The topic of this book has held my interest for almost a decade. Transitional amnesties – a term coined by Ruti Teitel in her seminal 2000 book on Transitional Justice – generally have a bad name. They are perceived as trade-offs of justice which send the wrong message to a society struggling to rebuild respect for the rule of law. The South African amnesty is special because it makes amnesty conditional upon the full disclosure of a politically motivated offence – not a threat to justice, it is claimed, but an integral part of an ethically justifiable response to an unjust past.

I first began work on this book as a full-time researcher in a project on transitional justice based at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and continued with it on and off since my appointment at the University of Cambridge in 2001. Over the years I have incurred debts to many people and many institutions. First and foremost, I want to thank my PhD supervisor, Professor Gerhard Werle, who inspired this study and could not have been more patient, and more supportive, throughout the years it took to complete it. I also want to thank my external examiner, Professor Andrew von Hirsch, and Sir Derek Oulton, who read large parts of the manuscript and gave me excellent advice on how to improve it. The Deutsche Volkswagenstiftung in Berlin provided me with generous funding from September 1998 to April 2001.