ABSTRACT
Focusing on the South African experience, this chapter explores how transitional justice processes can raise awareness, and mobilize societal and political engagement with the lasting legacies of historical experiences, by providing a narrative of the past that is “complete enough”. The South African apartheid project, which was formally implemented between 1948 and 1994, was one of the most extensive projects of racial entitlement and disenfranchisement in human history. The extensive apartheid laws imposed on South Africa during this period were designed to brainwash the population and insinuate a racial prism in their psyches. In spite of the available option of pursuing prosecutions for the human rights violations that were committed during apartheid, South Africa deliberately chose the path of prioritizing a restorative transitional justice model. The inability of South African society to achieve a much more profound transformation has raised questions about the effectiveness of a reconciliation agenda that is not sufficiently buttressed by an equivalent programme of socio-economic redress.
