La elaboración de una Memoria Nacional: la Comisión de Verdad y Reconciliación de Sudáfrica

Abstract

South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission created a record of violence committed between 1960 and 1994 of the Apartheid era. Drawing from Latin American examples, it claimed to offer a collective memory of the past. The resultant account priorities individual experiences of harm (gross violations of human rights). While the account of specific harm is important, it is not adequately situated within an assessment of Apartheid’s systematic and structurally damaging effects. Age and gender specific patterns of testimony before the Commission give rise to an account of the past that undervalues the effects of Apartheid on women, particularly the young and underestimates the role they played in resistance to Apartheid. The Commission’s emphasis on violation precludes an understanding of everyday social processes through which people make everyday life. “Collective memory” is insufficient to the task of ensuring democracy.