Covenant University Journal of Politics and International Affairs (CUJPIA) Vol. 2, No. 2, Dec. 2014. Beyond Retribution: Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa as Universal Paradigm for Restorative Transitional Justice Bonny Ibhawoh, PhD Dept. of History / Centre for Peace Studies / Arts and Science Programme McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada Abstract: This paper examines the articulation of Ubuntu as a traditional African form of justice and how it was deployed to legitimize the Transition and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), as a restorative transitional justice model within and beyond post-apartheid South Africa. Transitional justice here refers to judicial and non-judicial measures implemented to redress legacies of human rights abuses in the aftermath of conflict and repression. It seeks recognition and justice for victims while promoting peace and reconciliation. In the final analysis, it is observed that the deployment of ubuntu in both the context of the TRC and socioeconomic rights jurisprudence represents a vernacularisation process that has served to legitimize universal human rights in South Africa. It also marks a distinctive South African and African normative contribution to the discourse on human dignity and the global fulfilment of universal human rights. Keywords: Transitional Justice, Ubuntu, Truth, Reconciliation Introduction The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) marked a paradigmatic shift in the global restorative transitional justice movement. Following the end of Apartheid and the establishment of constitutional democracy in 1994, the ruling government of the African National Congress led by Nelson Mandela initiated a transitional justice project founded on the principles of human rights and national reconciliation. When the TRC was set up in 1995, its mandate was to bear witness to, record and in some cases grant amnesty to the perpetrators of crimes relating to human rights violations. The TRC was also mandated to explore reparation and rehabilitation for the victims of apartheid (Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act, No. 34 of 1995). Given South Africa’s difficult and complicated history of apartheid and the anti- apartheid struggle, the TRC model of transitional justice was aimed at mobilizing the processes and symbols of racial reconciliation and reparations in a manner that accommodated the aspirations of the society and that utilized indigenous notions of humanity (termed ubuntu) in its operations and procedures. The proceedings of the TRC provided the first occasion for a postcolonial government in Africa to consider the 1