Archived voices: Refiguring three women's testimonies delivered to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Abstract

The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) executed a vital process of transitional justice and was one of the country's most important efforts toward moving away from its past of injustice, discrimination, and intolerance to a future founded on the recognition of human rights, democracy, and equality. The TRC's main task was to address the human rights abuses of the past through a process of truth and amnesty. It used the testimonies of victims/survivors and amnesty applicants to gather information about the gross violations of human rights that had taken place under apartheid. The platform on which victims/survivors narrated their experiences more than anything else turned the TRC into one of the most significant phenomena in South African history. Today, the consequences, effects, and failures of the commission are still being debated among scholars as well as among certain parts of the population. The three testimonies discussed in this paper were delivered from this platform during the first and second weeks of TRC hearings in 1996. After being delivered with translations in public, the TRC archived these audio, visual, and transcribed English versions of the testimonies as part of its mandate to gather evidence of human rights abuses during apartheid. This archival material has since been used to refigure some of the archives of South African history. We want to explore the less obvious and more subtle refigurings that took place during the compilation of TRC testimonies. Using three testimonies delivered by women, we examine how refiguring happened not only through the processes of translation and transcription, or who is telling and how, but also through narrating the event in a way that leaves central moments un-uttered. © University of Tulsa, 2009. All rights to reproduction in any form are reserved.