Between Acknowledgement and Ignorance: How White South Africans Have Dealt with the Apartheid Past

This report examines the way ordinary people – Germans after 1945 and South Africans after 1994-  deal with an authoritarian past. The report considers how the past is perceived; to what extent people accept the new political order and its democratic values; and how they react to institutions such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which try to deal with and uncover the legacies of the past. Previously published survey data from Germany and South Africa is reviewed and new empirical findings are presented from a nation-wide telephone survey of 124 white South Africans.