An Analysis Of The Truth And Reconciliation Commission Of South Africa

The birth of interim constitution of South Africa in 1993 means the ending of apartheid and the new journey of democracy in South Africa. But under forty years (1948-1993) ruling of apartheid system, there were lots of conflicts between government force and anti-government force and gross human rights violation, especially the human rights violation with politic objective, happened in that period. The whole society was rich of politic violence and racial oppression and discrimination. All of the productions of apartheid system aggravate the hatred among races in South Africa which was in bad relationship before.The primary task of new South Africa government faced is how to deal with the legacy problem leaved by apartheid system to reconstruct the society which stressed in the interim constitution. In order to making progress and maintain a peaceful society order and build a good relationship among the races, there comes the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act (the ACT) in 1995. The parliament authorized the ACT set up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in South Africa to handle the gross human rights violation with political objective happed from 1960 to 1993, in the meantime, the ACT enacted the details about the mandate and function and objectives of TRC. In fact, whether can TRC handle this legacy problems of apartheid system properly is the key factor to the peacefully existence among South Africa races, in other words, is the key point that there is going to be a war or not in South Africa. The stable society order and the progress of economy that South Africa has acquired proved the validity and the value of TRC. So, I think it is necessary and valuable to research the TRC of South Africa.This paper introduced and analyzed TRC from four aspects. Firstly, I introduced the process and legal basis of TRC; secondly, I introduced the tasks and objectives and function and procedure rules of TRC; thirdly, I introduced the three working committee of TRC; lastly, I analyzed the characters of TRC and the meaning of TRC to South Africa.