Testimony, nation building and the ethics of witnessing: after the truth and reconciliation commission in South Africa

Abstract

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings in South Africa initiated a project of reconciliation, nation building, and healing through a process of truth telling and forgiveness. Witness testimony provided the nation with a harrowing historical archive that somehow had to be incorporated into the weft and warp of a fractured and deeply divided society. In the decade since the hearings closed, the country has witnessed many acts of remembrance that have been woven into the ‘rainbow nation’, some with deft stitches to reveal the strength of its diversity, others darned and roughly patched to conceal its gaping divisions. This paper looks at two such initiatives. One concerns large memorial projects initiated by the government to commemorate the Struggle against apartheid, honour its victims and provide unifying myths of nationhood. The other relates to a small project of listening instigated by a trio of researchers concerned to honour the testimony of one TRC witness in order to assist her journey towards recovery. The former relies on a ‘top-down’ politics of reconstruction for the nation that is often pragmatic in intention and hegemonic in effect. The latter relies on an interpersonal ethic of listening, hospitality and openness to the other that is just in intention and singular in effect. Although both can be redemptive, one encourages a politics of sameness, while the other promotes an ethics of difference.