ABSTRACT
Anthropological critiques of human rights take two conventional forms (see Messer 1993; Hastrup, this volume). The first, subsumed in the universal/ particular debate, has to do with the range and limits of conceptions of law. The second concerns the epistemological conception of the person that underlies rights discourse. I attempt to move beyond these, prompted by a photograph of protesters at the Supreme Court of South Africa, whose handmade placards identify them as urgent and accusatory in relation to the handling of matters of reparation and relief at the end of the work of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (henceforth, the Commission). The Commission, whose work was predicated on a model that defined harm in terms of violations of human rights, has become an internationally acclaimed model in the ‘transition’ from authoritarian to democratic states. The work of its Human Rights Violations Committee, conducted between 1996 and 1998, offers a lens through which to consider the workings of ‘rights’ in relation to understanding individual and social damage. The chapter uses the Commission’s work in relation to two sets of categories through which to understand harm; (i) ‘gross violations of human rights’ (GVHR), and especially the sub-category of ‘severe ill-treatment’; and (ii) ‘women’. Reflecting on these and the responses of political parties to the Commission’s findings, the chapter explores the limits of elasticity and the boundaries of exclusion in rights discourse, and assesses the efficacy of rights discourse as a measurement of harm. It argues that human rights may be effective in securing everyday forms of protection and social guarantees underpinned by law, but is inadequate as a tool for measuring harm. The chapter suggests that the forms of identity that emerge from discourses of suffering may not be liberatory.
