Since the 1970s, truth and reconciliation commissions have become increasingly popularised as options for addressing historical injustices, especially within the context of dictatorial regimes.1 Relying on the principles of restorative justice rather than retribution and punishment, truth commissions are non-judicial bodies tasked with bringing together victims and offenders to establish the truth about past violations and to promote healing and reconciliation. As Priscilla Hayner points out:
Of the many truth commissions to date, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC, 1995â2003)2 has been the one that has captured public attention throughout the world, providing a model for subsequent truth commissions (ibid., p. 5). Since it published the first part of its final report in 1998, there has been consistent scholarly interest in the TRC, offering investigations of its engagement with concepts such as trauma, truth, justice, amnesty and reconciliation.3In virtually every state that has recently emerged from authoritarian rule or civil war, and in many still suffering repression or violence but where there is hope for a transition soon, there has been interest in creating a truth commissionâeither proposed by officials of the state or by human rights activists or others in civil society. (2001, p. 23)
In addition to attracting a great deal of critical attention, the TRC has also had a significant impact on South African literature. Many works published in South Africa from the 1990s onwards present stories focusing on themes such as memory and truth, guilt and confession, atonement, forgiveness and reconciliation. As the South African novelist Phaswane Mpe has argued, South Africa has a long history of âtruth and confessionâ represented in the genre of autobiography (Attree 2005, p. 144), but this confessional turn has gathered pace with the advent of the TRC. Afrikaner author AndrĂ© Brink also observes that âthe enquiries of the TRC [need to be] extended, complicated, and intensified in the imaginings of literatureâ, otherwise âsociety cannot sufficiently come to terms with its past to face the futureâ (1998, p. 30). In the South African context, one fundamental aim of literature during and after the life of the TRC thus becomes to engage with the past as a means of addressing its consequences in the present, and, in doing so, many authors provide an afterlife to the work of the TRC and to peopleâs testimonies.
Mark Sandersâs Ambiguities of Witnessing: Law and Literature in the Time of a Truth Commission (2007) and Shane Grahamâs South African Literature after the Truth Commission: Mapping Loss (2009) are fundamental critical works, as they analyse the interconnections between literature and the TRCâs testimonial work.4 However, while Sanders and Graham focus on literary works published either during the life of the TRC or within a short distance from the completion of its mandate in the early 2000s, this book explores a wider selection of novels, the publication of which ranges from the mid-1990s to the 2010s, in an attempt to prove the steady impact of the South African TRC on the contemporary literary landscape. It seems to me that recent literary scholarship has neglected to emphasise the important role of the TRC and its key conceptsâtruth, confession, healing, forgiveness and reconciliationâas literary subjects that have attracted and continue to attract the interest of South African authors and, as we shall see, authors from outside South Africa. Andrew van der Vliesâs Present Imperfect: South African Contemporary Writing, for instance, is a most recent, comparative study of contemporary South African literature, which investigates how South African writers have responded to the period since the end of apartheid through the lens of âtemporalityâ and âaffectâ, especially in relation to the hopes that attended the birth of the ânewâ South Africa in 1994 and the inevitable disappointments that have followed. Presenting the purpose of his book, van der Vlies explains:
Van der Vlies is interested in investigating âhow particular kinds of affect are bound to particular formsâ (ibid., p. 23) in contemporary South African fiction. He notices that âthe temporality of South Africaâs long interregnum has been the suspension of the plot of revolutionary overcomingâ (ibid., p. 21), thus placing emphasis on the connection between the open-ended fashion that characterises many South African contemporary novels and sentiments of frustration and disappointment related to the new governmentâs unfulfilled promises of equality and democracy.While many critics have debated the open-endedness of apartheid-era writing or attended to questions of temporality and form inâfor exampleâblack South African negotiations of modernity, none has offered an engagement with issues of temporality and affect together in writing, and especially fiction, from or about South Africa since 1994. (2017, p. 23)
While agreeing with van der Vliesâs perspective, I argue that the choice of an open-ended narrative adopted by many South African post-apartheid novelsâand with the label âpost-apartheidâ I refer to the novels published from the 1994-elections onwards, and not only to those published during the political transitionâmay also reflect a resistance to the TRCâs goals of closure and reconciliation. It thus becomes essential to investigate the ways in which the TRCâs narrative machine has affected and still affects contemporary South African literature. This book intends to do exactly this. Through close readings of novels by a range of writersâsome known to international Anglophone readers including J. M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer and ZoĂ« Wicomb, some less well-known, including Afrikaans-language novelist Marlene van Niekerk, and others from a new generation including Marli Roode and Kopano Matlwaâthis book aims to examine the extent to which South African post-apartheid literature, especially fiction, has shown a consistent interest in engaging with questions inherent in the work of the TRC, particularly in connection with the Commissionâs definition of gross human rights violations, the limits of truth-telling, and the achievability of closure and reconciliation.
This introductive chapter continues with a concise account of the TRCâs process, outlining the main goals of its mandate, as well as highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the three committees that carried out the Commissionâs workâHuman Rights Violations, Amnesty, and Reparation and Rehabilitation Committees. I then consider the impact of the TRC on South African literature, with a particular focus on how the novel responds to the Commissionâs reconciliation process. I start by exploring briefly other literary forms such as theatre and the lyrical and then move to discuss Country of My Skull (1998), Antjie Krogâs personal account of her experience while covering the TRCâs hearings as a radio journalist. Finally, I highlight the novelâs particular suitability to engage in dialogue with the TRCâs testimonial and reconciliation process through analysis of Sindiwe Magonaâs Mother to Mother (1998) and Gillian Slovoâs Red Dust (2000). I conclude this introduction by providing an overview of the subsequent chapters and their main arguments.
1.1 The South African TRC
After the first democratic elections in April 1994 and the African National Congressâ (ANC) victory in those elections, South Africa faced overwhelming challenges in reinventing itself as a liberal democracy that respected those human rights that had been violated during apartheid. The establishment of the TRC in 1995 played a fundamental role in this process of political and social redefinition. Authorised by the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act, No. 34 of 1995, the TRC was set up âto provide for the investigation and the establishment of as complete a picture as possible of the nature, causes and extent of gross violations of human rights committedâ (Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act 1995) during a thirty-four-year period of South African history (1960 to 1994).
In alignment with the postamble to the Interim Constitution of 1993 (National Unity and Reconciliation), the mandate of the Commissionâcarried out through three committees, Human Rights Violations, Amnesty, and Reparation and Rehabilitationâspecified the following goals: to investigate past gross human rights violations, afford victims an opportunity to recount the violations they had suffered, grant amnesty to persons who committed abuses during apartheid (as long as crimes were politically motivated and there was full disclosure by those seeking amnesty), take measures towards restoring human dignity, report its findings to the nation, and make recommendations aimed at preventing gross violations of human rights in the future. According to the postamble, the Constitution:
In No Future Without Forgiveness , Archbishop Desmond Tutuâs memoir about his experience as Chairperson of the TRCâs hearings, Tutu places great emphasis on the importance of transcending the divisions and the strife of the past, which involves âa need for understanding but not for vengeance, a need for reparation but not for retaliation, and a need for Ubuntu but not for victimisationâ ([1999] 2000, p. 45). Besides drawing from the Christian concept of forgiveness, the TRC was founded on the African ethical concept of reciprocity called Ubuntu in the Nguni group of languages. In A Country Unmasked , Alex Boraine quotes the core belief of Ubuntu as âumntu nugmntu ngabantu, motho ke motho ba batho ba bangweâ, literally translated as âa human being is a human being because of other human beingsâ (2000, p. 362). A person with Ubuntu is aware of belonging to a greater whole and that all people are interconnected; this means that we are diminished when others are humiliated or oppressed, we are dehumanised when we dehumanise the Other:provides a historic bridge between the past of a deeply divided society [âŠ] and a future founded on the recognition of human rights, democracy and peaceful co-existence and development opportunities for all South Africans, irrespective of colour, race, class, belief or sex. (ibid.)
Postulated as the ethical foundation of the TRC, Ubuntu represents and demands responsibility and reciprocity. This African philosophy shares striking similarities with Emmanuel LĂ©vinas Emmanuel LĂ©vinasâ formulation of ethics as an obligation and responsibility towards the Other. The ph...None is an outsider, all are insiders, all belong. There are no aliens, all belonging in the one family, Godâs family, the human family. There is no longer Jew or Greek, male or female, slave or freeâinstead of separation and division, all distinctions make for a rich diversity to be celebrated for the sake of the unity that underlies them. We are different so that we can know our need of one another, for no one is ultimately self-sufficient. (Tutu [1999] 2000, pp. 214â15)