It was in 1995. with the fall of Apartheid and the beginning of the democratic transition was created in South Africa the commission of truth and reconciliation (TRC). Headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace, the Commission was aimed at creating a registration of serious abuses committed against the black population during the racist regime, as well as building a collective memory about a past marked by deep racial wounds.
The TRC redefined the global approach of the truth commissions when facing the sequels of the past through processes focused on forgiveness, reconciliation and damage repair. More than 21,000 people presented their testimonies before the Commission, ending decades of forced silencing. As a result, the TRC became a world reference in transitional justice and showed that it is possible to face historical crimes from a perspective based on the truth of the victims.
Its legacy has been fundamental to inspire reparation processes for the centuries of enslavement, transatlantic treats, colonization and systematic oppression of people of African descent. An example of this is the decision of the African union to designate 2025 as the year of repairs, under the motto: “Justice for Africans and Afro -descendants through repairs.” This initiative seeks to articulate a common front from the continent and its diaspora, to demand the old colonial powers compensation for the atrocities committed throughout generations.
The year of repairs is based, in large part, on the lessons left by the transition from South Africa to an “rainbow nation”, a concept coined by Tutu to refer to the vision of a diverse country, united and reconciled. But it also intends to avoid mistakes made during that process. It is a fact recognized by the international community that, although the TRC facilitated the construction of a historical memory on the regime of the Apartheiddid not adequately approach the inherited economic disparities of the segregation system. As a consequence, the deep social and financial inequalities among racial groups remain a reality in the country.
For this reason, repairing justice cannot be limited to the revelation of the truth or to the symbolic recognition of suffering. Along these lines, the framework document of the year of repairs indicates that the healing of scars caused by slavery, colonization and Apartheid It requires structural transformations that improve the material conditions of the Africans and Africanity. How could, if not, African societies and black communities in the diaspora look to the future, when current inequality prevents them from living with dignity? Is it possible to heal collectively while surviving in an impoverishment as a result of centuries of plunder and exclusion?
Indeed, the grievances that must be addressed through repairs do not belong solely to the past, but are manifested in the structures of the present. Therefore, it is not enough to recognize what happened or forgive those who benefited from centuries of oppression. It is urgent to transform the current conditions that continue to deny millions of African and Afro -descendant people the possibility of living with full access to their fundamental rights in a global context marked by the deepening of inequalities. Thus, the year 2025 gives us a powerful framework from which to sow the basis for the integral reparation that history claims.
A group of people visits one of the dungeons of the castle of Cape Coast (Ghana), which was one of the largest slave trade centers in Western Africa. Photography: Javier Sánchez Salcedo
