ABSTRACT
An important part of peacebuilding lies in dealing with the past, in creating space for the truth to emerge about the past and for accountability to occur. Democratization processes that abound since the 1990s inevitably are tied with questions of how to deal with the past, in terms of attending to gross violations of human rights, the prosecution of perpetrators, victims and debates about truth. As Tuomas Forsberg expresses it, ‘these questions have always been around in one way or another; but what is new is the context of a normative democratic ethos’ (2003: 65). Forsberg correctly reminds us that while questions of the past are particularly pertinent in societies emerging from violent atrocities, ‘the issue of how we should deal with the past is always with us, and only in its most urgent sense does it concern transitional societies’ (2003: 67). Where societies have been characterized by violence, polarization, segregation, ethnic conflict, caste and clan division, the link between justice and reconciliation is critical in times of transition from an oppressive discriminatory regime to a more democratic form of government where human rights are respected.
