Product Description

"Commissioning the Past" provides a multifaceted evaluation of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It is concerned with national politics, but also takes into account the specific, local implications of the TRCs hearings and findings, as well as the uncensored voices of some of the survivors of human rights abuses, in whose name the whole exercise was undertaken. The views of three groups with different perspectives are aired: academic scholars; commissioners and researchers who worked with the TRC; and people who told the Commission, stories of victimization on behalf of themselves or a family member. The emerging dialogue between 'outsiders' and 'insiders', and between national, local and individual experiences, are a distinguishing feature of the book.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1333705 in Books
• Published on: 2003-10-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Review
"Commissioning the Past takes academic understanding of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission onto a new plane. It engages more directly than any previous scholarship with the range of the TRCs activities, with the kinds of truth it sought to construct, and with the various ways in which its 'truths' were necessarily fractured, incomplete and selective. This is no shallow exercise in debunking. It yields penetrating and conceptually nuanced analyses. While many of the essays are critical of the shortcomings of the Commission, they simultaneously demonstrate a deep awareness of the contradictory brief and difficult circumstances in which the TRC operated. Colin Bundy, Principal, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London"