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Bodies of Truth: Law, Memory, and Emancipation in Post-Apartheid South Africa by Rita Kesselring (review)

By now, much has been written about the politics of apartheid victimhood and particularly South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)—a multi-year series of public hearings into political crimes committed under apartheid. Scholars have written on such varied topics as the public performances of the TRC (Cole 2010) and the bureaucratic work going on behind the scenes (Buur 2002). Scholars have praised the TRC for allowing reconciliation without requiring punishment (Asmal, Asmal, and Roberts 1997) and, conversely, criticized it for forestalling justice by granting amnesty in exchange for confession (Sitze 2013). Scholars have studied the multiple forms of individual confession and storytelling performed during hearings (Posel 2008), while others have decried the focus on individuals as detracting from the collective nature of apartheid’s injustices (mamdani 2002). With such varied work having been done on the country’s reckoning with apartheid’s crimes through the TRC, what more is there to say? Quite a bit if one reads Rita Kesselring’s excellent updating on the politics of apartheid victimhood, Bodies of Truth. one key difference between Kesselring’s book and previous work on apartheid victimhood is the empirical focus. Where other work predominantly looks at the institution of the TRC, Kesselring looks at a social movement of apartheid victims that first emerged in response to the TRC process. The Khulumani Support Group, a grassroots (though increasingly professionalized) victim advocacy group, forms the main basis for this study. This lens allows Kesselring to open a novel space through which to understand the relationship between apartheid and victimization.