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3 Vienna Online J. on Int'l Const. L. 55 (2009)
Book Reviews

handle is hein.journals/vioincl3 and id is 54 raw text is: * BOOK REVIEW Caroline Kerschbaumer Antje du Bois-Pedain: Transitional Amnesty in South Africa, Cambridge University Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-521-87829-6, 418 pp. The South African truth and reconciliation process has been studied widely and many publications have emerged since the completion of volumes 1 to 5 of the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 1998 and after 2003 when volumes 6 and 7 also appeared. It is probably the best known such process since it was the first of this specific kind and is publicly often seen as a big success story. However, the book Transitional Amnesty in South Africa by Dr. Antje du Bois-Pedain takes a closer look and examines critically, in a detailed way and comprehensively, the method of granting amnesties to perpetrators who fully disclose the facts of their politically motivated deeds within the framework of South Africa's truth and reconciliation process. This is done in an interdisciplinary way, the most reasonable one when discussing an issue such as transitional justice. Before reading this book, it is advisable to have knowledge about the South African political history of the past few decades. This is because the book directly starts with describing the amnesty scheme, including its preconditions and the effects of amnesties, the history of the TRC Act as well as its predecessors, and the interpretation of the respective provisions. It might be complicated at the beginning without having the respective background knowledge. Furthermore, du Bois-Pedain describes, on the basis of the decisions of the Cape High Court and the Constitutional Court on a famous case regarding five prominent apartheid victims, the constitutional challenge of the amnesty provisions. Also, some general remarks are made about the work of the Amnesty Committee including problems it faced and the issue of judicial review of amnesty decisions - a rare but interesting phenomenon. Finally, the problem of post-TRC prosecutions regarding persons who did not take part in the TRC process or whose applications were unsuccessful is highlighted. In order to conduct an in-depth analysis of the practice of the Amnesty Committee, du Bois-Pedain based her study on all 1100 published amnesty decisions released by the Committee from 1996 until 2001. Other primary sources, such as the TRC Report and transcripts of amnesty hearings, are also used. The inclusion of all of these decisions makes the research outstanding and very useful. Although most decisions do not contain full reasoning - limited instead to a description of the conduct of the amnesty applicant, the statement that the applicant has fulfilled the amnesty requirements, and the specific offence for which amnesty is granted - the author found a methodological approach on www.icl-journal.con Vol 3 1/2009, 55

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