ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), and its efforts to manage and shape public memory of a recent traumatic past. After explaining the reasons for the Commission’s establishment in 1995 and the underlying intentions that would shape its work, Tom Lodge provides an overview of the TRC’s operations and investigations, and of its concluding report. From the public testimonies offered by individuals classed as ‘victims’, the amnesty proceedings of the Commission, and the account provided in its report, a common narrative emerged of South Africa’s recent history during the apartheid era and its immediate aftermath. This was a public history that intentionally sought to promote national consensus, in the hope that this would lead to reconciliation between the communities of the ‘rainbow nation’. This version of the past had wide public support. It also resonated with particular understandings of the past within South Africa’s new political elite. Lodge explores how this conciliatory historical narrative helped shape the reconstruction and reinterpretation of key sites of memory, such as the location of the infamous Sharpeville massacre in 1960. His conclusion reflects on the fragility of this historical reconstruction, and of the political consensus it reflects.
