| Abstract | This article considers the experience of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in promoting intergroup forgiveness and reconciliation focusing on the participation of victims in the TRC process and their response. It utilizes a variety of sources of empirical data collected during a 6-year collaborative project between the Science and Human Rights Program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation for which I served as the project director. The article analyzes transcripts of the TRC human rights violations hearings and amnesty hearings and follow-up focus groups with participants conducted as part of the project. These data show the limitations of the TRC in promoting forgiveness and reconciliation in a meaningful way. The TRC had difficulties in conceptualizing forgiveness and reconciliation on an intergroup level and concentrated instead on relationships between individual victims and perpetrators. Former victims and members of their families who testified at the violations hearings rarely mentioned these topics unless prompted to do so, and those who did were generally not inclined to forgive perpetrators. At the amnesty hearings perpetrators were reluctant to acknowledge their wrongdoing or to offer meaningful apologies, expressions of regret, or some form of compensation to those who had suffered. In light of these data the article questions the efficacy of the TRC's approach to forgiveness and healing and the capacity of transitional justice mechanisms in postconflict societies to promote forgiveness and reconciliation.
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