RECONCILIATION IN SOUTH AFRICA AS A(N) (IM)POSSIBLE MODEL FOR THE POST-YUGOSLAV AREA

Abstract

The concept of reconciliation as a political-psychological concept came into being at the beginning of the nineties of the last century. It took a lot of time for the experts, who were engaged in peacebuilding in the post-conflict period, to understand that political, economic and other social processes were not sufficient for the reconciliation process, but that psychological aspects of reconciliation should also be included. In such a way, the process of reconciliation, in which subjects of reconciliation are race, people, nations, was lowered from the collective to the individual level. An example of such an attempt relates to the events after the apartheid in the South African Republic and the establishment of the Commission for Truth and Reconciliation. In this regard, this paper aims to identify the basic ideas and principles of the reconciliation process in the South African Republic and try to place it in the context of reconciliation between formerly warring parties in the former Yugoslavia. In the analysis of the concept of reconciliation that has been relatively successfully applied in the South African Republic, three key ideas have been identified. The first idea suggests that the process of reconciliation from the level of "political elites" should be lowered to the level of "ordinary people". The second, it is necessary to have a so-called Third party for the reconciliation process that will manage the whole process. And the third, that the truth is an unavoidable factor in the process of reconciliation. In this paper, a proposal for a possible model of reconciliation among the countries and nations of the former Yugoslavia is given on the basis of analysis of the post-conflict processes in the South African Republic and current events in the post-Yugoslav space.