Unsung Heroines: Media Reflections of the Social Conflict in South Africa

2002 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 349-366
Author(s):  
ELIZABETH LE ROUX
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Social Conflict ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Final Report ◽  
The Public ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
Women's Role

ABSTRACT This essay examines both media reports on South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), and the TRC's final report, to determine the reasons why women are portrayed in the media — when they are portrayed at all — almost exclusively as victims. This author examines media reports which deal with the testimony of women who lived through the period of social conflict (1960 to 1994) covered by the TRC. Building on theories that argue that media can create as well as reflect reality, the authors shows that women were not adequately represented in the media reports on the TRC, and thus in the public mind, in spite of efforts to include them in the TRC process. Thus, although the TRC process may have been helpful to individual women, it can be argued that it has had little impact on how people view women's role in South Africa, and more generally in armed conflict and social unrest world-wide.

Reconciliation in the Public Domain

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 412-427 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eddy Van der Borght
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Religious Symbol ◽  
The Public ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Way

Reconciliation shifted in South Africa during the transition from being a contested idea in the church struggle to a notion proposed and rejected by the fighting parties and finally embraced by the two main political protagonists when they reached an agreement on the transition to a democratic order. This article analyses the layered meaning of the reconciliation concept within the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. On the basis of this description the questions that will be explored are whether reconciliation functioned as a religious symbol at the trc, and if so, in what way. In the conclusion, the way the concept of reconciliation itself was transformed due to the role it played in the transition in South Africa will be summarized and the consequences for theological research will be indicated.

‘I Was Those Thousands!’: Memory, Identity and Space in John Kani'sNothing But the Truth

2007 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-84
Author(s):  
SHANE GRAHAM
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
The Public ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Spatial Configurations

John Kani'sNothing But the Truth(2002) dramatizes South Africa's collective confrontation with its traumatic past – played out on the public stage most visibly in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings – through the personal situation of Sipho Makhaya and his family. This essay analyses the obstacles Sipho and his daughter face in their attempts to negotiate new identities within the shifting social and physical geographies of post-apartheid South Africa. Identities in the apartheid era were rooted in specific places and socio-spatial configurations that are now being radically and rapidly transformed; Kani's play implies that this transitional moment in the country's history provides the opportunity to rewrite the codes that determine the ways that space is produced and used, and in the process to alter the ways that people form identities and memories in relation to both social space and other people.

Evaluating the Truth and Reconciliation Commission

2001 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 525-546 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Stanley
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Developmental Change ◽  
Transition To Democracy ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Final Report ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Social Level

Following a negotiated transition to democracy in South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was established to deal with crimes of the past regime. Despite the detail of submissions and the length of the Final Report, this article highlights the partiality of truth recognised by the Commission. The usefulness of acknowledged truth to deal with South Africa's past is shown to have been neutralised by wider concerns of social and criminal justice. In detailing the governmental reticence to provide reparations, the judicial disregard to pursue prosecutions, and the dismissal of responsibility for apartheid at a wider social level, the author argues that opportunities for reconciliation and developmental change are limited. Against the problems of crime, violence and unresolved land issues, the potential of the TRC to build a ‘reconciliatory bridge’ is called into question. The truth offered by the Commission increasingly appears of limited value.

South Africa's morality tale for our time

2000 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 303-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
ADRIAN GUELKE
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Final Report ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Nelson Mandela ◽  
Public Hearings ◽  
Desmond Tutu

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report: Five Volumes, Basingstoke and Oxford, Macmillan, 1999On 29 October 1998 Archbishop Desmond Tutu presented the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to President Nelson Mandela. This massive report has now been published by Macmillan in a handsome, extensively illustrated five-volume set. The fine quality of the production would seem appropriate to what has been hailed as a document of lasting importance for South Africa. Indeed, it is evident that many foreign commentators see it as important not just for South Africa but for the whole world. That has been reflected in the interest shown in the TRC by commentators, such as Timothy Garton Ash and Michael Ignatieff, who have not previously written about South Africa. The report was the culmination of nearly three years of work by the TRC. President Mandela announced the names of the 17 commissioners (designating Desmond Tutu as chairperson and Alex Boraine as deputy chairperson) in November 1995. It began to function in December that year, while the first public hearings were held on 15 April 1996. However, while the report has been the most significant product of the TRC's endeavours, it is not the end of its work. In particular, the Committee on Amnesty will continue to function until it has reached decisions on all the outstanding applications for amnesty received by the deadline of 30 September 1997. When it has completed this task a further volume of the final report will be published.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Llano
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Social Conflict ◽  
Musical Performance ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
Musical Practices ◽  
The Media ◽  
The City

As is described in this conclusion, more than the media and culture, Madrid’s public space constituted the primary arena where reactions and attitudes toward social conflict and inequalities were negotiated. Social conflict in the public space found expression through musical performance, as well as through the rise of noise that came with the expansion and modernization of the city. Through their impact on public health and morality, noise and unwelcomed musical practices contributed to the refinement of Madrid’s city code and the modernization of society. The interference of vested political interests, however, made the refining of legislation in these areas particularly difficult. Analysis of three musical practices, namely, flamenco, organilleros, and workhouse bands, has shown how difficult it was to adopt consistent policies and approaches to tackling the forms of social conflict that were associated with musical performance.

Disappointed Remains: Trauma, Testimony, and Reconciliation in Post-apartheid South Africa

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Field
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Trauma Survivors ◽  
National Unity ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Apartheid Regime ◽  
Democratic Elections

The apartheid regime in South Africa and the fight against the same, followed by the reconciliation is the crux of this article. The first democratic elections held on April 27, 1994, were surprisingly free of violence. Then, in one of its first pieces of legislation, the new democratic parliament passed the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act of 1995, which created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. At the outset, the South African TRC promised to “uncover the truth” about past atrocities, and forge reconciliation across a divided country. As oral historians, we should consider the oral testimonies that were given at the Human Rights Victim hearings and reflect on the reconciliation process and what it means to ask trauma survivors to forgive and reconcile with perpetrators. This article cites several real life examples to explain the trauma and testimony of apartheid and post-apartheid Africa with a hint on the still prevailing disappointments and blurred memories.

scholarly journals Truth and reconciliation in South Africa: Hindu experiences and concerns

2004 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
P.G.J. Meiring
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Faith Communities ◽  
The South ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Hindu Community ◽  
The Way

The author who served on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), focuses on the Hindu experience in South Africa during the apartheid years. At a special TRC Hearing for Faith Communities (East London, 17-19 November 1997) two submissions by local Hindu leaders were tabled. Taking his cues from those submissions, the author discusses four issues: the way the Hindu community suffered during these years, the way in which some members of the Hindu community supported the system of apartheid, the role of Hindus in the struggle against apartheid, and finally the contribution of the Hindu community towards reconciliation in South Africa. In conclusion some notes on how Hindus and Christians may work together in th

An analysis of media discourse on genetically modified rice in China

2020 ◽  
pp. 175048132098209
Author(s):  
Quan Zheng ◽  
Zengyi Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Media Discourse ◽  
Dominant Position ◽  
The Public ◽  
News Reports ◽  
Gm Rice ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Media ◽  
Specific Meaning

Current problems and controversies involving GM issues are not limited to scientific fields but spill over into the social context. When disagreements enter society via media outlets, social factors such as interests, resources, and values can contribute to complicating discourse about a controversial subject. Using the framework for the analysis of media discourse proposed by Carvalho, this paper examines news reports on Chinese GM rice from the dimensions of both text and context, covering the period of 2001–2015. This study shows that media may not only construct basic concepts, theme, and discursive strategies but also generate an ideological stance. This ideology constituted an influential dimension of the GM rice controversy. By following ideology consistent with the dominant position of the Chinese government, the media selectively constructed and endowed GM rice with a specific meaning in the Chinese social context, making possible the reproduction and communication of GM rice knowledge and risks to the public.

Missiological implications for Taylor Seminary arising from Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s recommendations

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 407-413
Author(s):  
Allan Effa
Keyword(s):  
First Nations ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Final Report ◽  
Cooperative Effort ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Cultural Genocide ◽  
The Government ◽  
Government Of Canada ◽  
Set Up

In 2015 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada concluded a six-year process of listening to the stories of Canada’s First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. More than 6000 witnesses came forth to share their personal experiences in listening sessions set up all across the country. These stories primarily revolved around their experience of abuse and cultural genocide through more than 100 years of Residential Schools, which were operated in a cooperative effort between churches and the government of Canada. The Commission’s Final Report includes 94 calls to action with paragraph #60 directed specifically to seminaries. This paper is a case study of how Taylor Seminary, in Edmonton, is seeking to engage with this directive. It explores the changes made in the curriculum, particularly in the teaching of missiology, and highlights some of the ways the seminary community is learning about aboriginal spirituality and the history and legacy of the missionary methods that have created conflict and pain in Canadian society.

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