Conflict Resolution through Reconciliation

Forty years after the first free elections in South Africa in 1994 it is worth revisiting the TRC-process that was at the time a shining example for conflict resolution through reconciliation. After the fall of the Wall, in Germany the less symbolically pregnant notion of "working through the past" ("Aufarbeitung von Vergangenheit") was preferred. Comparative key questions are worth to revisit: What options for actions (amnesty, applying the rule of law, truth commission etc.) were chosen in both countries and why? What rituals, rites or symbolic forms of expression accompany the processes of dealing with the past? How can the results of the processes be evaluated?

Professor
Ralf Karolus Wüstenberg
is Chair of Protestant Theology specializing in Systematic and Historical Theology at the European University of Flensburg (EUF) and Director of the European Wasatia Graduate School for Peace and Conflict Resolution; he is also a Visiting fellow at the Universities of Cambridge (St Edmund's College) and Stellenbosch (Theological Faculty), in 2002-2003 he was a visiting professor at Union Theological Seminary, New York City and from 2005-2009 Guest professor at Freie Universität Berlin. Dr. Wüstenberg also conducted research on political Reconciliation in South Africa between 1996 and 1999 (University of Cape Town). He is the author and editor of 26 titles in German, English and Portuguese language, including introductions to theology and Christology; on current topics such as the political dimension of reconciliation or the dialogue with Islam, and on Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theology and ethics.