ABSTRACT

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), despite the compromises, risks, shortcomings and court orders has functioned essentially at this subjective level. The TRC was expected to facilitate the process. Its brief was to help cultivate a milieu within which the gross violations of the past would not be repeated in future. Judge Richard Goldstone, Justice of the Constitutional Court and former Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and later for Rwanda, put it this way: The decision to opt for a TRC was an important compromise. The magnanimity of spirit shown by Ginn Fourie and the killers of her daughter should never be taken for granted. They include the story of Neville Clarence who lost his sight in the Church Street bomb detonated outside of the Air force Headquarters in Pretoria. In A Brief Evaluation of South Africa's TRC: Some Lessons for Societies in Transition, Paper delivered at Commissioning the Past Conference, University of the Witswatersrand.