Why Justice for Ukraine AND Russia Goes Through South Africa | Dr. Clivia von Dewitz

## A different route to justice: truth before verdicts The search for justice after mass violence is often framed as a binary: punish the guilty or let bygones be bygones. The conversation with Dr. Clivia von Dewitz pushes against that false choice. It proposes that a process rooted first in truth-telling, transparency, and the possibility of conditional amnesty can create space for healing that purely retributive systems seldom achieve. Drawing on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) as a living laboratory, the exchange reframes justice as a plural practice—one that must answer victims’ needs for acknowledgement and repair as much as the state’s interest in accountability. For conflicts like those involving Ukraine and Russia, the central claim is stark: justice that ignores the social fabric left behind risks perpetuating violence rather than ending it. ## South Africa’s model: conditional amnesty and public truth The South African TRC stands out because it combined an institutional mandate to investigate atrocities with the controversial power to grant amnesty. That design was not invented in a vacuum; transitional actors fashioned it as a compromise to make political transfer of power viable without unleashing a spiral of prosecutions that might have blocked peaceful transition. The amnesty procedure required applicants to make full disclosure, demonstrate political motivation for the act, and confine offenses to a clearly defined historical window. In practice this meant tens of thousands of submissions, relatively few of which met the stringent conditions—but of those that did, a large majority were granted amnesty. The bargain was explicit: tell the truth, or face criminal and civil liability. What made the TRC unique was its orientation toward narrative and visibility. Hearings—both victims’ testimony sessions and applicants’ confessions—were filmed and broadcast nationwide. That daily presence in media turned private wounds into public knowledge. It also reconfigured the victim not merely as a witness in a courtroom but as a central moral actor whose suffering demanded acknowledgement. This amplified truth’s social function: evidence was being produced not only for legal machinery but for collective memory. The result was an unprecedented communal documentation that helped delegitimize denialism and anchored national conversation. ## Why blanket retribution often fails Historic tribunals—Nuremberg, Tokyo, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia—did immense work in establishing legal norms and producing irrefutable documentary records. They showed the world that even leaders could be held responsible and that crimes against humanity could be codified and prosecuted. But trials answer one set of questions and often leave others untouched. Dr. von Dewitz draws attention to what courts typically leave out: the victim’s need to be heard beyond the role of a witness, the social mechanisms for repair, and the relational ties broken by crime. Retributive justice can harden social divisions. Trials by their nature concentrate power in institutions and tend to set victim and perpetrator on irreconcilable trajectories: punishment for one side, continued grievance for the other. International research cited by the conversation suggests that victims prioritize truth, reparations, and acknowledgment over mere punishment. Where a court can establish guilt, it rarely furnishes the relational work that helps societies live together afterwards. That is the core limitation of courts when the goal is social reintegration rather than legal condemnation alone. ## Restorative justice: healing the broken bond Restorative justice, as outlined in the discussion, is not sentimental or naïve; it is procedural and relational. Its premise is that crimes create a bond between perpetrator and victim—one that must be actively addressed if either is to be freed from the legacy of harm. Restorative encounters force perpetrators to confront the human consequences of their acts, and they give victims a degree of agency to articulate needs and demands for repair. That can mean apologies, material reparations, community service, or symbolic gestures that acknowledge dignity and loss. The conversation underscores that restorative mechanisms do not erase responsibility. Indeed, the TRC’s amnesty was conditioned on full disclosure—perpetrators had to come clean. Where they refused, or the political motivation could not be established, conventional criminal processes remained an option. In short, restorative justice in South Africa did not replace accountability; it recalibrated it, privileging truth as a currency that could buy social peace and psychological closure. Personal testimonies—like those from Holocaust survivors during the Eichmann trial or victims of apartheid on broadcasted TRC hearings—evidence the therapeutic dimension of witnessing and being witnessed. ## Practical design lessons: limits, incentives, and publicity Two design features of the TRC are particularly instructive. First, temporal and substantive limits: the TRC confined itself to defined dates and categories of political harm. That bounded mandate prevented the project from sprawling into moral infinity and made amnesty feasible as a negotiated instrument. Second, incentives mattered. Amnesty offered protection from criminal prosecution and civil liability—an attractive package that encouraged disclosures which otherwise would have remained hidden. The conversation highlights a paradox: many applicants were motivated less by moral absolution than by avoiding civil claims, yet their confessions still produced public goods—truth and documentation—that benefited victims. A third feature was publicity. Daily coverage and televised hearings transformed transitional justice from elite legalism into mass social experience. The exchange argues that such visibility matters because it turns private memory into public narrative, reduces denial, and builds a record for future scholars, institutions, and memorialization efforts. The filmed hearings also allowed victims’ voices to reach beyond courtroom walls, shifting the terms of legitimacy and historical knowledge. ## Applying the model to Russia and Ukraine: promise and pitfalls Translating South Africa’s model to the Russia–Ukraine context requires recognizing both its potential and its limits. The conflict is international in scale, involves competing national narratives, and is ongoing—conditions that complicate the kind of negotiated compromise the TRC was born of. Yet the central insight holds: truth can be a precondition for sustainable justice. The conversation proposes a temporal anchor—starting amnesty eligibility from 20 February 2014, the political turning point often associated with the Maidan climax—as a way to delimit the scope of a truth process. That choice would be politically freighted, but delimitation itself is indispensable for feasibility. Applying a truth-and-amnesty model would also require mechanisms to compel or incentivize disclosure, guarantee victims’ participation, and provide reparations. It would mean confronting foreign involvement, proxy dynamics, and transnational crimes—questions that the TRC did not have to answer to the same extent. Moreover, the international legal order has evolved; institutions like the International Criminal Court remain central actors with mandates that can conflict with blanket amnesty. Any Ukrainian–Russian truth scheme would need to navigate these institutional tensions carefully. ## Ethical trade-offs and political realities No transitional justice model is morally uncomplicated. Amnesty for certain crimes can feel like betrayal to victims who seek retribution. Conversely, insistence on prosecutions for all perpetrators may foreclose negotiated peace and perpetuate cycles of violence. The value of the South African example is not in present

Why Justice for Ukraine AND Russia Goes Through South Africa | Dr. Clivia von Dewitz The lies, omissions, and contradictions of the War in Ukraine are still rampant. That also holds true for warcrimes and crimes against humanity committed during this war. How can there ever be healing after all sides in this war accuse each other of the most horrendous crimes imaginable? Well, healing requires justice, and justice requires truth. The most instructive example for how a process of seeking justice can bring some healing to the victims of mass-violence—on all sides—is South Africa's approach to deal with the crimes committed by both, whites and blacks during the apartheid regime. My guest today, Dr. Clivia von Dewitz, argues that this experience holds important lessons for Russia and Ukraine, too, as justice begins with the search for truth. Dr. Dewitz is a judge at a District Court in Germany. In 1997 she completed an internship at the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and later researched for many years the role of restorative justice in Canada, Costa Rica, New Zealand, and the United States. She is also a trained mediator in criminal and civil law, and most recently she published a book with the title “A Peace Commission for the Ukraine Conflict: Could South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission be a Model?” Links: German Book Link: “Gerechtigkeit durch Wiedergutmachung?”: https://westendverlag.de /Gerechtigkeit-durch-Wiedergutmachung/2079 English Book Link:https://www.amazon.de/Peace- Commission-Russia-Ukraine-Conflict-Reconciliation-ebook/dp/B0DX2J4TRM Peace Institute: https://peacemaking.institute/english/ Homepage Clivia von Dewitz https://coachingcvd. info/ #F1 I suggest that the time for which you can apply for amnesty should be the 20th of February, 2014. You know, this was when the Maidan had its peak, the protests on Maidan had their peak. The president, the democratically elected president of the day, Yanukovych, had to flee the country. And the new government slowly came into power after that. I think it is very important that more truth comes out about what happened during the Maidan protests, what happened afterwards, and the influence of the United States, of Great Britain, of the West, basically. #M2 Hello everybody, this is Pascal from Neutrality Studies, and today I'm talking to a German colleague, Dr. Clivia von Dewitz. Dr. von Dewitz is a judge at a district court in Germany. In 1997, she completed an internship at the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and later researched for many years the role of restorative justice in Canada, Costa Rica, New Zealand, and the United States. She's also a trained mediator in criminal and civil law. Most recently, she -- 1 of 16 -- published a book titled "A Peace Commission for the Ukraine Conflict: Could South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission be a Model?" The very complicated topic of truth and justice after war is what we want to discuss today. So, Dr. von Dewitz, welcome. #F1 Thank you very much for the invitation. #M2 Well, thank you very much for saying yes to it, because you were actually recommended to me by Mr. Patrick Baab, who's a fantastic German journalist. I've had him on this channel before as well, and he said you have something really important to say. After looking at what you've been working on, I agree, because you've worked with a lot of traditions of justice and looked at how justice can work, especially in the South African case. You know, since the Second World War, we've had different kinds of tribunals that happened afterwards. We've had the Nuremberg and the Tokyo tribunals after the Second World War, but we then also had the Eichmann trial, right, where Eichmann was taken to Jerusalem and there was a process for his crimes, because he was one of the Nazis responsible for the Holocaust, running the concentration camps and extermination camps. Then we've had the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia after the Yugoslav wars. We also had the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa to deal with apartheid. Can you maybe start by introducing how these approaches to justice differ from each other and why your book focuses on the African case as a model? #F1 Let me first say that these international tribunals that you just mentioned wrote history, especially the one in Nuremberg. For the first time, crimes against humanity, the crime against peace, or crime of aggression were prosecuted. The lesson that is so important is that it showed that even heads of state do not go unpunished. Also, what I consider very important coming out of these cases is that there's huge evidence for what happened and that what happened cannot be denied thereafter. Very important. It has been said that especially the International Military Tribunal that was held in the Justice Palace in Nuremberg in 1946 actually marked the beginning of international criminal law. But I think we should not stop here because what about the victims? What about the reparations? What about the other side? Let me quote Nils Christie, a Norwegian criminologist, who provocatively said it's always the bandits on the other side that are brought to court. And he doubted that international criminal courts can really promote social peace. When I interned at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the Eastern Cape in South Africa, I had the great good luck to be able to attend both victims' hearings and amnesty hearings. And it really transformed my perception of the role of law, the role of justice, the role of judges. -- 2 of 16 -- #M2 Can you explain these trials for victims and for amnesty? Because this is a very interesting way in which South Africa approached restorative justice that I didn't know about. What were these amnesty hearings? #F1 So the specialty of this South African Truth Commission was exactly what you just mentioned: it was the power to grant amnesty. But what was the beauty of the proceedings? It was that it was colorblind. Actually, more Black South Africans applied for amnesty. There were about 7,116 amnesty applications, of which around 5,600 did not fulfill the conditions of the Act, and of the remaining 1,600 or so applications, 75% were granted amnesty. And what did it mean? It did not only mean amnesty from criminal proceedings; it also meant no civil liability. And what I found interesting was that not having to pay reparations or damages to the victims was actually the bigger motivator for people to come forward and apply for amnesty. The interesting thing also is that, you know, in court proceedings, there is the right to be silent; there is, you know, the fair process. And here, what I was told in the first hearings, the lawyer said, my client is not going to say anything. And the committee members of the amnesty committee said, well, this is an amnesty committee you're talking to. If you don't say anything, we cannot grant amnesty. This is the other way around. So the focus was on the amnesty applicant having to give full disclosure. #M2 And politically, it's important to know that this was decided right in South Africa, right at the end of apartheid, when Nelson Mandela basically came into power, on how to deal with this violent past where whites killed blacks and blacks also killed whites. It went both ways. How do we deal with this violent past? The approach was to say, okay, you can apply for amnesty, but you have to do so under certain conditions, right? What were those conditions? And then how was that supposed to help the nation to heal, healing through a judicial process? #F1 So the three conditions were: first, full disclosure, as I just mentioned. Then, the act had to be politically motivated and committed between the 1st of March, 1960, and the 10th of May, 1994. That was the day of the inauguration of Nelson Mandela, the first Black president in South Africa. The 1st of March, 1960, was the day of the Sharpeville massacre. These dates were chosen so that the mandated period was not too long. Apartheid didn't start in 1948; it started way earlier. For centuries, Blacks and non-whites have been suppressed. So the Truth Commission just looked at this relatively short period of time between 1960 and 1994 under these three conditions. -- 3 of 16 -- What I find very interesting is this whole process of setting up a truth commission with the power to grant amnesty was highly controversial, and it was actually the result of a compromise. The power that was then transferred from the white minority to the black majority was not easy, as the whites still held the military power and the economic power. It was clear that, at the end of the day, the black majority would have to get political power. That was the beginning. The idea of the Truth Commission came from the ANC, the African National Congress, the party of Nelson Mandela, because they had actually come up with this idea of dealing with the crimes committed by ANC members against ANC members, against comrades, especially in the ANC camps outside Africa. South Africa wanted to deal with this through the means of a truth commission. There have been several truth commissions before, especially in South America. The big examples were the truth commissions of Chile and Argentina. So there was something that South Africa could look to and learn from. But this amnesty provision was totally new, and it was challenged before the Constitutional Court throughout the process of the Truth Commission. The Constitutional Court said that because this amnesty clause was the result of a compromise, of a transitional phase, it is constitutional. #M2 And the idea here is to make sure that the people who live in South Africa and who have to continue to live with each other somehow get this moment of catharsis, of dealing with their own past without destroying the future. Because one of the issues when we think of justice is that we want justice in order for past wrongs to be rectified. But there are these moments when rectifying a past wrong might destroy the path into the future, right? Because you need a couple of the people who will be accused of whatever it was. Can you tell us what the idea was? I think the person who was in charge of this truth and reconciliation was Mr. Desmond Tutu, right? A highly respected figure in the ANC and the entire anti-apartheid movement. #F1 Let me go back a little bit. What does justice mean? I think everybody has a different notion of what justice means. It's such an important, big word that I actually have a lot of respect for the word. And I think it's actually overestimated. The belief we have in the West is that through criminal proceedings, we can achieve justice. Can we? I'm not so sure, to be honest. #M2 Another person I admire so much, Mr. Mahatma Gandhi, is usually attributed with saying, "An eye for an eye, and an ear for an ear, and the world will go blind and deaf." So is it that kind of thinking that if we do what has been done to others, then we will not get out of the mess? -- 4 of 16 -- #F1 Well, what I find very interesting is international research shows that what is most important for victims is actually knowing the truth, getting reparation, and having a perpetrator be accountable. The core message of my work is that the most important thing is that people who commit crimes be accountable. It's much more important if they come forward and take responsibility themselves. If they don't, we do need some kind of institution, like a court, that actually says you are responsible, you are found guilty. And then with the court comes the punishment. I hope that one day we will live in societies where we don't need punishment anymore, where people take responsibility, and where within the society, means can be figured out how to make good, how to make amends, and how to be sure that this does not happen again. Because if we look at the world after the