ABSTRACT
South Africa presents an interesting case where the exchange of truth for justice is made explicit, in the structure of the commission of inquiry and the provision for amnesty in the interim constitution. As with other countries, both enabling and limiting factors were at work. International condemnation of apartheid may have slowly pushed the regime towards change, and the change in the international environment with the fall of communism may also have affected the regime’s threat perceptions. International observers from the UN and elsewhere played a role, but a much more limited one than elsewhere. Domestic opposition in the form of, inter alia, the African National Congress (ANC) and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) formed a perennial threat to the legitimacy, though not the survival, of the apartheid regime. Also, many have suggested that the duration of the repression and rebellion produced exhaustion and warweariness that made the situation ripe for transformation. While the outgoing regime negotiated its own obsolescence, it made sure to protect many of its civil servants, and of course the famous amnesty that meant prosecutions could proceed only against those who didn’t confess. On the other hand, advances would be made on other fronts such as the reform of the doctrine and institutions of the security forces, as well as the alteration of the racial content of the military and police. Like most other countries in transition, South Africa found itself somewhere in the middle of the accountability spectrum, able to achieve some measures of justice (with the outing of the truth and the much rarer prosecution) and some measures of reform.
