Cambridge Studies in Law and Society: The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: Legitimizing the Post-Apartheid State

The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was set up to deal with the human rights violations of apartheid during the years 1960-1994. However, as Wilson shows, the TRC's restorative justice approach to healing the nation did not always serve the needs of communities at a local level. Based on extended anthropological fieldwork, this book illustrates the impact of the TRC in urban African communities in Johannesburg. While a religious constituency largely embraced the commission's religious-redemptive language of reconciliation, Wilson argues that the TRC had little effect on popular ideas of justice as retribution. This provocative study deepens our understanding of post-apartheid South Africa and the use of human rights discourse. It ends on a call for more cautious and realistic expectations about what human rights institutions can achieve in democratizing countries.

List of acronyms and glossary; Maps; Preface and acknowledgements; 1. Human rights and nation-building; Part I. Human Rights and Truth: 2. Technologies of truth: the TRC's truth-making machine; 3. The politics of truth and human rights; Part II. Reconciliation; Retribution and Revenge: 4. Reconciliation through truth?; 5. Reconciliation in society: religious values and procedural pragmatism; 6. Vengeance, revenge and retribution; 7. Reconciliation with a vengeance; 8. Conclusions: human rights, reconciliation and retribution; Notes; Bibliography; Index.