07 May 2004
	Politics 1995 Healing through painful encounters with the past BY SVEN LÜNSCHE

SA decides to confront its past when parliament approves the establishment of a Truth & Reconciliation Commission (TRC) comprising a 17-member team, led by Anglican archbishop Desmond Tutu. The TRC is given the task of exposing the crimes of the past and pardoning those who committed them if they were politically motivated. Tutu stresses the biblical principle that "the truth shall set you free", yet the process threatens to open up many old wounds. Some critics worry it impedes reconciliation rather than accelerating it. There are other problems that will emerge over the next three years at the TRC: the alleged bias towards the ANC, the unwillingness of many apartheid security agents to come forward and the minimal compensation paid to victims of political crime. No senior leaders of the ANC or the NP admit individual responsibility. Many of these leaders are subsequently granted amnesty. During the three years of public hearings, SA and the world will hear some harrowing tales of brutality, particularly by the apartheid security forces, tales that leave many of the commissioners in tears. When Tutu finally hands the extensive TRC report to President Nelson Mandela three years later, the consensus is that its work was fair and valuable and played a crucial role in national reconciliation. The TRC becomes a model for many other countries dealing with their histories of past injustice. Other events in the year: After stumbling from one scandal to another, Winnie Mandela resigns from her position as deputy minister of arts & culture but continues to head the ANC Women's League and remains an MP. Her marriage starts to unravel. The constitutional court is set up with Judge Arthur Chaskalson as its first president and, in one of its first decisions, the court abolishes the death penalty. Joe Slovo, a leader of the liberation struggle and democratic SA's first housing minister, dies of leukaemia. Local elections are held everywhere but in the Western Cape and KwaZulu Natal, which complete them a year later.