Apartheid Wounds

It's been a busy few weeks. And I have another article in Newsday today to show for it.

The story is pegged to the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was a body set up soon after the first democratic elections in South Africa to attempt to uncover some of the atrocities committed by the apartheid government and the people fighting against them.

The most interesting part of the story was when I was able to interview Alex Boraine, who was the deputy commissioner of the TRC, and one of those who had laid the groundwork for some sort of body of this sort for many years beforehand. And the most surprising part of my reporting was what he told me: he and others really think the government had hurt the process of reconciliation.

I was set to write a feel-good story about the legacy of the commission, but ended up with something a little darker.