Catherine M. Cole, author of Performing South Africa's Truth Commission, wrote an essay about her book for ROROTOKO. Of her latest work, Cole says:
Performing South Africa’s Truth Commission is about the
messy, uncertain process of transition from authoritarian to democratic
rule, and the quasi-judicial ritual that South Africa used to help
accomplish such a transition. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission
(TRC) was an attempt to draw a line in the sand, to say, “that was
then, this is now.” The TRC tried to separate the massive atrocities
and gross violations of human rights so routinely perpetrated during
forty years of apartheid from the country’s new dispensation post
1994—a multi-racial democracy with one of the most progressive
constitutions in the world.
This is the first book to examine a unique and defining feature of
South Africa’s TRC: its public iteration in front of audiences. Prior
to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which began in
1996, there had been sixteen other truth commissions in the world, in
places ranging from Uganda to Argentina. Yet South Africa’s truth
commission had the distinction of being the first to transpire overtly
in the public eye. Hearings happened on raised platforms and stages
throughout the country, with spectators attending in person, and radio
and television broadcasts transforming the commission into a media
event in which thousands participated.
Read the full text of the essay here.
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