound literary account of the mending of a country that was in colossal need of change.

Narrating Political Reconciliation

Narrating Political Reconciliation PDF

Author: Claire Moon

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 9780739140451

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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

The South African Truth Commission

The South African Truth Commission PDF

Author: Dorothy C. Shea

Publisher: US Institute of Peace Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 126

ISBN-13: 1929223099

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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.

Ubu and the Truth Commission

Ubu and the Truth Commission PDF

Author: Jane Taylor

Publisher: Juta and Company Ltd

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 100

ISBN-13: 9781919713168

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"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.