wfn.org | South African Institute for Justice and Reconciliation launched

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@wfn.org>]

11 May 2000

Cape Town - An organisation to follow up the still incomplete work of South
Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was headed by Bishop
Desmond Tutu, was launched here on 10 May.

Professor Charles Villa-Vicencio, a former head of the Research Institute
on Christianity in South Africa and who was Director of Research for the
TRC, is the first Executive Director of the Institute for Justice and
Reconciliation. At the launch function, he said the Institute "is founded
on the assumption that there are two inseparable and equally important
challenges facing this nation, namely justice and reconciliation. Both are
doomed to failure without the other".

Among the immediate tasks the Institute and its staff would be addressing
was the "sensitive issue of reparations for victims of apartheid, as
recommended by the TRC".

Professor Villa-Vicencio outlined some of its other priorities: to bring
people who scarcely know one another together to debate on campuses, and in
boardrooms, labour negotiations and ordinary communities; to gain an
understanding of what brought South African to the brink of collapse in the
eighties (particularly exploring the motivation of the perpetrators of
human rights violations); and to study the issue of comparative
transitional justice throughout Africa.

Among the Patrons and Board Members of the Institute are: Bishop Desmond
Tutu; the Most Rev Njongonkulu Ndungane, Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town;
Professor Jakes Gerwel, Chancellor of Rhodes University; Ms Louse Asmal of
the Canon Collins Educational Trust; Judge Siraj Desai of the Cape High
Court; and well known writer and poet Ms Antjie Krog.

Keynote speaker at the launch was Justice Pius Langa, Deputy President of
South Africa's Constitutional Court. In his address, titled 'Transcending a
Century of Injustice', Judge Langa said: "The Institute is eminently suited
to play a central role in the critical on-going work of reconciliation. It
will be a long haul, but then I think it would be a mistake to think that
reconciliation is an event. It will require the on-going commitment of all
levels of society. It will help to make the next hundred years a season of
regeneration and peace".

Rev Dave Wanless - Coordinator: Ecumenical News Network southern Africa
Tel & Fax: +27 (21) 683-9665
Cell: 082 958-6482
E-mail: davecong@mweb.co.za
Website: www.uccsa.co.za