South Africa, 1994 →

Timeline

1. 1990–93
   Negotiated end of apartheid: CODESA talks; interim constitution; release of political prisoners.
   Source: CODESA record
2. Apr 1994
   First non-racial democratic election. African National Congress takes office.
   Source: South African archives
3. 1995
   Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act establishes the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).
   Source: Act 34 of 1995
4. 1996–98
   TRC public hearings: Human Rights Violations, Amnesty, and Reparation & Rehabilitation Committees. Amnesty conditioned on full disclosure of politically motivated acts.
   Source: TRC Final Report (Vols 1–5)
5. 1998
   TRC Final Report delivered. Names named, in the truth-telling sense — but few prosecutions followed.
   Source: TRC Final Report
6. 2000s–present
   Socio-economic redistribution lagged. Police violence, including Marikana (2012), and persistent inequality have shaped scholarly critique of truth-without-structural-change.
   Source: Subsequent academic and HRC critique

Why it is cited as a cautionary frame

• Truth-telling without structural demilitarisation and socio-economic delivery has limits. South Africa is the most visible empirical record of those limits.
• Amnesty-for-truth bought public process but constrained accountability — a trade-off Sri Lanka's civil society has explicitly warned against (PEARL, ITJP, Adayaalam).
• Police reform without disarmament of inherited structures left a legacy that surfaced again at Marikana.
• Reading this comparator stops anyone from suggesting that a Sri Lankan “TRC-style” process alone — without monitored demilitarisation and land/livelihood remedy — would settle the post-2009 record.

What this is not

• South Africa's apartheid system and Sri Lanka's post-2009 ethnocracy are not equivalents — citing the curve does not flatten that difference.
• Cited as a cautionary comparator, not as an indictment of South African civil society, which has continued to push for delivery long after the TRC ended.
• TLTE does not propose a TRC for Sri Lanka. Truth processes — if and when designed — are for survivors, OHCHR-aligned mechanisms, and PEARL/ITJP/Adayaalam-led civil society to lead, not TLTE.