The politics of truth and reconciliation in South Africa : legitimizing the post-apartheid state /

The politics of truth and reconciliation in South Africa : legitimizing the post-apartheid state /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:	Wilson, Richard, 1964- author.
Imprint:	Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Description:	1 online resource (xxi, 271 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).
Language:	English
Series:	Cambridge studies in law and society Cambridge studies in law and society.
Subject:	South Africa. -- Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Reconciliation -- Political aspects -- South Africa. Apartheid -- South Africa. Post-apartheid era -- South Africa. Retribution. South Africa -- Politics and government -- 1994- South Africa -- Race relations.
Format:	E-Resource Book
URL for this record:	http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/12597197

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

Table of Contents:

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