Truth and Reconciliation Commission

• Established in 1996 by Archbishop Desmond Tutu to uncover truths about human rights abuses during apartheid, aimed to provide reparation and rehabilitation for victims and perpetrators of these abuses (22 000)
• Offers amnesty for political crimes between 1960 and 1994 in return for full disclosure of individuals and organisations
• It reveals the extent of violence in the preceding decades, not just well-publicised ones such as Steve Biko's murder, but also the involvement of thousands of ordinary South Africans
• Despite its work, long after reparation to families had still not been paid, and many whites refuse to take collective responsibility, frustration from sufferers over perpetrators' amnesty and evasion of punishment
• The situation was made worse as non-confessional individuals like Botha and De Klerk were not prosecuted; ANC tried unsuccessfully to halt the publication
• There had been no distinction made between the human rights violations committed by agents of the apartheid state and those committed by the liberation movements; the TRC was an imperfect solution to a complex situation
• Successes: Gave an opportunity to make known the suffering from years of apartheid oppression and provided evidence of state security's covert/illegal actions against ANC supporters and other anti apartheid groups
• Failures/limitations: Whites did not take collective blame for apartheid due to individual action focus, and victims resent lack of punishment for crimes admitted due to amnesty
• Two high-profile cases (2010) reveal ongoing apartheid wounds, Malem, (ANC Youth League) incited political violence with a song and Terre’Blanche, (AWB) was brutally murdered, rekindling calls for a separate white state