Our journey began in fifth-century Athens BCE. The start of the century witnessed the punishment of Phrynichus, a tragedian who was fined for daring to stage a play that reminded the audience of the capture of the Ionian city of Miletus. At the century's end was a public prohibition of memory that served as a precondition of democracy: Athenian citizens were required to swear an oath that they would not remember all they had suffered under the Thirty Tyrants. This enforced amnesia gave birth to fraternal twins: the model amnesty of Western history and its model democracy. We glimpsed how the amnesia that is the hinge on the doorway to democracy is found in political speeches and sensibilities insisting that the dead should bury the dead and that the present is but a blank slate.

This chapter examines South Africa's transition to democracy by way of its landmark Truth and Reconciliation Commission.