When is the conflict over? Truth, acknowledgement and transitional justice in South Africa and Northern Ireland

Abstract

In this paper, I explore the concept of transitional justice through a comparison between South Africa and Northern Ireland. Empirically, the focus is on the period of transition in each country, after the suspension of armed struggle in each case, in terms of the Pretoria Minute of August 1990 and the Good Friday Agreement of April 1998 respectively. Each period is examined and compared with relation to the following themes: Self-defence/community defence; policing, community policing and social order; territorial control and local power; weapons control, military discipline and demilitarization. Conceptually, the focus is on accountability for violations committed during such transition periods; and in the post-transition period, how transitional justice mechanisms deal with such violations; the legitimacy of the justice system during and after the transition; and community policing initiatives during the transition.

The difficulty of establishing a consensual truth about violations committed during transition periods does not detract from two important processes which transitional justice mechanisms attempt to address: the acknowledgement of responsibility for such violations by those who perpetrated them; and the holding to account of the perpetrators. The process of acknowledgement is integrally linked to the unveiling and establishment of the truth about the past; while the process of accountability can take a variety of forms, from conditional amnesty and full public disclosure, to community-based processes of reconciliation and restorative justice, to legal prosecution and punitive justice. It is concluded that whatever the nature of these processes, their importance in enabling societies which have been torn apart by violent conflict, to come to terms with their past, cannot be underestimated