(Russell Sage Foundation, 2004)
In 1994, as South Africans of every race streamed to the polls to vote in the nation’s first democratic elections, the world expected the country’s transition to be both long and painful. After all, the African continent has not spawned many successful democracies; few thought South Africa could be transformed without enormous heartbreak.
Now, as South Africa celebrates its first decade of democracy, a new book credits its success to steadfast faith in the power of truth to promote healing and reconciliation.
“Without the truth and reconciliation process, the prospects for a reconciled, democratic South Africa would have been greatly diminished,” concludes James L. Gibson, Ph.D., author of Overcoming Apartheid: Can Truth Reconcile a Divided Nation?
Gibson, the Sidney W. Souers Professor of Government in Arts & Sciences, bases this conclusion on a landmark survey of 3,700 South Africans representing all major racial, ethnic and linguistic groups — the most comprehensive study of post-apartheid attitudes in South Africa to date.
Gibson’s book generated a storm of media interest in South Africa, where it was released in August. It was published in the United States in April by the Russell Sage Foundation, and was launched in Manhattan in May.
How did South Africa succeed while so many other nations have failed?
Gibson credits the remarkably peaceful transition to the nation’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), headed by Nobel Prize Laureate Desmond Tutu. Working from the belief that understanding the past will help build a more peaceful and democratic future, South Africa launched the TRC as the mainstay of its efforts to deal with legacies of apartheid.
Gibson counters fierce debate over TRC success with evidence confirming the process made critical contributions to national healing. His survey produced compelling testimony that the TRC got its version of the truth accepted throughout South Africa.
“The most important lesson promulgated by the TRC is that both sides in the struggle over apartheid did horrible things,” Gibson claims. “If one accepts shared blamed, one might come to see the struggle over apartheid as one of ‘pretty good’ good against ‘pretty bad’ bad, not as absolute good versus infinite evil. Because all sides did horrible things during the struggle, all sides were compromised to some degree. It then becomes easier to accept the complaints of one’s enemies about abuses they experienced under the apartheid system.”
The bottom line, Gibson says, is that South Africans can thank the TRC for its contribution to the relatively stable and secure democracy that now exists in the country.
— Gerry Everding