Rethinking Reconciliation: Evidence from South Africa

South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994 heralded the end of more than forty years of apartheid. The Government of National Unity started the process of bringing together this deeply divided society principally through the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). However, interest in – and responsibility for - the reconciliation project first embodied through the TRC appears to have diminished over more than two decades of democracy. The narrow mandate of the Commission itself has been retrospectively criticized, and at face value it would seem that deep divisions persist. This edited volume uses a decade of public opinion survey data to answer these key questions about the extent of progress in South African reconciliation.