Attentive to a psychology underlying South Africa’s democratic imaginations, I describe how
Nelson Mandela’s intervention at a critical moment of conflict management, along with mechanisms
such as at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Moral Regeneration Movement,
invoked and enacted a humanising ethos. Centred on the ideas of restraint, empathy, emotional
proximity, witnessing, and fluid generative subjectivities, the humanising ethos was awakened to
support the process of reconciliation, social justice, and the making of inclusive and socially just
communities. Inspired by a decolonial attitude, and in part successfully enacted in support of the
country’s liberal democratic ideals, the elaboration of this psychology has been limited by ongoing
socio-economic disparities and a ruling psychology that naturalises extractive relations.Institute for Social and Health Studies (ISHS