INTRODUCTION

The work of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has been described as an exercise in remembering, which, according to Brent Harris, is ‘a quintessentially archival exercise’. The remembering function of the TRC was articulated in its founding Act as the task of putting together ‘as complete a picture’ of the past as possible. The report produced by the TRC in fulfilment of this mandate can therefore be seen as an attempt to ensure the public availability of ‘memory in the form of documents’ for generations to come.

The function of the TRC has, on the other hand, also been described as closing ‘a horrendous chapter in the life of our nation’. As a product of the negotiated settlement between those who wanted retribution and those who begged for forgiveness, the TRC was part and parcel of South Africa's new beginning as a constitutional democracy. It was to assemble an archive of South Africa's divided past that would make it possible to anticipate a future that could ‘once and for all’ close the book on the past.

The remembering/forgetting binary as it relates to perceptions of the TRC's functions come together in the TRC's Report as the official archive of South Africa's apartheid past. The critical point is that this archive had to remember in order to make it possible to forget, which is another way of saying that the TRC's task was to commence the work of reconciliation in South Africa.