Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) (South Africa) A committee that met from 1996 to 1998 in an attempt to find a way of dealing with past atrocities committed under apartheid. Chaired by Archibishop Tutu, it investigated many of the over 100,000 known human rights violations committed by all sides in South Africa, from the Sharpeville Massacre until the end of the apartheid system in 1993. In a novel procedure, those who had committed crimes were to reveal their actions in full detail. Counselling was provided for victims and their families, as well as for the families of the culprits. Amnesty could be granted to those who had committed crimes for a political party, and who had presented full and frank testimony. In this way, amnesty was granted to most of those who had committed crimes and shown remorse, but a number of high-profile cases, involving former Defence Minister Malan or the murderers of Steven Biko, were handed over to the criminal courts.

The Commission's final report was criticized by almost all groups in South African society: victims demanded punishment for the guilty, the ANC complained that it, too, had been criticized for human rights violations, while many Whites complained that the ANC and other black resistance groups had not been indicted extensively enough. Nevertheless, the Commission was born out of the recognition that in other former dictatorships, attempts at dealing with the past had failed. The TRC presented a pioneering attempt to establish an account of the truth, publicize it, and promote an acknowledgement of the human suffering caused by past wrongs. Although most transitional governments to democracy did not engage in such a comprehensive attempt in engaging with the divisive past, the TRC has served as a model elsewhere. In particular, in June 2001 a TRC was established in Peru, in order to uncover the human rights violations of the 1980s and especially the Fujimori period of the 1990s.