Ubuntu and Common Humanity in the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Abstract

Stuit analyses the use of ubuntu as a political discourse by the South African TRC, where it became interrelated with forgiveness as the preferred mode of interaction between victims and perpetrators in the process of reconciliation and nation-building. Stuit discusses how the meaning of ubuntu in this context revolves around a contradictory use of a notion of common humanity that is claimed to be all-inclusive but also (re)installs a new benchmark for communal and national belonging. Yet, as becomes clear from a close reading of some of Krog’s TRC-related poetry, this discursive strategy of implementing ubuntu and forgiveness also offers a place from which it becomes possible to change, or at the very least, act upon this dominant discourse from within.