54 research outputs found
Dealing with a traumatic past: the victim hearings of the South African truth and reconciliation commission and their reconciliation discourse
In the final years of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century, there has been a worldwide tendency to approach conflict resolution from a restorative rather than from a retributive perspective. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), with its principle of 'amnesty for truth' was a turning point. Based on my discursive research of the TRC victim hearings, I would argue that it was on a discursive level in particular that the Truth Commission has exerted/is still exerting a long-lasting impact on South African society. In this article, three of these features will be highlighted and illustrated: firstly, the TRC provided a discursive forum for thousands of ordinary citizens. Secondly, by means of testimonies from apartheid victims and perpetrators, the TRC composed an officially recognised archive of the apartheid past. Thirdly, the reconciliation discourse created at the TRC victim hearings formed a template for talking about a traumatic past, and it opened up the debate on reconciliation. By discussing these three features and their social impact, it will become clear that the way in which the apartheid past was remembered at the victim hearings seemed to have been determined, not so much by political concerns, but mainly by social needs
The African intellectuals’ project
Soon after taking the position of editor of IJARS at the beginning of 2019, I was
contacted by the dean of Unisa’s College of Graduate Studies (CGS), Prof. Lindiwe
Zungu, who informed me that the university’s principal and vice-chancellor, Prof.
Mandla Makhanya, had decided to revive his project, the African Intellectuals’ Project
(AIP). I was asked to coordinate this project, through which Makhanya sought to invite
scholars, academics, and intellectuals, both on and outside of the African continent,
to deliver presentations reflecting on the ills afflicting Africa and, at the same time, to
offer possible solutions. In pursuing the AIP, Prof. Makhanya was carrying on a
perennial tradition
Rhyming with “knowledge of self”: the South African hip-hop scene's discourses on race and knowledge
Intimate foreigners or violent neighbours? Thinking masculinity and post-apartheid xenophobic violence through film
Private property and the problem of the miraculous: the kramats and the city of Cape Town
- …