The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission came at a remarkable juncture in global politics and this is one reason for the international fascination with it. Around the world, governments and non-governmental organizations championed human rights institutions in post-apartheid South Africa as they desperately wanted to see a success story at the end of a truly horrific twentieth century. The century had begun with the unprecedented industrial annihilation of millions in a conventional war in Europe, culminated mid-century with a fascist genocide and ended with an upsurge in violent ethno-nationalist conflicts in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. In the dying embers of the twentieth century, South Africa represented a positive scenario, where a white supremacist regime gave way to non-racial constitutionalism in the absence (it seemed) of widespread retaliation and revenge. Out of the ashes of ruined Afrikaner nationalism, a new human rights commission led by a figure of unquestioned moral authority, former Archbishop Desmond Tutu, was explicitly dedicated to building a culture of human rights and an inclusive ‘rainbow nation’.

South Africa's transition became yet another example of the triumph of liberalism as it also coincided with the end of the Cold War, the subsequent demise of socialist ideologies and the rise of laissez-faire economics. Since global conditions were much less conducive to the defiant third world nationalism prevalent during the decades of decolonization, national elites in democratizing countries turned to human rights talk as the hallmark of a new democratic order.