In recent years, concepts of Transitional Justice have been becoming increasingly important in the context of coming to terms with societies’ past conflicts. The aim is to achieve reconciliation or at least an improvement in relations between the parties that were involved in the conflict, and to find a way for an often divided society to find peaceful forms of coexistence and thus prevent future conflicts.

The system of racial domination known as ‘apartheid’ had engendered a guerilla war since the 1960s and the country had become a militarised fortress . 

Apart from speakers from South Africa and discussion participants from Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, representatives of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and a number of German non-governmental organisations, particularly from the field of peace and conflict studies, also took part.