Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Video Interviews

"For many of them, it was the first time they had told the story at all ..., even to family ..."
Video interview segment with Maria MacDiarmid (Mary) Burton [2:08]
May 25, 2005

"There were days where it would start at 8:00 in the morning and by 5:00 in the afternoon there were still 59 people left to see, and you hadn't had a break."
Video interview segment with Shireen Brown [3:10]
May 5, 2005

"He stood up, and years of pent-up rage and frustration just poured out of him."
Video interview segment with Maria MacDiarmid (Mary) Burton [3:58]
May 25, 2005

"Until we've got the economy right, we're not going to be able to say that we've got reconciliation."
Video interview segment with Maria MacDiarmid (Mary) Burton [2:15]
May 25, 2005

"People on farms, for example, who were beaten ... According to the ambit of the Commission they did not qualify, and that was very hard."
Video interview segment with Shireen Brown [2:19]
May 5, 2005

"At the middle of the night this petrol bomb was thrown into the house; it caught fire."
Video interview segment with Obed Bapela [4:23]
May 15, 2006

"We sacrificed our youth, our education, for the liberation of a bigger people, and the government never rewarded us respectably."
Video interview segment with Colin De Souza [3:39]
May 26, 2005

"There needs to be more definite reparations, in terms of not only reparations, but also reconstruction and rehabilitation."
Video interview segment with Stanley John Abrahams [3:07]
May 26, 2005

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Memory, and Archives in South Africa
Video interview segment with Verne Harris [58.49]
March 29, 2006

Images

Political Art: "Stop Apartheid Killings, Their Struggle Continues"
By South African Students Press Union (SASPU) National 1985

Summary

Created by the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act of 1995, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), was part of the political compromises made during the negotiations that ended apartheid. The TRC was charged with investigating politically motivated gross human rights violations committed between 1960 and 1994. The intent was to prevent such atrocities from reoccurring and to begin to heal a divided nation scarred by past conflicts. South Africa’s TRC was the first truth commission to offer amnesty to individuals who fully disclosed in public their involvement in crimes that were deemed to be politically motivated. In doing so, the democratic government embraced the legal principle of “restorative justice” instead of the “retributive justice” embodied by a Nuremberg-style trial.

Web Documents

Testimony: "Testimony by Colin deSouza and Dorothy deSouza before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission at the University of the Western Cape"
By Desouza,C.
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Testimony: "Testimony by Obed Bapela before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Human Rights Violations Committee in Alexandra"

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Speech: "Statement by President Nelson Mandela on Receiving the Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Pretoria"
By Nelson Mandela
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Poem: "Because of You"

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Resource: South Africa: Truth and Reconciliation
By Neal Conan [more info]
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Recommended Websites

Truth and Reconciliation Commission
[more info]
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Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Final Report Volumes One - Five, Forward to Volumes Six and Seven, and Executive Summary (Guide to Contents)
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The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission Videotape Collection
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Traces of Truth: Documents Relating to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission
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