The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has been subject to numerous debates across a wide range of disciplines, including peace and conflict studies, justice and transformation studies, as well as religious studies. In political science, the debates concerning the TRC have mainly revolved around the peace versus justice dichotomy, and more recently - the heated question of whether symbolic measures as opposed to socioeconomic measures can pave the ideal path to justice and reconciliation in post-conflict societies. Arguably, the debates that have dominated the discourse on justice and transformation in South Africa so far has failed to acknowledge and unpack the central role that religion played in the country’s process of transition. My argument is that religion was instrumentalized politically in the TRC, and thereby used to morally justify certain political compromises that were made during the negotiations between the apartheid National Party (NP) and the African National Congress (ANC) in the early 1990s. By political instrumentalization, I am referring to the strategy of using an identity marker, in this case Christianity, to achieve political ends. I propose that that the Mandela administration purposely employed religious elements in the political nation-building-tool of the TRC with the intent to create an atmosphere of “spiritual healing”. This symbolic and inter-personal understanding of justice in turn, it can be argued, came at the expense of retributive and/ or socio-economic justice. The influence of religion within the TRC can be seen most strongly in the identity of the key people involved (the chairperson Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and four of the commissioners who were theologians), the overt biblical rhetoric employed both in the hearings and in the final report, as well as in the design of the commission. The constructivist theories in which this paper will frame its understanding of “the religious” suggests any space can become holy through the performance of religious practices. In this regard, I propose that the TRC, while appearing to be a court-like body, became a sacred space through practices including prayers, lighting of candles and singing of hymns.

法國在2010年發生了一件富社會與政治爭議性的大事：對非法吉普塞人移民的驅除。當時法國媒體極力報導這則消息，並皆由報導重新建構此事件。此篇論文探討法文報紙在報導吉普賽移民議題上如何被政治化。此研究由法國《世界報》與《費加洛日報》中挑選240篇文章出來做框架分析，《世界報》與《費加洛日報》分別代表法國兩大不同政治理念的國家日報，藉此分析支持學者哈林與曼席尼的媒體政治制度化與框架中的分化假設。《世界報》中大部分文章有著支持吉普賽移民框架報導(107篇文章)而《費加洛日報》中大部份文章則是反吉普賽移民框架報導的(76篇文章)。此外，結果顯示《世界報》中佔優勢的框架是支持吉普賽人安全制度的框架，而《費加洛日報》佔優勢的框架則是反吉普賽人移民的國家主義框架。 / Summer 2010 in France was marked by a major socio-political controversy: the expulsions of illegal Roma immigrants. The French news media widely broadcasted the issue, reconstructing the debate for the audiences. This thesis researched how French newspapers are being politicized in reporting the Roma immigration debate. Framing analysis of 240 articles in Le Monde and Le Figaro, two selected French national dailies of differing political ideology, supported Hallin and Mancini’s hypothesis of media instrumentalization and polarization in frame. Le Monde had a majority of pro-Roma immigration frames (107 articles) and Le Figaro had a majority of against Roma immigration frames (76 articles). Moreover, findings showed that Le Monde’s dominant frame was the pro-Roma securitization frame and Le Figaro’s dominant frame was the against Roma immigration nationalism frame.