"Forms of Justice after Evil: Argentina, Uruguay, South Africa"

LUCAS MARTÍN

African Yearbook of Rhetoric

Centre for Rhetoric Studies ? University of Cape Town. Cape Town

Lugar: CapeTown; Año: 2015 vol. 6 p. 81 - 90

2220-2188

What relationship to justice is established when an attempt is made to respond to the legacy of a criminal regime in the context of a new democratic beginning? To respond to this question, we must confront both the question of the foundation of a new democracy as well as the need for justice that accompanies this new beginning. On the following pages, I will offer interpretations of the different yet exemplary forms of responding to this question in Argentina, Uruguay and South Africa at the end of the last century. To do so, I will compare and contrast these three experiences in an attempt to shed light on an issue that is difficult to approach and entails certain debts. We believe it is possible to acknowledge that different forms of justice can be established in post-traumatic times, forms that depend on the different place given to other legitimate ends that are sought out simultaneously with justice. By legitimate ends, I am referring to the goals that are in some degree connected to justice and to democracy as a polity that enables justice: returning the dignity of the victims, establishing the truth, strengthening democracy or democratic peace, not repeating the past (the concept of ?Nunca Más?), promoting a culture of human rights and elaborating a collective memory of a traumatic past.