Gender, Truth & Transition

Abstract

The [South African Truth and Reconciliation] Commission's work relied on giving words to experience. Yet, women's 'si-lence' can be recognised as meaningful. To do so requires carefully probing the cadences of silences, the gaps between fragile words, in order to hear what it is that women say.... the specific aim of the Commission, assumes, perhaps pa-tronisingly, that the world is knowable only through words and that to have no voice is to be without language, unable to communicate. The testimonies reported here suggest otherwise. 2