Learning to Live Together Practices of Social Reconciliation

This title takes an indepth look at reconciliation initiatives that are emerging in education, land reform, rural development, business and the non-governmental sector. The Institute for Justice and Reconciliation has in the past three years undertaken several interventions in communities across the country, aimed at seeking the understand what hinders and what promotes understanding and reconciliation among former enemies and ordinary South Africans who struggle to build a common future after generations of violent conflict. We have learned from what is happening in the promotion of reconciliation in a wide range of communities. These include: a rural KwaZulu-Natal community in Muden; Cradock in the Eastern Cape; Gugulethu, a township outside of Cape Town; a student community in Stellenbosch; Trust Feed, the location of a 1985 massacre; a middle-class white suburb in Cape Town; a coloured community on the Cape Flats. In each of these communities we have collected stories of "best practices" in pursuit of social and political reconciliation. The title raises questions, poses concerns and invites debate on how we as South Africans are learning to live together.