RIREC workshop features lecture by Charles Villa-Vicencio, former TRC Research Director

There is a simple yet profound lesson to be learned from the successful transition from racial conflict to a non-racial democracy in South Africa, said Charles Villa-Vicencio, Executive Director of the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation and former Research Director for the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). “Talks are important; even talks about talks are important. Military power can achieve only so much. Peace and legitimate power are ultimately negotiated.”

Villa-Vicencio, a participant in the Kroc Institute’s Research Initiative on the Resolution of Ethnic Conflict (RIREC), presented a thought-provoking lecture focusing on the lessons learned from South Africa’s TRC as part of the project’s inaugural workshop on September 24-25. An internationally- recognized scholar on the TRC, Villa-Vicencio will lend his expertise to RIREC’s “transitional justice” research cluster.

After presenting a brief history of South Africa in relation to apartheid, Villa-Vicencio turned to the relatively nonviolent end to apartheid, which Archbishop Desmond Tutu proclaimed, “a miracle.” He observed that, after the Soweto protests in 1976, “both sides realized that neither was strong enough to defeat the other.” Thus, any resolution of the conflict would have to be built on some kind of political compromise.

The TRC emerged as a bridge between the old and the new. The only other options appeared to be a blanket amnesty or Nuremberg-type trials, neither of which would have been likely to work, noted Villa-Vicencio. A blanket amnesty would have left victims without any recompense or even public acknowledgment of the wrongs done to them, which could have led to further eruptions of violence.

On the other hand, seeking to prosecute perpetrators would have likely led to only a few successful convictions, given the difficulties inherent in prosecuting political crimes and the strain this would place on the justice system during a difficult transition. Moreover, prominent criminal trials can easily become show-trials, undermining the quest for a historical account of the past.

Of course, not everyone was convinced that the TRC was the mechanism for transitional justice. “The TRC was always more popular outside than within South Africa,” he said. Many South Africans remain ambivalent about the TRC, given how the past remains present in the form of poverty, oppression, and crime. However, most think the TRC did help South Africa move through a difficult time.

According to Villa-Vicencio, one of the major achievements of the TRC is that it has led to the beginning of a rights-based culture in which people are aware of the existence of certain basic rights that cannot be taken away. He cautioned however that the two unresolved issues — poverty and racism — could bring the new South Africa to its knees.

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