Bearing Witness

People who witness acts of terror and violence are often called after the event to bear witness to what they saw. In cases where this violence is inflicted by the state upon its own people, the process of bearing witness is both politically complex and traumatic for the individual involved. Independent trials and commissions have become important mechanisms through which the truth of past violence is sought in democratizing states, but there has been little close attention paid to the processes and complexity of the work of such institutions. This study of the process of bearing witness examines the gendered dimensions of this topic from an anthropological and ethnographic viewpoint. Taking as a key example the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, the author explores women's relationships to testimony, particularly the extent to which women avoid talking about or are silent about certain forms of violence and suffering. Offering first-hand examples, she approaches a more subtle understanding of the achievements and the limitations of testimony as a measure of suffering and recovery generally. Is it, she asks, the panacea it is usually seen as? Or do conventional dis