ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the hundreds of public hearings conducted by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in South Africa, Colonel Eugene de Kock. In a remarkable decision, especially in light of tribunals adjudicating war crimes or other instances of state violence or the legal regimes, the TRC decided to decouple remorse from amnesty. As persons whose lives had been directly affected by the violence of apartheid, victims at the TRC occupied a privileged position not just as those entitled to forgive the transgressor but also as arbiters of whether the remorse shown was genuine. But there is another dimension to remorse apart from its didactic role in instructing the community for which actions and beliefs you are obliged to feel remorse. The persons who authorized De Kock’s actions never came forward, nor were obliged to demonstrate remorse reveals the political limits of moral accountability.