Truth and Reconciliation

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At the end of a violent, unjust and racially biased thirty-four year policy put in place by the ruling minority, the National Party lead by white South Africans, the new government, the African National Congress (ANC) had questions that they needed to answer. Questions such as how we go about providing justice and healing for the majority of a nation that has been forced to live in conditions of extreme poverty, experienced brutal and violent racism for the majority of their lives and have had loved ones wrongly imprisoned or worse murdered for no reason at all? For such an incredibly large scale task this was not going to be easy for the ANC to do. On a separate continent, another country was facing a similar dilemma. In Canada, its First Nations people were struggling with the pain and grief inflicted by the Residential School system. A school system that is responsible for destroying First Nations languages, cultures and people across Canada. The grief and pain these people have carried around has caused many to turn to drugs and alcohol to escape it. As with the ANC in South Africa, the leaders of the First Nations people in Canada needed to come up with a solution to help ease the suffering of people who have had their language and culture stolen from them and had been severely abused in the process. Looking chronologically South Africa were the first to come up with their solution. In 1995, South Africa’s new president Nelson Mandela appointed Arch-Bishop Desmond Tutu as the Chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Arch-Bishop Tutu went about putting together the Truth and Commission appointing a diverse group of South Africans to
TRC 2 lead the commission and organize the gatherings in which the numerous testimonies were about to take place.
Going further in detail as to why the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was ever needed in the first place, we must take a look at South Africa’s shameful Apartheid system which gripped the country for over thirty years. Apartheid, an Afrikaner word meaning “apart”, was a political system of racial segregation allowed and enforced by political legislation passed by the National Party comprised of only white South Africans. The apartheid system segregated people based on their race. Races were categorized as black, white, Asian or coloured. The entire system completely favoured white South Africans allowing them to gain better educations and jobs within the country. Non-Whites were not allowed to attend the same schools as whites, be in the same restaurants, and use the same facilities. The South African government set up a home land system created to keep people of similar races all in one area. Naturally white South Africans were given the best parts of the country to reside in. Even neighbourhoods in cities were completely segregated. Arguably the ones who suffered the most under the apartheid system were black South Africans who were forced to live in what are called townships. These were large areas that black South Africans used to construct crude shelters made out of mostly tarps, old wood and scrap metal if they were lucky. Some of the poorest areas in South Africa were, and continue to be the townships.

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Often the police would inflict incredible brutality upon any person who dared to question or protest the apartheid system. This brutality was incredibly apparent towards the latter years of the apartheid regime in the 1980’s. Apartheid created a great deal of tension between the black African majority and the white African minority that held power. Ultimately due to great national and global pressure, the president of South Africa
F.W De Klerk began to negotiate with Nelson Mandela and the ANC about a transfer of power away from the National Party which would mean apartheid would effectively end.
In 1994, South Africa elected Nelson Mandela as their president officially ending apartheid. A year later is when we see Mandela forming the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in an effort to unite and help a healing nation.
A major part in the negotiations between the National Party and the ANC was the fact that the national party demanded that complete amnesty be declared for all those responsible for maintaining apartheid. The ANC realised that had they not agreed to this, the transfer of power would probably have never happened.
If we look at the Jewish Holocaust as an example, they were able to conduct the Nuremburg trials as a result of officially defeating Germany and the Nazi’s in war and therefore had control over Germany thus allowing them to put war criminals on trial. There was no ground for the Nazi’s to stand on to demand amnesty. South Africans now could not prosecute the leaders of apartheid for their severe violations of human rights so Mandela turned his attention to the people who were affected by it.
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The Truth and Reconciliation Commission began setting up large conventions in all the major cities in South Africa like Cape Town, Johannesburg, Soweto, Durban and Pretoria. Over thirty thousand people attended these counsels set up by the Commission to give their testimonies about the terror they faced during apartheid. For the first time in decades people in South Africa and the rest of the world were forced to realize the severe injustice and the human rights violations that took place within the apartheid regime. Testimonies were given by mothers telling about their sons and husbands being killed in cold blood for little to no reason, or watching them being hauled away by police never to be seen again. Other testimonies were given by people forced to live in the townships the apartheid government had created as a means to separate black South Africans from the whites.
In addition to the numerous people called to come and give their testimony during the commission, many of those who stood guilty of upholding apartheid were called to attend the counsels and listen to the testimonies. The most famous example of this being when the commission demanded that former President P.W Botha attend the counsels. Botha immediately refused calling the Truth and Reconciliation Commission a “circus”. The commission immediately took Botha to court over his decision which ended in Botha winning the case due to the fact the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was not seen as a legal hearing Botha needed to attend.
Although the Truth and Reconciliation Commission proved to be a success, it did not please all South Africans. The person I interviewed is a black South African that left the
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I really don’t believe the “commission” did anything to help anyone. Yes a lot of people got to sit around and tell their story about how apartheid was bad but who does not already know that? Suddenly because Madiba became president and we were now given a chance to tell the world our stories of hardships now everything is fine. Meanwhile not one person who committed any terrible acts had to pay for it at all. In fact many people responsible for apartheid and the police who were most brutal during the apartheid regime still was around to this day never having to pay for their actions. You know why? First because they were given amnesty, and second because apparently telling stories makes it better. Forget the fact that I was not allowed to coach professionally in South Africa despite having more qualifications, unfortunately being black didn’t count as a good one. But what I should do now is go and speak with those Technical Directors and tell them and the rest of the world that their outright racism made me feel bad and it was wrong, and then forgive them for it because that now makes me feel “better” and makes everything all ok. I left my homeland because there was absolutely no future for me and my family there; because it was legal to be racist and make me live in sub-standard conditions. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission did nothing to make me feel better about what happened. The only thing I take joy in is one day these criminals will face God and they will first be surprised to see he is black, and secondly God will ask them “why did you put all these innocent people through so
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Despite many people voicing their dissatisfaction with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, it set a new president in the world in regards to how a nation deals with a mass violation of human rights, and mass atrocities in general. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission showed that restorative justice is just as effective as punitive justice. With their method, the focus was put on the victims rather than the perpetrators. Such was the effectiveness of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission that it was copied in Canada thirteen years later.
In the late nineteenth century, the Canadian government felt it had to do something to modernise and integrate its aboriginal people into Canadian society. One of the many ways the government tried to do this was forcibly send every First Nations child in the country to what was called a Residential School. These schools were set up in multitudes all around the country. The main goal of the school was to provide a “white education” to the Indian children while at the same time forbid the use of their language as well as practice the traditions of their culture. Essentially they wanted to take the Indian out of the Indian.
These residential schools were often underfunded, lacked qualified staff and were poorly run. As a result of not having qualified teachers in these schools, the main curriculum taught was religion.

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Physical and sexual abuse was rampant in these schools as well as illness, poor nutrition, starvation, and incredibly high death rates. Often the children that died within the school were buried in the school yard without a proper First Nations burial, or even a Catholic burial for that matter.
With the last residential school closing in 1998, after more than their one hundred years of existence, residential schools left behind a legacy of abuse, death and ultimately a cultural genocide. As with the survivors of apartheid, the First Nations people within Canada, who as children were forced to go to these schools, have a lot of emotional and physical pain to carry around. They needed an outlet, some form of justice.
Efforts were made by many First Nations leaders within the country to get the Canadian government to recognize the terrible actions in its past. The most notable acknowledgement was the large settlement sums given to those people who had attended residential school. Many of these settlements were spent on liquor and drugs rather than the professional help these so obviously needed.
On June 1, 2008 the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission was officially established by Murray Sinclair, Marie Wilson and Willie Littlechild. Much like the commission in South Africa, this one also looked to give residential school survivors a chance to tell their stories of the abuse and cruelty they were subjected to. Another similarity between this commission and the one in South Africa was its focus was on the victim and not prosecuting the offenders. Unlike South Africa where the offenders were granted amnesty for
TRC 8 their crimes, in Canada, those who ran residential schools and committed the crimes against these children had been dead for sometime leaving a generation guilty of no crimes having to pay the price for it.
City by city the Truth and Reconciliation Commission traveled across Canada giving survivors a chance to tell the world their story of what their experience in residential school was like. The commission gave a voice to a people who had previously had none; it gave a hope of healing the internal scars that we cannot see. The commission has not solved every problem that residential schools have caused within the First Nations community, but it has definitely opened the doors to healing.
With these two incredible cases of human forgiveness and alternative justice, one must ask is it always necessary to seek punitive justice? There will always be people divided on the issue, some arguing that yes people must always be punished for their crimes and others that will argue that other means of justice must be tried. Can it really hurt to try a method of restorative justice that focuses more on the victim than the offender? After all, the victim is the one who will be more hurt after the offense has taken place. It may not work in every case in the world, but it is definitely worth trying.