Peace, reconciliation and justice: delivering the miracle in post-apartheid education

In the last decade of the twentieth century, the liberation struggle in South Africa bore its fruit. Apartheid was brought to an end through a negotiated settlement, and a new constitutional state was established, enshrining equality and human rights for all. In 1994, at the first democratic elections in South Africa, millions of people queued to exercise their first vote, and Nelson Mandela, once gaoled as a terrorist, was installed as president in a glorious ceremony rich with symbolism of the changing order. In an historic compromise where amnesty would be exchanged for truth-telling, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission provided a public process for coming to terms with the worst human rights abuses of apartheid. It was a limited record, addressing individual instances of gross abuse rather than the everyday suffering of ordinary people under the structural violence of apartheid. Nonetheless, in the spirit of compromise and national unity, restorative justice prevailed over retribution so that a new order could be forged from the old