TRUTH

The theme of truth, its discovery, propagation, and the extent to which it should be pursued along with other objectives in the post-conflict environment, is a perennial consideration in transitional societies.

What does �truth’ entail in the context of post-conflict societies? Generally, truth after conflict concerns people’s understandings of what occurred in the past. As Robert Rotberg argues, �if societies are to pre­vent recurrence of past atrocities and to cleanse themselves of the corro­sive enduring effects of massive injuries to individuals and whole groups, societies must understand - at the deepest possible levels - what occurred and why.’^[79] Truth can be achieved through various means, for example, a legal process, if it involves the provision and weighing of evidence regarding crimes, or an emotional process, when it concerns personal experiences of conflict. A controversial feature of the truth commissions established in South and Central America was their attempts to con­struct an �official’ version of the truth by producing reports that synthe­sised evidence gathered from thousands of citizens who had experienced, or witnessed, alleged atrocities.^[80] Individuals’ and groups’ recollections of the past often clash, and may be expressed for various well-intentioned or cynically instrumentalist reasons.

Despite these caveats, three processes related to uncovering truth after conflict can be distinguished: what I term �truth-telling’, �truth-hearing’ and �truth-shaping’. First, truth-telling concerns parties’ public articula­tion of the truth, for example with the aim of providing legal evidence at a war-crimes tribunal, or in pursuit of some form of catharsis through emotional expression in front of a truth commission. In these instances, legal evidence that leads to the conviction and sentencing of perpetra­tors exemplifies how truth can constitute a means towards certain forms of justice; in the case of emotional discourse, truth may help facilitate healing.

Second, truth-hearing entails the reception of truth-telling, focusing on the ways in which different audiences respond to evidence or emo­tional expressions. Truth-telling and truth-hearing constitute halves of a post-conflict dialogue; in the case of legal settings, this dialogue is less pronounced, as truth-hearers are usually judges who engage in dia­logue only in so far as they ask questions of those providing evidence. In more negotiated settings, such as truth and reconciliation commissions, there is a greater sense of dialogue, as perpetrators and victims are often encouraged to speak face to face.

Third, truth-shaping concerns the ways in which parties external to the initial truth-telling and truth-hearing receive and re-mould evi­dence to serve purposes for which the original participants may not have intended their discourse. For example, historians and political leaders engage in truth-shaping when they use evidence gleaned from transi­tional institutions to serve wider social or political purposes, such as to reinterpret historical events or to teach the population moral lessons.

One source of complexity and controversy in the TRC in South Africa was that all three truth processes - truth-telling, truth-hearing and truth-shaping - occurred within the same institution. Individual per­petrators and victims sometimes engaged in face-to-face dialogue, and their discussions were recorded, debated and interpreted by a range of external parties, not least by the commissioners of the TRC tasked with producing the Commission’s Final Report, which was supposed to pro­vide a basis for post-apartheid nation-building.¹¹ That the truth concern­ing past crimes emanates from many different sources and is expressed, and subsequently deployed, for many different reasons ensures that the three processes of truth often intersect and are invariably contentious.