In Mousaion: South African Journal for Information Studies. 31(2): 92-114, 2013. Muhammed Haron University of Botswana Page1 Towards Compiling an Annotated Bibliography of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission: Trials and Tribulations * Muhammed Haron † (University of Botswana) Abstract When the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was established and began its work during the early part of 1995 with the intention of contributing towards nation-building, it generated widespread interest from various quarters for a variety of reasons. Whilst journalists wrote about the TRC‟s effects upon the South African society during the time that it was in session, academics analyzed different aspects of the TRC to gauge whether it produced important findings that were of relevance to the international community. As a result of their extensive and rich outputs in the popular media and in peer reviewed journals, the TRC invariably attracted the attention of another set of interested individuals, namely bibliographers who had also witnessed the TRC process unfolding. They, as stakeholders, realized that the TRC had gradually generated a vast body of knowledge that needed to be monitored and recorded in a useful compilation that would serve many local and international researchers, scholars, and academics. Although by the beginning of 2000 a handful of these bibliographers had their works published on the internet and in journals, none of them annotated their entries with only one exception; in response to this glaring „short-coming‟, The South African TRC: An Annotated Bibliography was prepared. The purpose of this paper is to reflect upon the trials and tribulations of compiling, annotating and editing The South African TRC: An Annotated Bibliography, which was published by the New York based Nova Science at the end of 2009. The paper intends to assess the bibliographical articles/compilations that had been published as well as those that had been in progress by the end of 2008, and thereafter it argues why and how this bibliography regarded itself different from those that had been published or were in progress. Apart from sharing thoughts about the decision making process that pertained to the overall presentation of the bibliography, the essay prefaces the discussion with a detailed reflection regarding the process of the production of knowledge; a process that is inextricably tied to the compilation and formatting of this bibliography. Key words: South Africa, Truth & Reconciliation Commission, bibliography, annotations, knowledge production 0. Introduction: Placing the TRC Annotated Text in Context Pundits could have predicted, from the very outset, that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (hereafter TRC) - as a non-religious, secular, quasi-judicial institution - was going to be under the spotlight from the time the idea was mooted until long after it had completed its mandated tasks. In fact, before the Promotion of National Unity and * This was a paper delivered at the ASAIB conference on 13 May 2011 in Johannesburg. † He is also an associate researcher in the Department of Religion at the University of Johannesburg