Reparations for Apartheid's Victims: The Path to Reconciliation?
26 Pages Posted: 16 Aug 2006
Abstract
This Article will address the South African context of reparations and reconciliation within the broader project of national reconstruction and nation building. This Article will also raise the concerns of truth and forgiveness and their place within the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) process with specific reference to the question of racial healing, racial harmony, and racial reconciliation. In addition, this Article will note the tensions inherent in individualizing racial harms by demarcating individual victims and perpetrators within a context of systemic and structural racial oppression and subordination. Particularly, it will highlight the complications in implicating the beneficiaries of racial privilege, and assess both the nature of the harm and causation for victims and beneficiaries. This Article will also discuss the United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance by highlighting the difficulties of the global reparations project.
Keywords: aparheid, truth and reconciliation, racial reconciliation, transitional justice
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