South Africa and the Importance of Improving the Arguments for a Public Debate

Abstract

The aim of this article is to provide an argumentative basis for a debate —that of reconciliation— which, as far as it is avoided, has consequences over the way in which we Argentines elaborate the legacy of human rights violations perpetrated during the last dictatorship. Following the most recent irruption of the topic of reconciliation after statements uttered by national deputy Nicolás Massot, and under the light of my research on the South African case, I examine the arguments opposed in Argentina in regard of the possibility of taking into account south African reconciliation process as a possible way to inspire an answer for the legacy of crimes against humanity in Argentina. The lack of willingness to provide truth on the part of the military, their lack of repentance, the assertion that criminal justice produces truth, the refusal to embrace with murderers and the legal impossibility of departing from trials, will be analyzed critically in this article in order to distinguish how much can we retain from those arguments and how much should be revised.