Conflict Resolution through Reconciliation

No future without recociliation

Forty years after the first free elections in South Africa in 1994 it is worth revisiting the TRC-process that was at the time evaluated as a shining example for conflict resolution through reconciliation. After the fall of the Wall, in the German context people have used the notion of reconciliation with reserve; they have preferred to describe the German endeavor in terms of the less symbolically pregnant notion of “working through the past” (“Aufarbeitung von Vergangenheit”). However, there are comparative key questions worth to revisit: What were the initial conditions for the respective reappraisal in both contexts? What options for actions (such as amnesty, truth commission, reparation etc.) were chosen in both countries and why? What rituals, rites or symbolic forms of expression accompany the processes of reappraisal? What are the results of the processes of dealing with the past that can be perceived in political reality? Was reconciliation achieved in Germany or South Africa?

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