ABSTRACT
No truth commission has received the global attention and near universal acclaim of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Politicians and civil society groups in post-conflict societies around the world have looked to the South African experience as they consider examining a legacy of human rights violations elsewhere. Many in the international human rights community are inured to the potential of truth commissions based almost entirely on the South African model. In contrast, South Africans are more ambivalent about the TRC. While, in general, individual South Africans have had varied reactions to the truth-telling process, victims have been more uniformly disappointed.1 Although there is a burgeoning literature seeking to evaluate the TRC’s effects on the country, many questions remain. To date, most country-level studies have based their judgments on moral and ethical grounds.2 It is less clear what tangible effects the TRC has had on such things as democracy and human rights.
