Truth, reconciliation, gender: The South African truth and reconciliation commission and black women's intellectual history

Abstract

The article reports on the goals of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) that was formed as a result of political negotiations between the South African apartheid government and the African National Congress (ANC). The TRC's major bid was twofold: to find out hitherto obscured truths about human rights violations conducted in the name of apartheid and the struggle against apartheid; and to institute a process of reconciliation obviating further violence. The author's aim is to comment on the changing social constructions of gender, partly in the ways in which gender was deployed in conceiving 'truth' and 'reconciliation', and partly in the social opportunities forged - and not quite forged - through the TRC process.