Vol. 14 No.11 (November 2004), pp.912-915

OVERCOMING APARTHEID: CAN TRUTH RECONCILE A DIVIDED NATION? by James L. Gibson. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2004.  467pp. Hardcover. $47.50. ISBN: 0-87154-312-5.

Reviewed by Ayo Ogundele, Department of Political Science, Texas A&M University-Commerce.  Email: Ayo_Ogundele@tamu-commerce.edu

Before providing my evaluation of this book, I need to make two confessions. First, after seeing the book’s title, and not being very familiar with Professor James Gibson’s earlier work on the subject, I thought this was going to be another normative or prescriptive volume—the type that waxes philosophically about a political/social phenomenon or prescribe a road-map for policymakers.  Imagine my surprise upon finding out that this is not only a full volume of empirically-based research, but also one that focuses on what is arguably one of the most concerted institutionalized experiments in contemporary times: the attempt by South Africa to create a reconciled and unified society from the ruins of apartheid.

Second, because I am not an expert or specialist in political psychology, I react to the book as would the average political scientist and educated reader with very little knowledge of how it relates to other works in its field: I limit my assessment mainly to the extent to which I believe the book accomplishes its purported claims or objectives.

With that in mind, I begin the review with a little background information for readers unfamiliar with South Africa’s reconciliation efforts.  Following the transition from apartheid to democratic rule, South Africa’s Parliament, in 1995, established a quasi-judicial body, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and gave it the mandate to examine and document human rights atrocities committed during the struggle over apartheid.  All who felt that they had been a victim of political violence could come forward and be heard before the TRC.  Perpetrators of violence could also give testimony and request amnesty from prosecution. No one was exempted from being charged. But the TRC could grant amnesty if the crimes were politically motivated and the person seeking amnesty told the whole truth. The goal of the truth and commission process was to promote national unity and reconciliation. The premise behind it was that uncovering the horrific details of the past can heal the nation of its wounds from apartheid. Indeed, the truth and reconciliation process reportedly brought forth many witnesses giving testimony about the horrific acts committed under apartheid and has been credited both for helping to bring peaceful and democratic transition to South Africa and for spurring similar process in other troubled areas of the world.

Professor Gibson, however, does not believe that evaluations of the South African truth and reconciliation process should be based simply on faith or even on its perceived success. As he sees it, whether the TRC succeeded in its [*913] objectives is an empirical question that can (and should) be subject to systematic investigation.  However, are concepts as amorphous and malleable as truth and reconciliation amenable to empiricism? Is it possible to develop operational measures for the two, let alone establish causality between them? Gibson contends that, while the challenge of doing both is daunting, the task is not impossible. All that is needed is a careful plan of attack. In the book, he sets out to do just exactly that.  His study is based on a representative survey of the South African mass public conducted in 2000 and 2001, and his analysis utilizes methods of social science research in both their simple and advanced forms.

My assessment begins with Gibson’s claim that his study has made an important contribution to the operationalization of the concept of reconciliation. I find little to disagree with in this claim. Reconciliation is conceptualized as a multidimensional variable involving at least four aspects: interracial reconciliation, political tolerance, support for the principles of human rights, and legitimacy. Gibson does not dispute that these dimensions do not provide an exhaustive definition of reconciliation, but he maintains that that they are central to its meaning. This is especially true in the study of South African reconciliation, because three of the measures—interracial reconciliation, political tolerance, support for the rule of law—are enumerated as part of the objectives of the truth and reconciliation process in the statute creating the TRC, while one—legitimacy—is mentioned in the commission’s final report.  Further, Gibson contends that these elements are the building-blocks of democracy. At a minimum, democratic consolidation requires interracial accommodation, tolerance of political foes, support for both abstract and applied principles of the rule of law, and willingness to accept the legitimacy of major political institutions even when they produce unfavorable policy outcomes. In fact, Gibson views reconciliation as a mini-theory of the process of democratization, with the logic of the theory proceeding as follows: amnesty leads to truth, truth leads to reconciliation, and reconciliation leads to democratization. His focus, however, is on the correlation or causal linkage between truth and reconciliation, although he devotes a section of the volume to an examination of the effect of amnesty on reconciliation in South Africa.

For the operational definition of truth, the focal point of the first section of Chapter 3, Gibson chooses not to ascribe his own meanings to the concept as he did for reconciliation, and rightly so. It is doubtful he could have derived a definition of his own that would have been satisfactory to all. Rather, Gibson bases his conception of truth on theories of collective memory proposed, constructed, and endorsed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The inference from this discussion is that truth is context-based, at least in the case of South Africa. Might it be possible to craft a universal working definition of the concept? Probably not, but doing so was not Gibson’s goal.

A second claim by the author—and the central focus of the book—is that it is possible to test empirically the question of whether truth has contributed to reconciliation in South Africa. For this objective, Gibson adopts a three-pronged approach. In Chapter 2, he first [*914] documents conceptually and operationally a range of control variables that he uses in the substantive analyses throughout the book. Most of the results here, like the findings that racial differences exist in a wide variety of South African social and economic life and in experiences with the apartheid system, are not surprising. That apartheid had a disparate impact on each of the racial groups and left a racially divided society is to be expected. Unanticipated are the findings that most South Africans express optimism about their country’s future and profess the same degree of attachment to the nation as they do to their primary racial groups. If true, this bodes well for the future of South Africa.

Next, Gibson examines the degree to which South Africans of all races accept the collective memory produced by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, as well as the correlates of acceptance. The test is required, because without an indication of which aspects of the TRC’s collective memory were accepted, by how many, and for what reasons, a key piece in the puzzle to unravel the connection between truth and reconciliation would be missing. Two key conclusions emerged from these analyses. The first is that a common understanding of the past, based on the belief that all sides in the apartheid struggle committed horrible acts, has emerged in South Africa. The second conclusion is that the TRC’s revelations appear to have played a crucial role in creating such an understanding. There are some rather unexpected results as well. For example, the data show that, while a significant proportion of South Africans of every race believe that apartheid was a crime against humanity, a similar proportion also agree that, in principle, the idea of apartheid was good. It is this type of nonlinear finding that make the book an impressive piece of work.

Having established the presence of a shared memory of the nature of apartheid among a significant majority of South Africans, Gibson proceeds to the central and most complex part of his study, which is to establish, with empirical data, that the truth and reconciliation process has led to reconciliation in South Africa. These analyses were the main emphasis of chapters four, five, six, and eight, with each chapter focusing on one of the four dimensions of reconciliation identified earlier in the book. The reader will have to reach his or her own judgment about whether the author accomplishes his goal. Establishing causality between social or political phenomena is always a difficult and tricky business in social science research. My view is that Gibson’s approach and analyses in these sections are methodical and logical. The application of two-stage least squares, along with the introduction of experimental vignettes embedded within the sample data, makes causal conclusions possible and adds a great deal of validity to the study’s findings and conclusions. The weak link in the volume is Chapter 8, and only because I feel that the hypothesis that acceptance of the TRC’s collective memory (the independent variable) resulted in willingness to extend legitimacy to political institutions (the dependent variable) is not strongly established.

Finally, the book purports to make substantial contributions to theoretical research. This claim is not without merit. [*915] The reader will find in the volume a rigorous and comprehensive measurement of variables and the marshaling and application of a wide array of theories of social interactions and group relations, ranging from interracial contact theory to theories of political tolerance. The findings are just as impressive, with some having national policy implications. For example, the discovery in Chapter 6 that political tolerance has not increased in South Africa, compared to interracial reconciliation, suggests that countries dealing with human rights violations after extensive political change may find tolerance the most difficult to achieve.  Equally noteworthy is the finding in Chapter 7 that the absence of retributive justice created by amnesty can be ameliorated by other forms of justice, such as distributive and procedural justice.

Beyond its asserted contributions, the book also touches on several substantive issues in its conclusion, but more to acknowledge them than to posit answers. There is the recognition that macro-level processes can reinforce reconciliation at the individual level. Of course, the reverse can occur as well. That is, political institutions and elites can exacerbate interracial conflict or political tolerance. Examples abound in the world about undisciplined and corrupt political elites having a corrosive influence on their citizenry and political systems. Other questions raised are how much reconciliation is needed for democratic consolidation in South Africa, and whether the relationship between reconciliation and democracy is always linear.

Despite his painstaking efforts in this study, Gibson is circumspect about the findings. He should not be. If nothing else, he has demonstrated that even the most amorphous or malleable social and political concepts are not impervious to systematic investigation. Further, his study provides at least some empirical support, if not definitive evidence, that the truth and reconciliation process has been a positive force in moving post-apartheid South Africa toward a reconciled democratic nation.

Pedagogically, this volume is a perfect text for courses in political psychology, but it can also be used as a supplemental reading in survey methods classes. And one last thing: if the reader can get past the several tables of statistical evidence in the volume, he or she would find a pleasant and readable text as well.

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© Copyright 2004 by the author, Ayo Ogundele.