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pointed to the instrumental role of the international human rights movement in the struggle to end apartheid to explain his endorsement of the TRC’s creation. He claimed, “South Africa is unique in that it is the only country to achieve change as the result of an international human rights endeavor—and we owe a moral duty to pay our dues [sic]” (in Boraine and Levy 122). Goldstone suggests here that South Africa pay its debt to the international human rights community by adhering to one of its central tenets: the need to document, acknowledge, and publicize human rights abuses. Minister of Justice Dullah Omar argued that truth telling served the government’s broader goal of creating a “human rights culture” in the new South Africa by “entrenching international norms [of documenting human rights abuses] within the framework of South Africa’s domestic jurisdiction” (in Boraine and Levy 2–3). Proponents of the TRC sought to leverage the example set by other countries as well as the dictates of international law to compel South Africa to engage in truth-telling efforts.

      Other nations’ experiences with “dealing with the past” in the context of a political transition directly influenced the formation of the TRC. The Justice in Transition institute, founded by Alex Boraine in 1994 in response to the controversy surrounding Dullah Omar’s proposal for a truth commission, played a pivotal role in bringing these international insights to South Africa. The institute hosted a two-stage conference to explore the different ways in which South Africa could confront its history of human rights violations. The first conference, Justice in Transition, took place in February 1994, when, as Richard Goldstone put it, “the idea of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission seemed like a pipe dream,” one that only Alex Boraine had “the faith and confidence to carry through” (in Boraine and Levy 127). This conference “focus[ed] on the experiences of Eastern Europe and Latin America, to give [South Africans] a better appreciation of the complexity and extent of the problem and sharpen our options” (Boraine, Levy, and Scheffer xv). The Institute for Democracy in South Africa website noted that international delegates “from places as varied as Poland, Israel, and El Salvador . . . brought stories and perspective rarely heard in South African discourse.” As José Zalaquett observed in his opening remarks, “a pool of world experiences is contributing to an understanding of the lessons to be learned about justice in the process of transition” (in Boraine, Levy, and Scheffer 8).

      The majority of the international delegates stressed that the complexities of political transitions preclude strict adherence to absolute principles; compromises, more than ideological purity, characterize political transitions. Zalaquett advised politicians to remember that “they are dealing with an exercise in maximization, not simple righteousness” (in Boraine, Levy, and Scheffer 9). So while Juan Mendez, an Argentine human rights lawyer, advocated the principle of the “duty to prosecute” (90), other international delegates offered advice about how South Africans could make the constitutionally mandated amnesty more palatable to victims. They especially stressed the need to link amnesty to truth telling, so that amnesty would not descend into amnesia. Adam Michnik, a philosopher and theorist of Poland’s Solidarity movement, lauded a mutual amnesty’s ability to “open up the road to peace,” but he hastened to add that “amnesty is not equivalent to amnesia and thus the past must be carefully written up and remembered” (18). Roberto Canas, a member of the negotiating team that ended the civil war in El Salvador, likewise stressed the importance of truth telling: “For a peace settlement to be solid and durable, it must be based on truth” (54). Here we see the origins of the argument that South Africa’s mandated amnesty, when linked to truth telling through the requirement of full disclosure, could strengthen the new democracy. Indeed, Albie Sachs, a legal academic who served on the national executive of the ANC, reminded the international delegates, “The amnesty is balanced out with the concept of reconciliation and reconstruction. It is not a reconciliation to bury and forget the past . . . it is to assume responsibility for the past and correct the imbalances and injustices” (128). The TRC commissioners would later elaborate on Sachs’s argument, presenting amnesty not as a compromise to be accepted with gritted teeth, but as the grist of reconciliation.

      Localizing Global Rhetorics of Truth and Reconciliation

      The South African attendees expressed gratitude to the international delegates for sharing their experiences and insights, but they also insisted on the complexity of the South African context. Mary Burton, president of the anti-apartheid organization Black Sash (1986–90) and future TRC commissioner, said, “I have wanted to call out during the conference: ‘Yes, but you don’t quite know what it’s like for us. You don’t understand the complexity of the things in which we are involved’” (in Boraine, Levy, and Scheffer 121). Burton went on to describe the Afrikaner concentration camps of the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902) and the psychic effects of that experience on later generations of Afrikaners. Wilmot James, executive director of the Institute for Democracy in South Africa, urged attention to the effects of three hundred years of colonialism on social inequalities (134). Others pointed to more recent historical events and factors that would, or should, distinguish South Africa’s efforts to “deal with its past.” Andre Du Toit noted that state violence under apartheid took a different form than it did under South American dictatorships (130–33), while Albie Sachs, in reference to the entirety of the apartheid system, insisted that “anything that caused severe pain on the basis of racial domination must be part of the mandate [of the proposed TRC]” (146). All expressed their newfound appreciation for the “magnitude of the task ahead” (120), describing the conference as a “rich but also confusing, even contradictory, experience. There has been an overload of relevance” (130–31).

      After the democratic elections in April 1994, the newly elected parliament began to debate the terms and implications of the postamble, specifically Minister of Justice Dullah Omar’s proposal for a TRC. In July, the Justice in Transition institute held a second conference, the South African Conference on Truth and Reconciliation, “to encourage discussion and debate so that misgivings and misconceptions can be fully dealt with and so that maximum consensus can be reached concerning this extremely important and sensitive proposal” (Boraine, Introduction xxi). Participants at this conference began the process of localizing the insights offered by the international delegates at the first conference by considering their kairos (timeliness) and to prepon (fit) for South Africa. As Kader Asmal stated, “We will be guided, to a greater or lesser extent, by experiences elsewhere. . . . But at the end of the day, what is most important is the nature of our particular political settlement and how best we can consolidate the transition in South Africa” (in Boraine and Levy 27). While the guiding assumptions and final form of the TRC did incorporate the lessons gained from Latin American and Eastern European transitional experiences, they also reflected the unique historical and sociocultural context of South Africa.

      Building on the concerns expressed at the first Justice in Transition conference, South Africans at the second conference again questioned whether and how the proposed truth commission could address the particularities of the South African context. The anti-apartheid activist Mamphela Ramphele, now vice chancellor of the University of Cape Town, asked whether the language of human rights, such as “crimes against humanity” and “human rights violations,” would adequately encompass the destruction wrought by apartheid or too narrowly define the scope of responsibility for that destruction (in Boraine and Levy 32–36). Ramphele wondered whether it would create a narrow “truth,” one that would exclude many victims from its purview and exculpate those “silent voters who did not stand up and say ‘no!’ loudly enough” (36). While endorsing the proposed truth commission, Willie Esterhuyse, a professor of philosophy, voiced the concerns of many in the white Afrikaner community about South Africa’s adoption of a mechanism that was developed to address the legacy of Latin American dictatorships. Esterhuyse pointed to the factors that, in the eyes of white Afrikaners, distinguished apartheid from those dictatorships—namely, that apartheid took place under a limited democracy and that both the government and “anti-apartheid” activists committed atrocities (31). Esterhuyse further noted that the Roman Catholic influence in Latin America made “confessions and repentance semi-public affairs,” whereas in South Africa the guiding principle is “confess your sins privately and live accordingly” (31). Finally, he suggested that the “ugly face of truth” might threaten the fragile reconciliatory process already under way (32). Esterhuyse concluded his remarks by again

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