Hidden Bibliographic Details
| Varying Form of Title: | The Politics of Truth & Reconciliation in South Africa
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| ISBN: | 9780511522291 (ebook)
9780521802192 (hardback)
9780521001946 (paperback)
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| Notes: | Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).
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| Summary: | 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.
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| Other form: | Print version: 9780521802192
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