Reconciliation through Restorative Justice in Post-Apartheid South Africa (original) (raw)

Nation-building in divided societies requires that contending groups can find enough common cause to transcend the past and to move forward together (Lederach, 1995). This process starts with reconciliation. The key to the reconciliation process is the identification of victims and perpetrators and the holding of reflexive dialogues so both the victims and perpetrators can find their own space in the reconciliation process. Coupled with this process is ensuring transitional justice to ensure that the legacy of past conflicts is appropriately addressed by instituting a process of amnesty and reparation (Lederach, 1995). The impact of these interrelated processes is ensuring that all involved parties transcend the past together and find a common cause in moving forward. During the transition, it became critical to pursue justice to address apartheid's legacy marred with mass human rights abuses (Llewellyn and Howse, 1999). The choice of restorative justice over retributive justice was a result of political compromise and the acknowledgment of a need for both healing and forgiveness. Kollapen in Liebenberg (1996:127) concurs and argues that "given the post-election scenario of nation-building and a government of national unity and national reconciliation, the focus of any pertinent and efficacious way forward should be on healing". Nonetheless, national reconciliation would be impossible without some accounting for the violent methods of apartheid; an admittance and diagnosis of what transpired and who was responsible (Luna, 2011; Lund, 2003). For decades, South Africa was a society divided by racist oppression. Therefore, nationbuilding depended on the healing of victims of 'crimes against humanity' that bedeviled the majority of the black population for decades (The Apartheid Convention, 2008). Dowdall (1991: 51) argues that behind the bureaucracy of apartheid was "an efficient police and security police force and a sophisticated military which the state has not hesitated to use to

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