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Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae

versión On-line ISSN 2412-4265
versión impresa ISSN 1017-0499

Studia Hist. Ecc. vol.46 no.1 Pretoria  2020

http://dx.doi.org/10.25159/2412-4265/7160 

ARTICLES

 

Narrative Pertaining Truth and Reconciliation

 

 

John Stephanus Klaasen

University of the Western Cape jsklaasen@uwc.ac.za; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9388-3601

 

 


ABSTRACT

The use of the oral historical form of communication was tantamount to the failures and successes of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). In this article, narrative or storytelling is the theoretical framework to assess the successes and failures of the work of the South African TRC. A correlation between the Commission's work and what followed after it had completed its mandate, points to the successes of the Commission in contemporary South Africa. Current limitations to form unity and build a reconciled society can be placed within the structure and function of the truth as relayed through stories and narratives of individuals and groups at hearings of the Commission. There exists a corpus of literature regarding the post-TRC period. This contribution provides a perspective of the work of the TRC from a narrative approach.

Keywords: narrative; reconciliation; Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC); national unity; storytelling


 

 

Introduction

The impact of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) (henceforth Commission) is closely correlated with the objective of the Commission. However, this correlation is not as innocent as it appears. A number of factors that question the correlation between impact and objective deserve to be mentioned. These factors include the purpose and expertise of the commissioners, the historical context, the cultural context, and the name of the Commission. The Commission was an initiative of the first democratically elected government. Its primary objective was to build a united nation on the basis of truth and reconciliation. From the birth of the idea of a commission, questions of whose truth and reconciliation between what groups or persons were evident. Looking back at the early stages of the work of the Commission, it is evident that truth and reconciliation were more than a moral phenomenon and had to include a legal aspect if its work was to have any kind of authority.

What followed the work of the Commission was both a moral and legal obligation on the part of the government and the general public. From a legal perspective, the state had to be legally bound to make sure that victims are compensated and that perpetrators are treated within the legal framework. From a moral perspective, and for effective healing, the victims had the right to know who the perpetrators of the wrongs were. The perpetrators, on the other hand, had the right to an opportunity to tell their perspectives of their role in the wrongs of the past.

Reparation was formulated in the legal and moral framework, and although the Commission did not have the authority to dispense compensation, the grounds for reparation, as part of healing, were based entirely on the findings of the Commission. One of the three organs of the Commission was responsible for recommending persons or groups for compensation. The reparation committee followed certain principles and guidelines to make recommendations. Reparation was a complex issue and both promoted and thwarted unity and nation building.

The South African truth and reconciliation process was recognised universally as a miraculous process. In many ways, the process was more recognised as a hugely successful process of healing, unity and reconciliation by the international community, than by local citizens. The scepticism amongst South African citizens about the success of the Commission is partly due to the lack of reparation and dissemination of its findings.

The Commission used a storytelling or narrative form rather than a literary form as submissions and engagement with the losses and atrocities of victims and perpetrators of gross human rights violations and political "unfreedoms." This methodology attracted unprecedented media coverage and participation from diverse groups of persons, including rural and urban, poor and rich, white and black, religious and non-religious.

The use of the oral historical form of communication was tantamount to the failures and successes of the TRC. The South African poet and author, Antjie Krog, regards narrative-or storytelling-as an indispensable aspect of the Commission's methodology and subsequent successes and failures. Narrative is also the framework used to assess the correlation between the Commission's work and what followed after it had completed its mandate. Current limitations to form unity and build a reconciled society can be placed within the structure and function of the truth as relayed through stories and narratives of individuals and groups at hearings of the Commission. There exists a corpus of literature regarding the post-TRC period. This contribution provides a perspective of the work of the TRC from a narrative approach.

 

Oral Tradition and Storytelling

Andrews (2007) quotes Ndebele (1998) who asserts that one of the most important effects of the TRC was "the restoration of narrative. In few countries in the contemporary world do we have a living example of people reinventing themselves through narrative." Andrews points out that the significance and uniqueness of the TRC are not that narrative was used to form personal identity, but that narrative was a way of forming national unity. Oral history, and not literary form, was used to involve the whole nation to participate in the building of a national identity (Andrews 2007, 148).

It is noteworthy that while the Commission was not against written evidence or literary form of communication, oral transmissions addressed an important political aspect. Most illiterate people in South Africa are black and storytelling was a way of addressing the imbalance of the victims (who were mostly black) and the perpetrators (who were mostly white). Written submissions were like "barbed wire" compared to the spoken word. Hofmeyr alleges that in the same manner that whites controlled land, crops, influence and culture through fencing the territory with barbed wire, so too did they control communication by means of the written word. Hofmeyr (1993, 71-72) further affirms: "Fencing, then, in the popular imagination, formed part of a wider net of white control. Small wonder that today at least one old man remembers fencing and literacy as intimately tied."

Additionally, Hofmeyr (1993) asserts that the boundary constructed in the form of a fence symbolically represents the fixity of the text for those who are literate:

As the referent of the text, the fence embodies the reality of the boundary and supposedly writes it permanently into the earth. Against the "literacy" of the fence, the residents of the chiefdom mobilised the resources of an oral performance culture ... at times they successfully forced the commissioner to deal with them on the terms of an oral world, but as the fences surrounded Valtyn, undermining the material base of the life to which people were accustomed, such victories over the commissioner became irrelevant and petty. Overall, it was the barbed wire that caged the spoken word. (Hofmeyr 1993, 77)

The report of the Commission (Volume 7) clearly alludes to the problems encountered with the statement-taking process. Statements were written down on behalf of the people, incurring misinterpretations, misrepresentations, omissions and distortions of their stories. The Commission used both experienced and informal statement takers, which opened the Commission to numerous other variations of the truthfulness of the experiences of the victims and perpetrators. Statements were also limited to the Commission and were rarely made public on the same level as the broadcasting of verbal stories.

Contrary to those who view storytelling as irrational, it is a cognitive activity with coherence and consistency. Ganzevoort rightly concludes that Bruner (1986) identifies cognitive functioning to be both argument and story:

Both have the purpose of convincing, but where argument convinces of logical truth, story convinces of lifelikeness. Characteristic of the narrative approach, in comparison to what he calls paradigmatic thought, is that experience is explicitly placed in time and space, and that it does not try to transcend particular experience into abstractions. (Ganzevoort 1998, 276-277)

Storytelling takes the past as an important aspect of the present. It is for that reason that Hofmeyr refers to her approach as oral historical narrative. Freeman defines memory as that "which often has to do (not only) merely with recounting the past but with making sense of it-from 'above' as it were-it is an interpretive act the end of which is an enlarged understanding of the self (Freeman 1993, 29). The past opens up the limited experience of the present. Here, limited experience is referred to as "lived experience"- which is the cumulative sum of actual experience. The past, however, adds another layer to experience, giving it a more comprehensive meaning. I refer to the notion of experience as narrated experience. Andrews (2007, 151) rightly maintains that the transition from the apartheid past to a democratic South Africa had to be grounded in memory, more specifically, in spoken memory

Hofmeyr provides a cluster of three groupings that can be applied when placing the past within a meaningful present. Firstly, units or clumps are arranged around certain identifiable "clichés or core images" and placed in a larger group that forms the core of the story. This was particularly evident and helpful when victims referred to local and cultural images and concepts to explain their experiences in a meaningful way. Secondly, less frequent elements that have a long-lasting timeframe, but with relative coherence, and thirdly, those activities or periods that are "episodes, transitional images and motifs that come up frequently but in highly diverse forms" (Hofmeyr 1993, 113).

The majority of the stories were told by women, even though most of the deaths were that of men, emphasising the transitional nature of the episode. Krog (1998, 186) recalls the story of Deborah:

When I look around, I marvel at how we battle to be normal-and no one knows how shattered we are inside ... I shared my first detention spell in the Old Fort with Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Fatima Meer and Joyce Seroke. This was a powerful group. The wardresses called Winnie by her name and she had such amazing strength. She taught us to stand up for our rights and dictate our terms. We discovered that black female prisoners were not allowed to wear panties. We changed that. We also heard children screaming at night and demanded that these children be released . When I was rearrested at Vrede in the Free State, I was detained at Phoenix. After a week I demanded to see a warden . that afternoon they came. Two of them . They handcuffed me to a big iron ball. I stood there the whole night while they were having a braai outside . The Truth Commission venue is silent. No one wants to interrupt this story of the power of women of care, endlessly. The moment surpasses all horror and abuse.

According to Hofmeyr, through this clustering of themes or periods, historical information is coupled together to retrieve the past for meaning making in the present (Hofmeyr 1993, 113).

Freeman describes the position of the past as a four-stage process. Firstly, recognition of differences between the life lived and the one that ought to be lived. Secondly, identifying the challenges and traumas in one's life and then separating oneself from it. Thirdly, one must articulate the "old self and the one presently being projected as a future possibility," and fourthly, appropriation, which refers to acting (Freeman 1993, 45).

Both Hofmeyr and Freeman place the past within the continuing process of meaning making of the present and influencing the future. The past is not isolated for the sake of obsoleteness but is an integral part of the process to shape, form and determine the future. Freeman has worked for decades on the self and the past. His progression can be summarised as follows: "Rather than thinking of narrative mainly in terms of its orientation to the past, I have tried to suggest that it bears upon the future as well: the process of rewriting the self is at one and the same time a process of articulating the self-to-be, or the self-that-ought-to-be" (Freeman 2014, 13).

Ganzevoort identifies four features of narrative theory. These four features provide a theoretical frame within which the storyteller and storytelling place the episodes in an action-oriented process of sensemaking of past atrocities in the context of healing. The author is the first feature and can be the actual storyteller or an archetypical figure, and is responsible for his/her construction of the story. The author has a certain amount of freedom to individual artefacts to compose the story. However, the author is also limited by the social interactions that stifle his/her freedom to choose. Marginalised groups, for example, might feel compelled to use the language, images, symbols and metaphors of dominant groups (Ganzevoort 1998, 277). The authorship is further complicated. As Barthes (1977 in Freeman 1993) goes on to elaborate, the author "is a product of our society insofar as, emerging from the Middle Ages with English empiricism, French rationalism and the personal faith of the Reformation, it discovered the prestige of the individual, of-as it is more nobly put-'the human person' (142-3)" (Barthes in Freeman 1993, 67-68).

Deborah, the author of her story, is the storyteller. She is confined by the historical social-political context. She chooses to cluster the three different arrests or imprisonments to make up her story. As part of the oppressed and limited by her unfreedoms, her language, images and metaphors are situated within the confines of the dominant Afrikaner culture. Braai (barbecue), for example, is a typical Afrikaner social gathering that has become almost a national cultural family event.

The second feature identified by Ganzevoort is the story itself. The story consists of the characters, including the author, who is an actor. As an actor, the author represents the author's experiences, suppositions and interests: "In telling the story, the author has the opportunity of moulding facts and fiction info a structure with which he or she can live. For that reason specific roles and other stylistic motives are adopted in the story." The scene of the story is set in a time and space that sets the scene for the limits of the actors and the sequencing of the plots (Ganzevoort 1998, 277).

Deborah assigns the roles of heroism and power to both fellow prisoners, such as Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Fatima Meer, the wardresses, and the wardens. These actors represent different kinds of power and the prisons set the scene within which power is interpreted. This evokes both facts and fiction. The story demands imagination, which, in turn, invites the hearers to become closer participants of the story. Although the prisons set the boundaries of the roles of the wardresses, wardens, and fellow prisoners, it gives control of the story to the author.

The audience is the third feature of storytelling. The interest lies with whom the story is told to. Who are the hearers that make up the primary audience? The secondary audience can include other significant actors, such as imaginary, symbolic or metaphorical others. The function of the audience cannot be overstated because, in a sense, it is they who initiated the storytelling by summonsing the author and keeping the author accountable to the truthfulness of the story. Social relationships, performance, negotiation and altering of positions constitute the essence of the audience (Ganzevoort 1998, 279).

The commissioners and others present in the venues are the audience. The commissions opened the call for people to tell their story. They initiated the story. With regard to the audience, Andrews draws an important distinction between truth commissions and therapeutic circumstances. In respect of truth commissions "one of the most challenging aspects of listening is the ability to suspend the expected tale, and leave oneself open to hearing a new kind of story" (Andrews 2007, 166-167). In this regard, the Commission has come under severe criticism because not all of them were trained listeners. There were one psychologist and two clergypersons who potentially had professional training in listening.

The final feature of storytelling is the purpose. How does one maximise significance? Following Pargament (1997), Ganzevoort uses the term "significance" because it refers to personal interpretation and it is related to the end point of the story. Significance here has two broad interests, the structure of which is "the inner purpose, enhancing identity." The author is able to put together an order of life experiences in a coherent and meaningful intelligible form. The author seeks to convince the audience to accept the authenticity of the intelligible form of the narrative. The author considers the social relevance and roles in order to be accepted by the audience. The actors play a supporting role according to the dictates of the author (Ganzevoort 1998, 277).

Deborah left the audience speechless and in wonder. Their silent reaction was as much a sign of their astonishment of the horrific and brutal transgressions against Deborah as it was of the enormity of her courage and transcendence. Drawing on the powerful figures, Deborah presented a story of courage and personhood.

The Commission came under criticism for imposing its mandate of reconciliation on the storytellers. Commissioners were accused of leading evidence through asking questions that were aligned with their outcome. Commissioners (including Tutu) were also accused of pre-empting the storyline by disrupting testimonies, pausing when overcome by emotions, or determining when a testimony must be stopped or continued. A storyteller, Yazir Henri, recalls his experience of giving testimony before the TRC. Before Henri had finished, Archbishop Tutu interrupted him: "He had listened to my story with reverence and said that he understood what I had been through. My head fell against the witness table and my knees would not carry me from his gaze. I felt the weight of his words tearing my heart from my body and my mind shouted, 'How can you say what you cannot know? ... But I am not finished ... There is more!' "(Andrews 2007, 107-108).

Storytelling assumes that the audience suspends their story within the storyscape, so that the story told takes on its own authentic meaning. It became clear that the TRC had its own criteria when selecting which stories to include in the reports. The polarisation of victims and perpetrators of human rights abuses had the potential to separate stories within a hierarchy of relevance and subsequently distort the accuracy of the social and political contexts of the story. The ripple effect could result in the thwarting of reconciliation. As Yazir Henry writes: "I have had to avert the downward spiral of victimhood and the entrapment of the TRC's victim box to find my own humanity" (Andrews 2007, 167).

Despite the critiques, the narrative approach was politically and socially an appropriate and important methodology used by the TRC to heal the wounds of the past and build national unity. The fluidity of the approach puts the storyteller at the centre of the process and he/she determines the validity, make-up, and structure of the truth and reconciliation, and ultimately, the degree of national unity. The storyteller has the authority to determine what plots are made public and the life experiences of the author that are scaffolded together to form the whole. Narratives provide the vehicle through which the authors recollect the past, and in consideration of the changing social settings, seek to live the life they ought to live. Hofmeyr comments: "Not only do historical narratives refer to the past and mediate an understanding of the past through form, the stories and their tellers also pass through time and are shaped by its often precipitously changing circumstances. Stories then, comment on the passing of time and times past; they also enfold fragments of the past in themselves while they simultaneously transmute under the pressures of a changing social climate" (Hofmeyr 1993, xi).

Krog, a prominent journalist who reported the stories of the victims and perpetrators, tells the following story; Ms Gobodo-Madikisela asked the person to tell the Commission what happened on that day:

Mr Sikwepere: "... I heard that we were going to be attacked. I ran ... I just wanted to find out what was the response of this white man . The white man said in Afrikaans. ... You are going to get eventually what you are looking for. And I am going to shoot you ..." Ms Gobodo-Madikisela: "Baba, do you have any bullets in you as we speak?" Mr Sikwepere: "Yes, there are several of them ..." Ms Gobodo-Madikisela: "How do you feel, Baba, about coming here to tell us your story?" Mr Sikwepere: "I feel what-what has brought me here has brought my sight back, my eyesight back is to come back here and tell my story. But I feel what has been making me sick all the time is the fact that I couldn't tell my story. But now I-it feels like I got my sight back by coming here and telling you my story." (Krog 1998, 30-31)

The social and political contexts have changed dramatically from the time when the police brutally shot and beat Mr Sikwepere until now, when he was telling his story. By clustering together his episodes and plots, occupying the centre and taking control of his life, choosing what role the listeners will play and assigning characters to them, Mr Sikwepere gives meaning and sense to his life. He reclaims his sight, although bullets were still lodged in his face; his body had lost half of its strength, but after telling his story, he was restored to full humanity-he could see again.

 

Narrative Scape1 towards National Unity

Storytelling is not a new phenomenon in South African history, as Hofmeyr's study (1993) demonstrates: "In both form and function, to the cultural storytelling of which Hofmeyr and others write. Overall, the TRC functioned well as a conduit for the making of collective memory, from its very inception. Although there was some public discourse about the healing nature of story-telling for individuals, in fact its real purpose for being was to assist the nation in moving beyond a traumatised past" (Andrews 2007, 171). The individual stories narrated at the Commission had a dual purpose. It brought a sense of completeness to the authors. Telling their story was an opportunity to fill in the gaps and to restore wholeness. The primary purpose of the storytelling was to deal with the past atrocities and build a nation on the foundation of truth and reconciliation. The task of the Commission was to construct a meta-narrative that will represent South Africa's multicultural nation. The individual stories had to be interwoven into a liminal space that transcended the lived experiences of the individuals and groups.

The individual stories are contour lines that join "points of equal and constant values. For example, contours on an elevation have constant heights that are the same on each line. "2 The individual stories find their paths to sensemaking within the broader social and political contexts. Ganzevoort introduces the concept of a "storyscape," which provides a theoretical framework for placing individual stories in a continuous whole:

"A 'storyscape' can be seen as the surrounding landscape of interconnected stories with which we inevitably interact."3

The stories of the victims must be placed within the immediacy of the TRC. Boraine, the vice-chairperson of the Commission, describes the single most important contribution of the Commission as follows: "In the TRC, in government, in civil society, and in the professions, there is the determination that what was experienced in the past must never happen again. It is this new spirit, this commitment, that was primarily the TRC's greatest contribution to a country emerging from a very dark night of the soul into a new day" (Boraine 2000, 157).

The Commission had 21 400 testimonies which represent about .05% of the South African population of 40 000 000 (Andrews 2007, 155). A much smaller percentage of stories were included in the final report of the Commission. However, some stories were carefully collected and "these relatively small numbers notwithstanding, as a means for constructing historical narratives of South Africa's apartheid past, it was very effective" (Andrews 2007, 171).

Each of the 21 400 authors had the opportunity to impact the historical narrative of South Africa. By telling their stories, and for the few who had their stories included in the Commission's report, the victims of gross human violations and serious atrocities, and the perpetrators and collaborators of perpetrators could direct the course of the South African nation. Each story told was confronted with the normativity of the social and political contexts. The social and political contexts provided both the constancy and the structure for recollection. Freeman (1993, 47) reminds us that "the word 'recollection' itself: while the 're' makes reference to the past, 'collection' makes reference to the present act, an act ... of gathering together what might have been dispersed or lost. Framed in another way, the word recollection holds within it a reference to the two distinct ways we often speak about history: as the trail of past events or 'past presents' that have culminated in now and as the act of writing, the act of gathering them together, selectively and imaginatively, into a followable story."

Andrews furthermore asserts that the purpose of the Commission was to help construct a new, united South Africa. In the Foreword to the Commission's report, Tutu appealed to people to use the report as a tool to promote national unity and not an instrument to take revenge or to slander people. Nelson Mandela echoed this sentiment at the handover of the Commission's report when he declared the "hope and confidence in the future" and referred to the report as "the property of our nation (which) should be a call to all of us to celebrate and to strengthen what we have done as a nation (BBC Online network http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk)" (Andrews 2007, 172-173).

 

Knowledge as Acknowledgment

The distribution of knowledge and information about the TRC has taken many forms, including books, articles, electronic publications, creative presentations, and the media. Both the public and private sector made use of these resources to understand the historical development of South Africa from 1960 to the formulation of the TRC and to the present. From a political point of view, the impact of these resources on the continuing influence of the TRC is questionable, considering that the majority of the South African population has not got the formal education to comprehend the ideas articulated in the various mediums.

The advantage of storytelling is its participatory manner in which knowledge finds meaning. Knowledge is not about abstract ideas but about meaning making and agency. Boraine asserts that the space and time of the hearings contributed to laying the foundation for a nation that is built on human rights and freedom. Boraine highlights the manner in which knowledge was made available as significant for healing and taking responsibility for human rights violations: "Thousands of victims and survivors from all parts of South Africa appeared before the TRC and told their simple and yet powerful stories of human suffering and indignity. As a consequence, the stories of victimisation and human rights violations have been told not merely in statistics and incidents but with a poignant human voice" (Boraine 2000, 154).

The knowledge transmitted in images and symbols that have meaning for the author, although it was drawn from the dominant cultural and political groups, placed the truths from the perspective of the storyteller at the disposal of the Commission and the nation. Boraine confirms that victims and perpetrators presented their truths within the multifaceted South African narrative. Personal truths were, and still are, passed on to the general public through social and traditional media. Of this kind of truth or knowledge, Boraine claims that: "To listen to one man relate how his wife and baby were cruelly murdered is much more powerful than all the statistics in the world, and it gives insight into the conflicts of the past" (Boraine 2000, 156).

Knowledge is a means to acknowledgement. The influence of knowledge through narrative contributes to reparation and amnesty. Knowledge provides the substance for the perpetrators to acknowledge their roles in human rights violations and atrocities against fellow human beings. By articulating knowledge and distributing it to as wide an audience as possible, the actors-in this case, the perpetrators-have no justifiable reason to deny their roles in the wrongdoings. (Ac)knowledge by means of storytelling, according to Sachs, created a moral climate, in "that it wipes out any possibility of denial. Even the most right-wing newspapers always start the editorials by saying that we have to acknowledge that terrible things were done in our name. Once that is done, it creates a climate which puts intense moral pressure on those who supported the system of apartheid to change, and to contribute to change" (Sachs 2000, 96).

Boraine recounts his own experience of the Commission: "The generosity of spirit by the majority of the victims/survivors was one of the remarkable experiences of those of us who sat on the Commission, and this feeling spilled over into the wider community." He attributes this remarkable experience to the entanglement of knowledge distribution and acknowledgement "through the hearings of major institutions, including political parties, the business and labour sectors, the health community, the media, the judiciary, the faith community, and others, many people publicly acknowledged their own collusion with apartheid. This acknowledgement should never be underestimated as a generous response from those who have been victimised and indeed dehumanised in the past" (Boraine 2000, 155).

 

Conclusion

After extensive analysis and a relatively objective look at the TRC and the work that it did, Verdoolaege (2008, 21) concludes: "We could tentatively argue that it was a praiseworthy undertaking, necessary for the future of South Africa. Many of its features, though, could have been improved and some of its anticipated achievements or results turned out to be failures." A nuanced look at the Commission and its work suggests that the peaceful transition from apartheid to democracy could in part be contributed to the narrative approach that the Commission took to create a spirit of reconciliation. A narrative approach places the victims of human rights violations and freedoms at the centre of transition from apartheid to democracy. Personal stories contributed to national unity by joining different stories into a "storyscape." A narrative approach also unmasks the "barbed wire" that gives a powerful position to those who are the privileged. It furthermore creates a space for those at the margins to occupy the centre and exercise their power to foster the future.

 

References

Andrews, M. 2007. Shaping History: Narratives of Political Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511557859.         [ Links ]

Boraine, A. 2000. "Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: The Third Way." In Truth and Justice: The Morality of Truth Commissions, 141-157, edited by R. I. Rotberg and Thompson, D. Princeton: Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400832033-008.         [ Links ]

Bruner, J. S. 1986. Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.         [ Links ]

Freeman, M. 1993. Rewriting the Self: History, Memory, Narrative. London: Routledge.         [ Links ]

Freeman, M. 2014. "Narrative, Ethics and the Development of Identity." Narrative Works: Issues, Investigations and Interventions 4 (2): 8-27. https://doi.org/10.7202/1062097ar.         [ Links ]

Ganzevoort, R. R. 1998. "Religious Coping Reconsidered." Journal of Psychology and Theology 26 (3): 276-286.         [ Links ]

Ganzevoort, R. R. 2017. "Naviguer dans les récits. Négociation des histoires canoniques dans la construction de l'identité religieuse." In Récit de soi et narrativité dans la construction de l'identité religieuse, edited by P.-Y. Brandt, P. Jesus, and P. Roman, 45-62. Paris: Éditions des archives contemporaines. https://doi.org/10.1177/009164719802600305.         [ Links ]

GisGeography. 2017. "What do Contour Lines on a Topographic Map Show?" Accessed October 20, 2019. https://gisgeography.com/contour-line-topographyic-map/.         [ Links ]

Hofmeyr, I. 1993. "We Spend our Years as a Tale that is Told: Oral Historical Narrative in a South African Chiefdom." Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.         [ Links ]

Krog, A. 1998. Country of my Skull. Johannesburg, Random House.         [ Links ]

Pargament, K. I. 1997. The Psychology of Religion and Coping. Theory, Research, Practice. New York: The Guilford Press.         [ Links ]

Sachs, A. 2000. "His name was Henry." In After the TRC: Reflections on Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa, edited by W. James and L. van de Vijver. Cape Town: David Philip Publishers.         [ Links ]

Truth and Reconciliation Commission. 2002. Final Report, Vol. 7. Accessed October 20, 2019. https://www.justice.gov.za/trc/report/index.htm.         [ Links ]

Verdoolaege, A. 2008. Reconciliation Discourse. Amsterdam: John Bejamin's Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.27.         [ Links ]

 

 

1 'Narrative landscape' is a phrase Ganzevoort used in a conversation with me about narrative and unity in September 2019 in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
2 This definition of a "contour line" is taken from GisGeography. Accessed October 20, 2019. https://gisgeography.com/contour-lines-topographic-map/.
3 Cf. R. Ruard Ganzevoort. 2017. "Naviguer dans les récits. Négociation des histoires canoniques dans la construction de l'identité religieuse." In Récit de soi et narrativité dans la construction de l'identité religieuse, 45-62, edited by P.-Y. Brandt, P. Jesus, and P. Roman. Paris: Éditions des archives contemporaines.

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