ABSTRACT
South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was established by President Nelson Mandela in 1995 to deal with the crimes of the apartheid era. One of the most scrutinized phenomena in Africa's political history, the TRC attempted to come to terms with South Africa's racist past and has helped with conflict-resolving initiatives around the world. The Afrikaner poet Antjie Krog covered the TRC hearings as a radio reporter for the South Africa Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and sensitively recorded the unraveling of "the web of infinite sorrow" that had been woven into the tattered fabric of South African life since the imposition of separate development in 1948. Archbishop Desmond Tutu's sixteen multi-ethnic commissioners included doctors, lawyers, ministers of religion, and others from the civil sector of South African life. The TRC, which was made up of three committees, human rights violations, reparations, and rehabilitation and amnesty, had subpoena powers.
