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In times of conflict or authoritarian regimes, a wide range of actors commit or support acts of violence. These can include corporations who command, directly engage in, entice and support, or benefit from violence. Symbolic reparations (SRs) is an umbrella term that describes symbolic acts of repairing harm, such as apologies, acknowledgment, memorialization or commemoration during transitional justice processes. SRs seek to address the intrinsic wrongness of the harm endured by victims and put their needs for recognition, respect, dignity and hope center stage.
Whilst corporations are increasingly important as participants in and supporters of transitional justice, their role in these processes remains under-researched. Neither the transitional justice nor the business ethics and management literatures provide satisfactory answers to the questions of why, when and how both corporations and victims may decide to engage in SR processes or what impact this may have.
This project aims to answer the following questions:
The project studies the involvement of corporations in SRs in Colombia, South Africa and Germany. We draw on the multi-disciplinary backgrounds of the research team in political science, transitional justice, management and business ethics and adopt a multiple-case study approach. The team will conduct key informant interviews, archival work and document analysis.
The findings will provide policy makers, scholars and practitioners with a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of the contributions that corporations can make to transitional justice processes through SRs.
In the project “Corporate symbolic reparations in transitional justice contexts: Case studies from Colombia, Germany, and South Africa” we set out to identify and elaborate the role corporations can and do play in processes of transitional justice. In contexts of conflict or authoritarian regimes, a wide range of actors commit or support acts of violence. These can include corporations who command, directly engage in, entice and support, or benefit from violence. We started from the view that whilst corporations are increasingly important as participants in and supporters of transitional justice, their role in these processes remains under- researched. Neither transitional justice nor business ethics and management literatures provide satisfactory answers to the questions of why, when, and how both corporations and victims may decide to engage in transitional justice processes or what impact this may have. Using symbolic reparations (SR) as our specific entry point, this project set out to explore those questions in Germany, South Africa and Colombia.
This policy brief presents a summary assessment of the progress made in providing redress for victims of the Marikana Massacre,1 when 34 striking miners were killed by the South African Police Service (SAPS) in 2012 and ten people were killed in the conflict that led up to it. In the ten years since the massacre, there has been meagre progress in addressing its consequences. Direct victims and their relatives have not received full reparations, the community of Marikana remains underdeveloped and deeply divided, and the apartheid legacy of the mining sector in South Africa remains an unresolved wound in the national psyche. An integrated approach is required to address both the systemic injustices and the specific legacies of the Marikana Massacre, while being clear about the specific responsibilities of all the stakeholders.
This policy brief spells out key facts about the events, outlines what progress that has been made in the last ten years in seeking truth, justice and reconciliation, and spells out recommendations for state, corporate and civil society actors on the way forward.
These findings and recommendations are based on research conducted by the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) in collaboration with the University of St Gallen over the past two years,2 and builds on the CSVR’s local engagement with community members in Marikana over the last decade.
The fact that the transitional justice process in South Africa is still ongoing and unresolved 27 years after the 1994 transition to democracy raises critical concerns about how transitional justice is conceptualized and how remedies are devised. Transition to democracy has not resolved some of the fundamental sources of conflict in the business sector, and the conditions of inequality in wealth and power have continued to fuel new conflict and human rights abuses. The Marikana Massacre of 2012 (the worst mass shooting by police in South Africa since 1960) in which 34 miners were killed was a direct consequence of systemic problems in the corporate sector that had not been addressed by the political transition. Key problems identified19 were the very direct role of the mining company officials in shaping police responses, the appalling living conditions of the mine workers, and the volatility in the bargaining relations between workers and managers. This expectation that the conditions that cause conflict in the business sector will be resolved through a political transition is often misplaced.
Moral repair is an important way for firms to heal moral relationships with stake- holders following a transgression. The concept is rooted in recognition theory, which is often used to develop normative perspectives and prescriptions, but the same theory has also propelled a view of moral repair as premised on negotiation between offender and victim(s), which involves the complex social construction of the transgression and the appropriate amends. The tension between normative principles and socioconstructivist implementation begs the question how offending firms should approach moral repair. Addressing this question, we develop a two- level conceptualization of moral repair, distinguishing between procedural and substantive levels of practice, which accommodate normativity and socioconstruc- tivism, respectively. In so doing, we enrich the literature by 1) promoting concep- tual clarity, 2) refining understanding of the moral repair process, and 3) suggesting the use of a unified, configurational approach to studying (nonlinear) relations between amends and moral outcomes.
This report focuses on the process of corporate redress in response to the Marikana Massacre, which occurred on 16 August 2012. The study sought to examine the various forms of reparations that have been provided to victims by the mining company and to understand this process in the context of other processes of justice and repair to address the consequences of conflict and violence. As such, this report forms part of a broader international study on the role of corporate actors in transitional justice processes.1
The publication of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) was a watershed moment in the business and human rights (BHR) debate, a scholarly and policy discussion that has boomed over the last two decades. In parallel, the United Nations General Assembly issued its Agenda 2030, featuring 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by the end of 2030. Both, the UNGPs and the Agenda 2030, are instruments designed to advance corporate sustainability at an international level. Yet, despite their apparent complementarities and potential synergies, the connection between the two remains loose and therefore ambiguous. The discon- nect is exacerbated by how the Agenda 2030 frames the role and contributions of the business sector, which holds strong parallelisms with the traditional notion of “Corporate Social Responsibility” (CSR). However, adopting a “CSR” approach to SDG implementation obstructs the integration of the UNGPs and hinders Agenda 2030 from taking advantage of the progress made in BHR over the last two decades and thus to realize their full potential in charting a holistic path of sustainability of business actors.
Florian Wettstein
Coordinator
University of St. Gallen
Ulrike Lühe
Co-Coordinator
University of Basel
Jordi Vives
Principal Member
University of St. Gallen
Hugo van der Merwe
Principal Member
Center for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, South Africa
Mbalenhla Matandela
Principal Member
Center for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, South Africa
Marco Velasques Ruiz
Principal Member
Columbian Special Jurisdiction for Peace JEP, Colombia
Ana Maria Reyes
Associated Member
Boston University
Frank Haldemann
Associated Member
Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights
Swiss Network for
International Studies