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Within a year after the first free elections in South Africa in 1994, legislation was drafted to create a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). From 1996 and over the following two years, South Africa initiated an extraordinary process through which hearings on the crimes and suffering of the traumatic past became part of the daily news. Compared to earlier truth commissions such as those in South America, the South African TRC was vested with innovative, quasi-judicial powers to grant amnesty and with an exceptionally clear focus on reconciliation. Furthermore, it was established and carried through with an unusual degree of public debate. It combined an investigation into what had happened, a forum for victim testimony, a committee on reparations and rehabilitation, and a process of amnesty. This procedure was uniquely constructed to increase knowledge about the past as well as to ensure some measure of individual accountability. Even though more than twenty truth commissions have been established since the 1980s, it is the South African TRC that has provided the model when initiatives for new commissions have been proposed in places such as Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sierra Leone, and Rwanda. At the same time, it is also broadly recognized that the South African Commission does not yield a flawless model simply to be implemented in any given context. It is difficult to judge the success of the TRC in relation to the promotion of truth, justice, and reconciliation. If the government does not follow up on the Commission's recommendation to introduce a policy of reparations toward the victims, and if in the end political criminals, whether they were refused amnesty or did not even apply for it, will benefit from a general amnesty, then the whole TRC process looks bleak from the victims' perspective.This and a host of other questions about the successes and shortcomings of the Commission's mandate, about the way in which it handled the mandate and the complex set of procedures and decisions adopted by the TRC constitutes only one level of the debates that have surrounded the institution from before its inception.